In the two articles referred to above, Dr Roger Duff, the Director of the Canterbury Museum, reviewed the evidence then available for the origins and character of the first human settlement of New Zedand. Using the evidence of both oral tradition and archaeology, he saw the first settlers as Polynesians, coming from a tropical ‘Hawaiki’ to the north-east (identified as the Society group) and possessing a material culture similar to that typical of Eastern Polynesia, particularly the peripheral islands of Hawaii, the Marquesas, Easter and Pitcairn. Chronologically, he was prepared to argue that ‘. . . there is strong circumstantial evidence for believing that human settlement must be earlier rather than later than A.D. 950’, the genealogically derived date for the discovery of New Zealand by Kupe (who was followed, again according to traditional interpretations, by Toi, about A.D. 1150). To Duff, this ‘strong circumstantial evidence’ comprised the remains, particularly in the South Island, of a distinctive and now extinct avifauna consisting of moa, swan and eagle found in association with Eastern Polynesian-type artifacts but hardly referred to in Maori tradition. Duff argued that it would be logical to relate the Maori themselves to the traditional arrival of the so-called Fleet from Eastern Polynesia (Society Islands and/or Southern Cooks) in about A.D. 1350, which ‘. . . brings to a close a general period of migration from Polynesia. Introducing the sweet potato and other food-plants, the newcomers impose themselves as an aristocracy upon the Toi and pre-Toi descendants, and found the tribes which were dominant in Cook’s time’.

Banked and ditched rectangular burial enclosures, called ‘Grabgärten’ (grave garden, literally) by the local folk, are found frequently in the southern Rhineland, with distribution centred on the south east Eifel, the Rhine-Moselle junction and the northern part of the Hunsriick mountains. All examples known to us up to the time of writing are plotted on the map (FIG. I).

Within these enclosures are found incineration burials, either in urns, pits or stone cists made of schist slabs, or simply a scatter of bones in a pit. In some cases post holes which have been found may belong, by analogy with finds in Champagne, to mortuary houses, cult stelae or the like. Chronologically, the enclosures in the Rhineland fall partly in the late La Tène period, but the majority are early Roman Imperial in date. Inasmuch as the origin of these enclosures, due to the paucity of data, is still unclear, it is not possible to comment on that aspect of the question.

In the fifties of the last century attention was paid to these earthworks for the first time by von Cohausen, though he misinterpreted them as Roman fortifications. Half a century later, R. Bodewig recognized that the ‘Grabgärten’ which he excavated in the Koblenz municipal forest were flat graves, and he contrasted them with the round barrows which often accompanied them. He considered them to be the individual family burial plots of the Treveri, a view which the present writers support?

During the past two decades numerous scholarly works based upon the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial have illuminated aspects of Anglo-Saxon history and culture and have specifically focused attention upon the royal court of East Anglia. However, the one aspect of the burial which could define its time and setting most precisely is still controversial: whom does this magnificent monument commemorate? An attempt is made here to present a new candidate for the burial utilizing recently re-evaluated genealogical evidence.

The theory developed here proceeds from the hypotheses, convincingly advanced by such scholars as Mr Bruce-Mitford and Professor Chadwick, that the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial is a cenotaph of an East Anglian King.

In addition to fulfilling these requirements, any candidate must fulfil the criteria imposed by the archaeological evidence of the find and by the historical situation existing at the time of the burial. First, the East Anglian king must have ruled and died at a time, not only within the limits imposed by the dates of the Merovingian gold tremisses, but at a time peaceful and propitious enough to permit such a magnificent burial rite. Also, since this pagan mode of ship burial contains definite Christian elements, details of the life of the king so honoured should reflect a similar combination of paganism and Christianity.

The results of the research carried out in these last years by the Istituto di Antichità Sarde e di Paletnologia of Cagliari University, particularly in Southern Sardinia, enable us to make a new and useful analysis of the stratigraphy of the cave of S. Bartolomeo, discovered and excavated by Orsoni in 1878 on the limestone promontory of Cape St. Elia at Cagliari, and re-explored by Patroni in 1901.

The cave, as Childe has already pointed out, is the only place in Sardinia which up till now has provided the possibility of stratigraphical observations which (though still under discussion) nevertheless provide us with some reliable and objective data concerning the prehistoric cultures of pre-nuraghic date.

