The formative period of Maya civilization has been the subject of recent attention, both in discussion (e.g. Adams, 1977) and in excavation; several projects have been established specifically to investigate the processes that led to the Classic Maya florescence in the first millennium AD. Among these has been the Cuello Project, a joint venture of the British Museum, the National Geographic Society and Rutgers University; this article summarizes the results of the third and final season of the project’s excavations at Cuello, Belize (Fig. I), which took place from January to March, 1980. The terminology for excavated features, structures etc. is detailed in Hammond (1978).

The site was discovered during extensive surveys in 1973–4 (Hammond, 1974, Fig. I), and its potential for the study of the Preclassic or Formative period which preceded the rise of Classic Maya civilization led to a test excavation in 1975. The sequence of building levels and pottery preserved by the growth of Platform 34, a large flat construction with a small superincumbent pyramid (Str. 35) (PL. XXVIa), lying to the southwest of the main part of the site (Donaghey, et al., 1976, Fig. 2), showed that the uppermost floors on the platform had been laid in the Late Formative (conventionally 300 BC–AD 250 ), over structures of the Middle Formative (1000–300 BC). Below these were earlier deposits associated with pottery of pre-Middle Formative date which was assigned to the Early Formative (2000–1000 BC).

MacKie, the foremost Scottish scholar to address himself in recent years to the study of brochs, has said, with characteristic firmness, that ‘brochs are among the most striking of all the prehistoric monuments of Europe’ (1975, 72). Certainly this is so, and ever since the first real awakening of interest in Scottish antiquities around the midnineteenth century the broch has always been felt to be Scotland’s archaeological show-piece. Yet, close on a hundred years after Alexander Rhind set the ball rolling with his excavations at the broch of Kettleburn, Wick, Sir Lindsay Scott was forced to admit that ‘No ancient sites have been more excavated than those of the broch and, unfortunately, none with less result’ (1947, 3). In the 30 odd years since Scott, the full excavation reports of only three brochs have appeared. With this consideration it is perhaps less surprising to see so little space devoted to brochs in Cunliffe’s recent major review of the British Iron Age (1974a, 219–22; 2nd ed. 1978, 235–8) and their total omission from British prehistory (1974b) is marginally less startling; such summary treatment is a result of a dearth of the right kind of information, which itself derives from the whole approach to brochs throughout most of the history of Scottish archaeology.

Carved wooden chests to contain the bones of the dead are peculiar to New Zealand and constitute a fine artistic achievement of the Maori people; they are little known or appreciated outside their country of origin. They include some macabre and disturbing imagery, consisting of a variety of divine or heroic figures both male and female, which are decoratively patterned in either incised or relief style. Some 60 examples are known, mostly in the museum collections at Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, with a few more in small museums in New Zealand and a few in museums overseas, including one in the British Museum (Museum of Mankind) (Cranstone, 1953, 58). They have not hitherto been the subject of a special study and an archaeological appraisal is overdue.

A convincing case has now been made out for linking [the cursus, avenues, alignments, henges and circles] with a remarkable store of engineering, mathematical and astronomical knowledge’ (Burgess, 1974, 195)

… it is fantastic to imagine that the ill-clad inhabitants of these boreal isles should shiver night long in rain and gale, peering through the driving mists to note eclipses and planetary movements in our oft-veiled skies’ (Childe, 1930, 164).

Over the last decade many claims have been made that early prehistoric Britain was the focus of a scientifically learned society whose mathematical, geometrical and astronomical discoveries anticipated those of the Babylonians and Greeks, and some of whose megalithic observatories survive for us to examine.

This paper falls a little outside the normal scope of a paper for the Chateau Gaillard conference. It may not even be a paper, but—to use contemporary language—rather an anti-paper. Possibly, it will shock some of the audience. If so, I would like to say that such people need the shock.

The paper will not bring news from excavations, neither any new interpretations nor suggestions for new excavations. On the contrary, it deals with what should be left unexcavated. I intend to advance the opinion that generally too much is too ruthlessly excavated in places where the archaeological remains are not threatened by destruction.

This last phrase is the important one. It is evident that where archaeological sites are going to be removed anyhow due to construction of new roads, building activities or whatever may be the cause, it will always be an act of merit to squeeze every piece of archaeological information out of them by excavation beforehand. Therefore, the points of view advanced in this paper do not comprise rescue operations, but only the excavation of sites protected by the law, or by considerate owners, and consequently not exposed to any immediate danger of removal or other destructive activities.

