An archaeological survey of the Thracian hinterland of Constantinople led by James Crow (Newcastle University) began in 1994 and its first stage is due for completion this year (2000). The main focus of the project over the past five years has been the Anastasian Wall, a 6th-century monumental linear fortification stretching some 56 km from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and situated c. 65 km from the city itself. In places the Wall survives up to 5 m high, but for the most part it lies obscured deep within the forests of central and northern Thrace, together with its associated forts, an outer ditch and a complement of massive towers.

In the 15 years since the decipherment of the so-called ‘Linear B’ script as Greek, I have often been asked what was the most important resulting gain in our knowledge of ancient Greece. I have always put first the final and conclusive proof that the Mycenaeans, the people who produced a brilliant civilization in Greece between the 16th and 12th centuries BC, were Greeks. Previously there had always been room for argument, and although most people accepted this as a fact, it was always just possible to assert that the Mycenaeans were a non-Greek people, whose deeds and legends had been appropriated by the Greeks as their own.

The unusual assemblage of aurochs horn cores from the baths of Bourbonne-les-Bains suggests votive deposits. But were they? The authors describe the assemblage, date it to the later Roman to early medieval period, discuss its possible environmental and ritual connotations, but also raise the possibility that it relates to craft-workers making use of the hot water supply to work the horn.

The churches of the Holy Land play a very special part in the lengthy controversies as to the origin and formation of the Christian basilica, since particular significance is attributed to them as constituting a norm from which the basilica type developed. For example, Wulff remarks :l ' If any region anywhere played a leading part in the development of the early Christian basilica, it is Palestine, including the whole coast of Syria to Philistia, where, under Constantine the Great, building was already developed with the express purpose of fostering the cult in the holy places '. This view, illuminating in and for itself, is today generally accepted ; it cannot, however, be maintained against the result of recent excavations. In this article chief emphasis is laid on the churches of Constantine, which are of especial importance not only because of their age, but in particular because they stand on the most sacred places of Christendom.

A linear earthwork in lowland Scotland, known a couple of centuries and often thought to be connected to Roman military operations on this far north frontier, is shown to be a Neolithic feature of a kind more often seen further south in Britain.