Orsoni found a cavity measuring 5 m. × 4, completely filled from the roof to its rocky floor by an ancient deposit containing human and animal remains. The upper strata of this deposit were largely disturbed by modern graves, contained in a ditch walled in by ‘stones cemented with reddish mud’—and without any grave goods.

Since 1950, the attention of the Czechoslovak Archaeological Institute has been focused on the study of the Early Neolithic in Czechoslovakia, and since 1960 the investigation of Neolithic society in all its aspects has been one of the principal assignments of the Academy of Sciences in the field of social sciences.

In the years 1950-1952 a survey of a Neolithic site of the Danubian I or Bandkeramik, and Late Lengyel cultures, at Postoloprq in NW Bohemia, was undertaken and its results are now in the press. This investigation has shown, however, that NW Bohemia belongs to a peripheral region and that thus any findings made there have a local validity only. Unless they are taken in conjunction with evidence from a less peripheral region, they present a very distorted picture. For this reason a suitable site was looked for in eastern Bohemia, where it could be assumed (on the basis of an analysis of earlier finds in local museums) that particularly suitable localities could be found in the region.

The book, prepared originally as a dissertation for the Oxford Doctorate of Philosophy, is published posthumously. It gives the measure of the scientific quality of its young author, prematurely deceased in November 1958 at the age of only thirty-four, and it constitutes without doubt one of the most relevant contributions offered during the last few years to our knowledge of the figurative world of ancient Etruria. J. Boardman and Mrs Brown have edited the manuscript for publication, completing it with careful and valuable analytical indexes of sites, museums, bibliographical sources, and subjects. J. D. Beazley has added a short biographical note.

As the author himself explicitly declares in the preface, the book is a history of the representation of the lion in Etruscan art from the end of the 8th to the end of the 3rd century B.C. The work does not set out to be a corpus, but in effect it assembles and makes use of all the material which offers even the slightest interest from the diverse points of view of typology, technique, or style. The research is carried out on the basis of iconography as a study of the origins, the rate and means of penetration and diffusion of individual typological variants of the lion figure, and of the backgrounds, chronological succession, and inter-relationships of the different classes of lion representations. However, in view of the exceptional importance which this theme assumes in the figurative production of the Etruscan world chiefly in the orientalizing period, but also later, in the 6th and 5th centuries, the survey inevitably finishes by discussing the major problems in the history of Etruscan art: its links with Greek and Oriental sources of inspiration, its original qualities and conservatism, its individual centres of production, and its overall stylistic development. In his direct and detailed analyses, the Author says the last word about certain monuments or groups of monuments which are classed among the most famous and significant in the whole Etruscan art—for example, the Regolini-Galassi fibula, the situlae from La Pania, the bronzes from Perugia, the lion of Val Vidone, and the chimaera of Arezzo.

Recent work on Archaeomagnetism has been concentrated in two main fields, first, detection of sites with magnetic anomalies using instruments like the proton magnetometer, and secondly the construction of a dated graph of the earth’s magnetic field with the ultimate aim of providing an absolute chronology for fixed fired sites, mainly kilns and hearths. Important work in a third field, using the changing angle of inclination of pottery to provide a relative chronology for a series of vessels entirely independent of archaeological means, has fallen out of fashion despite the efforts of the pioneers of Archaeomagnetism and more recently the researches of Mr R. M. Cook on Corinthian pottery, at Cambridge and Dr M. J. Aitken on Chinese porcelain at Oxford. It is with this third method of approach that the present article is concerned and its application to a series of British beakers.

When a clay vessel is fired its temperature is usually raised well above the Curie-point, about 500-600° C.; at this point the magnetic elements in the clay will begin to orientate themselves with the prevailing Earth’s magnetic field rather as though they were myriads of minute compass needles. Upon cooling, this uniform orientation will remain ‘fossilized’ and under normal conditions a permanent record of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time and place of firing. However, the finished vessel will then be used and removed from its firing position, thus for ever removing any chance of comparing its angle of declination (or compass bearing) with that now existing, since their positions relative to geographic north cannot be determined. If it can be shown that the vessel was fired in a vertical position the angle of inclination (dip) is still recoverable for comparison with the modern angle and with that preserved in other similar vessels. Since the angle of inclination alters a little every year (non-linearly)—it should be theoretically possible to arrange them in relative order of firing or date, thus providing an invaluable relative chronology.