Stonehenge is a small site (its central stone setting just 30 m across) standing in an open landscape where archaeological concerns can direct land management. Its twin hengesite in a joint World Heritage designation, a little distance away on the south English chalk, is Avebury. It is a larger site, the great stone circle 350 m across. And the prehistory is embedded in the modern village of Avebury.

Both the state agency English Heritage and the voluntary association the National Trust own parts of each site. English Heritage is taking the management lead at Stonehenge, the National Trust at Avebury. The Trust has announced the creating of a ‘virtual reality’ show in the Great Barn by the village centre.

Knowledge of Avebury archaeology grows: also reported in this issue of ANTIQUITY is a new feature within the great circle first spotted on air photography: pages 639–46.

The main purpose of this article is to put on record material from two collections of photographs, made by Mr O.G.S. Crawford and by the writer. As the ‘ exhibits ’ were varied and numerous, it seemed desirable to make a selection that would link up with what has already been published on the subject in ANTIQUITYpr, oducing in the process some shadow of an evolution. For any opinions that are advanced, however, the writer, and not Mr Crawford, must be held entirely responsible.

How do visitors make sense of displays? What should curators be trying to achieve with them? Some 70 experts and students spent a day on these and related issues at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge University, on 23 September last, to celebrate the completed rearrangement of its Greek & Roman gallery. That project provoked much of the discussion but comparisons were drawn from the current development of Oxford Universitys Ashmolean Museum and from elsewhere in Britain and overseas (James 2009, 2010). Short lectures by Kate Cooper and Lucilla Burn, of the Fitzwilliam, and by Rick Mather, architect of the Ashmolean’s rearrangements, were followed by eight panellists’ remarks on technical and methodological issues; and the day was rounded off with the Museum’s Severis Lecture for 2011,Dimitrios Pandermalis on The new AcropolisMuseum: project and realization’ (Figure 1).

The reconstructed trireme (Coates & Morrison 1987; March issue, 87–90) was launched in the Aegean this summer. Here is the first first-hand report for many centuries as to how a great classical Greek warship actually rows and sails.

The peninsula of Athos, home of monks, resort of pilgrims and the sole surviving example of the life of the Middle Ages which exists in Europe, is the only spot in these days of hooting motor cars, roaring machinery and rushing, busy people, in which it is possible to lead a completely altered life. There only in Europe can one meet an entirely original mental outlook. Even in the remotest European village everyday life is of this age and it is only by exercising the imagination that one can transfer oneself to the past. But on arrival on Athos this earth is left behind and one begins to experience the life of a pilgrim of the Middle Ages. One sees from actual experience what that life really was, and one continues to live it until the discomforts of the thirteenth century finally persuade one that the evils of this age are amply repaid by its merits and that the romance of the Middle Ages is even excelled by the adventurous spirit of today. The medieval life is something that one likes to remember as a curiosity, something to be experienced occasionally only. But the claims of its art are more lasting and in these days of ease and luxury we can appreciate them the more fully.