Roger Mercer, prehistorian and formerly Secretary of the Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments for Scotland, looks back.

The excavations at Minet el Beida and Ras Shamra, begun in 1929 and continued in 1930,were undertaken at the suggestion of M. Rene Dussaud, Member of the Institute and Conservator at the Louvre. The natural harbour of Minet el Beida (the White Bayy lies facing Cyprus; and it was this fact which gave M. Dussaud the idea of a Mycenaean colony from Cyprus importing thither the copper which had to be disembarked for transport to the interior and to Mesopotamia. This theory was supported by the fact that 1000 metres from the bay is a huge tell (mound), called by the natives Ras Shamra (Cape Samphire), which might well hide the ruins of this assumed sea-port.

In early 1988 my grandfather, Robert Barron Kerr Stevenson (1913—1992), former Keeper of the National Antiquities of Scotland, was asked about his recollections of his former teacher and colleague Vere Gordon Childe. “There is”, he wrote in reply, “very little that I can say of use to you”. The reason for such a statement seems to be that my grandfather felt that his contacts with Childe had never been concerned with the broad historical and philosophical concepts that scholars were so interested in, believing rather that his own academic perspectives were more from the “worm's eye than the bird's eye view”. Yet what my grandfather knew was a more personal side to Childe that does not come across in his published works.

It has always been part of the programme of ANTIQUITY to insist on the value of air-photography as an archaeological method; and records of discoveries made by its use have often appeared in the pages of this journal. Here is another such record; the first, I think, in which air-photography has led to the discovery and excavation of an altogether unknown Roman site.

In 1998 extensive investigations were undertaken on Water Island, US Virgin Islands, by a research team from the Southeast Archeological Center, National Park Service. The US government is relinquishing ownership of the island, an action that would affect cultural resources. Earlier surveys had located a number of sites, including the remains of three 18th- and l9th-century plantations, historic wells, prehistoric shell middens and an extensive World War II fortification complex (Wild & Anderson 1992; Knight 2001; Anderson et al. in preparation).

Water Island, located off St Thomas, encompasses about one square mile, and is characterized by steep rocky slopes, a pronounced central ridgeline and a highly indented coastline with numerous bays and beaches (FIGURE 1). Fresh water comes from rainfall, and in small brackish ponds. Vegetation ranges from dry tropical thorn scrub to mangrove/salt ponds.

You didn't need to be an archaeologist in 2008 to know that things were happening at Stonehenge. For years controversial plans to improve the Stonehenge environs (costed at £600m) had dominated media and much academic debate, but in November 2007 the British government announced that it couldn't afford them (Pitts 2008a). The plans were dropped (much cheaper changes are now being implemented to make Stonehenge look nice for the 2012 Olympics: English Heritage 2008). There are new broadcasts and press stories featuring the stones every year, but 2008 was different. As road protests diminished, real archaeologists took the stage.