In the autumn of 1928 a German archaeological expedition began to excavate the site of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanid empire. Two years earlier the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft, which had successfully made excavations at Babylon, Assur, Farah and Warka, was informed by the Iraq Ministry of Education that the help of German archaeologists in carrying out research would be welcomed. The Society thereupon agreed to co-operate with the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft in the excavation of Ctesiphon and Seleucia.

The opinion which attributes the origin of ancient winding roads in the older lands (including England) to the ‘wild animal path to the ford’ or drinking-place, is no novelty to most archaeologists, even if they have made no special study of the subject. Many also are doubtless familiar with the argument from the ‘buffalo trails’ or paths of our Western plains, which has been adduced in support of the theory. The manner in which the buffalo argument has been used by its champions manifestly indicates a confident conviction that it is so entirely conclusive as to banish all reasonable doubt and virtually settle the question.

Probably not one in ten thousand of those who pass through the middle of Durrington Walls is aware of its existence. Though plainly visible when once pointed out, the earthen ramparts have been so greatly altered by ploughing as to be hardly recognizable, and the reconstruction of their orginal form is a very pretty exercise in field-archaeology

The walls consists of a round enclosure, cut into two unequal parts by the road from Amesbury to Netheravon (Wilts), about a mile and a half north of Amesbury, on the west bank of the Avon. Woodhenge is only eighty yards to the south, close to and on the west side of the same road. The earthwork differs fundamentally from the ordinary defensive ‘camp’, for it encloses, not a hill-top but a coombe or hollow, and it has its ditch inside, not outside, the rampart. In this latter respect it resembles the circles at Avebury and Marden in Wilts, Knowlton in Dorset, Thornborough in Yorkshire, and Arbour Low in Derbyshire; though there are points of difference. In size, Durrington Walls compares closely with Avebury, whose great earthen circle is slightly smaller in diameter; rom east to west the internal area of the Walls is 1300feet across, and from north to south about 1160 feet. (The average diameter at Avebury is 1130 feet). Both too are within easy reach of a stream, the Avon being IOO yards from the eastern entrance of the Walls, and the Kennet 330 yards from the nearest point of the great circle at Avebury. The enclosure at Marden actually touches the banks of the Avon at a point higher up in its course.

The mountain known as Mongó is an isolated mass of limestone, rising to a height of over 2500 feet above the level plains which border the sea in the neighbourhood of Denia in the ancient territory of the Contestani and the modern province of Alicante (pl. I). Standing free, as it does, from the main mass of mountains, it is the most conspicuous landmark on the promontory which stretches eastwards towards the Balearic Islands. The views from its summit cover a wonderful expanse of country; south and westwards to the mountains, northwest across miles of orange groves to the coast leading to Valencia and beyond (pl. 6), while eastwards the Isle of Ibiza is clearly visible 70 miles away.

The name of the Syrian town of Katna is first met with in the El-Amarna Tablets, a collection of 300 letters written in Babylonian and found in 1887 at El Amarna in Upper Egypt. These letters were addressed by the princes of Palestine and Syria to their allies or suzerains, the Pharaohs Amenophis 111 and Amenophis IV, in the first half of the fourteenth century. Four or five of these letters of El Amarna were actually written from Katna itself. They show us the Prince Akizzi expressing to the Pharaoh Amenophis 111 his feelings of loyalty, and at the same time asking his help against the Hittites, who then occupied a large expanse of territory in the north of Syria, thus threatening the Valley of the Orontes.

Nicaea is now known to us only as a name, a somewhat illusionary place connected with synods, bishops and councils of the Church and, more usually, with the creed which takes its name from it. But in reality it is more than a name. Some fifty miles from Brusa, or a good day's journey from Constantinople with the aid of all the conveniences of modern travel, what remains of this city that was once so important stands on the borders of the lake of Isnic. To reach it several ranges of hills have to be crossed by the worst of roads, intended only for the old Turkish araba or high carriage but now gaily used by motors and lorries. But the country is delightful and the view from the various foot-hills which surround Mount Olympus is superb. These hills, together with those of a second range further to the north, hem in the lake and so afford a natural protection for the town on its eastern shore, the walls of which can just be distinguished from the hills as brown patches amongst the exuberant green of the coastal fringe.

The arid plateau of the Judaean wilderness drops on the east to the trough of the Dead Sea in a long range of sheer cliffs, which are pierced about 32 miles south of the mouth of the Jordan by the ravine of the Wad-el-Hâfâf. On its northern flank a huge mass of their red limestone has split away to form an isolated flat-topped crag standing 1700 feet above the Dead Sea about a mile and a half from its western shore.

