The domestication of plants and animals was the byproduct of an evolutionary process in which particular elements in the constellation of potential domesticates were subject to human manipulation as a response to adaptive strategies within diverse ecological habitats (Braidwood, 1971, 238). During the course of this development, patterns of exploitation apparently exerted an external stimulus which eventually resulted in the selective modification of the adaptive attributes of particular species of plants and animals. Such morphological change has been taken as a key criterion in delineating the diagnostic characteristics distinguishing wild from domestic plants and animals (Jarman, 1972, 16). The problem then becomes one of identifying the most reliable indicators in the resultant effects upon the domestication of plants and animals, as well as the inherent limitations stemming from the interpretive potential of such attributes (be they biological or cultural).

Born in Rovereto in the North of Italy during the Risorgimento, and a student at Padua, Vienna and Rome, Orsi is best known for his work in Sicily from 1888 onwards, as inspector and then director of the Syracuse museum. His long and distinguished career began with research in the Trentino where he studied the antiquities of all periods, and his first publication (the first of over 300) appeared in I 878. The Italian archaeological establishment, and prehistorians such as Pigorini, Chierici and Strobel, soon became aware of Orsi's tireless ability as a fieldworker and scholar in his home area. His stratigraphic excavations in the rock-shelter of Colombo di Mori in 1881, his particular interest in prehistory and his early three-fold division of the North Italian Neolithic in 1882 were notable and clearly marked the beginning of systematic research in the Trentino. Orsi became a regular contributor to the Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana from 1882 and later other journals such as the Monumenti Antichi and the Notizie degli Scavi of the Accademia dei Lincei widely publicized his discoveries in Sicily. By 1893 the editors of the American Journal of Archaeology had drawn attention to his 'immense activity in Sicily , . . By his means Sicily is becoming the part of Italy where the most interesting excavations are being carried on' (293).

One of the few things to have remained very little changed in the City of London for nearly one thousand years was the position of most of its streets and lanes. Unfortunately this is no longer true, and in the past few decades large numbers of medieval streets have disappeared from the map for ever to be replaced by characterless dual-carriageways that now slice through the City. Not only do these new routes replace the earlier ones, but at the same time they swallow up and destroy all the surrounding side lanes and many of the old alignments disappear. Equally, property boundaries which may also have survived for at least 800 years now disappear for ever in very large redevelopments, and nowhere is this whole process more clearly seen than in the vast swathe cut for the new southern dualcarriageway that has replaced Thames Street. The whole of the western part of Upper Thames Street, with its adjoining side lanes, has been physically removed, to be replaced by a tunnelled dualcarriageway further to the south. For well over half a mile the central part of Thames Street is now so wide that it has engulfed properties on its north side, while the eastern end from the Custom House to Tower Hill, with its surrounding redevelopments, has had all signs of the medieval topography removed except for All Hallows church with its unique Anglo-Saxon arch (Taylor & Taylor, 1965, 39-400)

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bore witness to the zenith of the European art of 'collecting' antiquities. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the beginnings of systematic archaeological techniques of excavation, field survey, conservation and protection. It saw what Professor Seton Lloyd has called the 'birth of a conscience' regarding the expropriation of antiquities from other countries. In the twentieth century the idea has emerged that cultural property is a matter of international concern, as being part of the 'heritage of mankind'. This concern has centred around looting from and destruction of archaeological sites, cultural heritage, the illicit traffic of art in the international market, and the return of cultural property. ildditional controls have been sought to establish the protection of cultural property in time of war as well as peace.

In recognition of the significance of these sites, and those of the classical and medieval periods also revealed by aerial photography, the Apulia Committee was set up under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries to organize a systematic programme of research. Unhappily this enterprise, begun with great intentions, became an early victim of tragic illness and accident of the chief protagonists and latterly has fallen into the malaise characteristic of old archaeological projects that have lost their initial momentum. All that is available in print is three preliminary reports in ANTIQUITY (Bradford & Williams-Hunt, 1946; Bradford, 1949; Bradford, 1950), some further information in Bradford's book Ancient landscapes (1957) and a few articles by other authors that arose as a result of work sponsored by the Apulia Committee. Of the series of monographs initially envisaged by the Society of Antiquaries, none has yet appeared, though at the time of writing (June 1984) the first-on the neolithic sites-is now advertised (Jones in press). In the years since 1945 there has been considerable work on the Tavoliere, most of it by Italian scholars, Further aerial photography has greatly increased the number of known sites (Odetti, 1975), while excavation and some field survey have gathered information about the nature and chronology of the sites.