The plates facing pages 385 and 452 of this number represent the culminating point of archaeological air-photography. They were taken by Pilot Officer Jonas, R.A.F., between I I and 12 o'clock on the 16th of May 1929, using a K.Z filter. The sites lie half a mile apart on the hill called Woodbury, less than a mile south of Salisbury Cathedral, between the Blandford and Bournemouth roads. Woodbury is three miles south of the aerodrome at Old Sarum, from which they were taken and where I found them when taking over obsolete negatives on behalf of the Ordnance Survey (where they now are). They were taken during pin-pointing, as part of the ordinary routine of training; but that these particular sites were selected for practice is due to the keenness of the photographic section at Old Sarum, which has been closely associated with the development of this branch of air-photography from its birth. (It was the Old Sarum section that obtained many of the first archaeological air-photographs ever taken, including those of the Stonehenge Avenue, in 1921, and of the Celtic fields round Winchester, in 1922). Regarded merely photographs, from a technical standpoint the negatives are as nearly perfect as possible. The wonderful definition of the crop-marks is probably due partly to the use of a K.2 filter, partly to the dry spell during the first half of 1929.

Ever since the first discovery of predynastic cemeteries in Egypt by Sir Flinders Petrie at Naqada in 1895 it was realized that the beginnings of civilization in the Nile Valley had not been found, and that remains of earlier stages might come to light. For nearly thirty years, in spite of active and more or less scientific excavation in all parts of Egypt and Nubia, no earlier settlements or cemeteries were discovered which could then be classed as older than predynastic. Flintwork of palaeolithic man abounded, especially on the high desert; and the flints of the Fayyum, in great variety, were recognized as mainly neolithic. But the ancestors or forerunners of the predynastic people seemed to have left no other trace. Probably the advance of the cultivation with the gradual rise of the mud level had obliterated all that they had left behind them. Steep slopes of desert are obviously covered less quickly than the flatter areas. The eastern desert fringing the cultivation in the Badari district of Middle Egypt presents a succession of more or less high spurs intersected by dry watercourses or wadys running down from the cliffs to the fields. It is here, and so far here only, that the much sought for precursors of the predynastic Egyptians have been revealed to us. They have been called Badarians to distinguish them from the well-known predynastic people (Amratians, Gerzeans and Semainians) with whom they are closely akin both in culture and physical type.

The earliest Christian churches of England must have been built‘while the Romans yet dwelt in Britain’. It is quite possible that some remains of them exist, unrecognized by modern eyes, and offering in their arrangements none of the conventions which have since so greatly influenced the development of the church plan. But we have at Silchester the plan of a building which has been claimed as a Christian church, probably of 4th century date, and of it we may say that if it be actually so—a matter which is not capable of definite proof,— it falls well enough into line with later churches of whose nature there can be no doubt. It is a little building with a rectangular nave flanked by side chambers or aisles and preceded by a porch. The nave ends in an apse, in this instance to the west, with transeptal chambers to north and south.

The excavations so far made in Macedonia are as follows:—

In the valleys of the Vardar (Axiós) and Galliko (Echédoros)

In the neighbourhood of Salonica

In the valley of the Haliakmon

In the Lankadá valley

In Chalcidice

John webb, in his preface to Inigo Jones's posthumously published Stonehenge, in 1655 says : ‘This discourse of Stonehenge is moulded off and cast into a rude Form, from some few indigested notes after the late judicious Architect, the Vitruvius of his Age, Inigo Jones’. Upon these notes, Webb undoubtedly dined not wisely but too well and I trust I shall not be accused of doing the same with Colonel Hawley's many and well digested notes. I have one advantage over Webb in that I have seen Stonehenge, and I very much doubt whether he had.

In describing the stones, I shall begin at the centre and work outwards, taking as centre the point where a line drawn from stone 91 just inside the bank to stone 93, and a line from hole 92 in the middle of the supposed barrow to hole 94 in a similar barrow in the NW quadrant, cut each other and the axis of Stonehenge. It is from this point as centre that all the black circles on the plan are drawn. The axis is a line through the centre, which divides the stones and earthworks into two equal parts.

Assam is one of the very few remaining areas in which rude megalithic monuments are still erected and, like the most notable of the others—Madagascar—is on the fringe of the diffusion area of Indonesian civilization. Far apart as the two countries are, rough stone monuments are in both associated with a cult of the dead; both areas have cultural connexions with the Pacific. This paper, however, deals only with Assam, and its purpose is to give a brief account of the megalithic work existing there and thus to throw some light, perhaps, on the purposes and methods which may have been responsible for similar work in the prehistoric past of other countries.