A recent re-examination of the architectural and other sculpted stone fragments from Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) drew attention to the small sandstone column on which is scored an ogham inscription. The commonest materials used for columns, capitals and ornamental sculpture at Silchester are the fine Jurassic limestones of Bath or Portland type. A very few pieces are carved intertiary sandstones or imported marble. This is the pattern for architectural masonry throughout southern England in the Roman period; limestone predominates and sandstone, usually greensand, is rare. On visual examination the particular stone with the ogham appears to be different from that of the other architectural fragments in the Silchester collection. It should also be noted that no similar material has so far been identified in the city wall or amongst any of the other ordinary building materials recovered from the Roman town. On the basis of visual examination alone it has been suggested that the stone originated from the calcareous grit of the Oxfordshire Corallian (Boon 1959, 87), but doubts about this identification led us to a more searching investigation to ascertain the character and source of the stone. Before introducing these analyses and their results it will be useful to summarize our present knowledge of the Silchester ogham. In this way the implications of the new results can be more satisfactorily appreciated.

The heavy metal collar or neck-guard of the Dendra panoply (PL. XXXIIc; Verdelis, 1967; Åström, 1977; also Catling, 1977; Cassola Guida, 1973,52ffr)a ises a simple question which may have important implications for the study of Greek warfare in the Late Bronze Age. Pictorial and verbal representations reveal the neck as a highly vulnerable target in infantry warfare throughout the whole millennium which spans the Late Bronze Age and the classical period. Mycenae’s Shaft Grave warriors of the sixteenth century are frequently shown either aiming sword-thrusts downwards at an enemy’s throat over the top of his body-shield or thrusting upwards at his neck with a lance (e.g. Karo, 1930, Pl. 24, nos, 35, 116, 241; pp. 59, 177, Figs. 14, 87; Lorimer, 1950, 140–4, Figs. 2, 5, 6, 8; Cassola Guida, 1973, pl. I, Figs. 2–5; Furtwangler & Loeschcke, 1886, Pl. E, 30; and even lions get it in the neck: e.g. Evans, 1921–36, IV (2), 575, Fig. 556). The very differently accoutred Mycenaeans of the late thirteenth-century Warrior Vase and Stele march with spears poised for a downward thrust into their enemies’ necks (Furtwangler & Loeschcke, 1886, PI. 43; EA, 1896, P1. I; Lorimer, 1950, Pls. 3.1a; 2.2; Cassola Guida, 1973, Pls. 32,1 and 2; Verdelis, 1967, Beil. 32,2; Astrom, 1977, P1. ‘31,2). And the seventh-century hoplites do exactly the same on the Chigi Vase (CVA, Italy, I, P1. I; ABSA, XLII, 1947, 81, Fig. 2; Snodgrass, 1964, PI. 36).

James Mellaart’s attempt to demonstrate a ‘high’ chronology for Egypt and the Near East for the period of c. 4000-1500 BC will undoubtedly stimulate much discussion among historians and archaeologists. He has forcefully pointed out various problems which have arisen in trying to reconcile the standard historical chronologies established between and within individual countries. It is probably true that some scholars have treated the so-called ‘middle’ chronology as if it was almost sacred, and certainly some individuals have ignored radiocarbon dates (especially calibrated dates) if they appeared to be in conflict with results obtained from traditional historical and archaeological sources. But neither these faults, nor others pointed out by the author, justify his own methods of trying to demolish the middle chronology in favour of a significantly higher one. Since elsewhere in this issue Barry Kemp is presenting a critical review of Mellaart’s Egyptian historical data, and has included some remarks on the Egyptian radiocarbon dates, I will restrict my own remarks here largely to the Palestinian radiocarbon materials, and will only comment on the Egyptian C14 dates as they pertain to Palestinian Early Bronze Age chronology.

Since the mid-1960s, significant advances have been made in the techniques and organization of archaeological research in British waters. However, the sites discovered and explored during the first decade of such work have dated without exception to the centuries after 1500 AD. The results from investigations such as those on the Mary Rose of 1545 (Rule, 1978) or the wrecks of the Spanish Armada (Martin, 1975) have clearly demonstrated the potential of such sites to shed light on periods and topics for which documentary sources are also available; nevertheless, the full archaeological significance of this new area of research remained unrealized through being limited to the post-medieval period. The discovery and study of two underwater bronze age sites in the past few years have thus changed the whole complexion of British maritime archaeology. The purpose of this note is to provide a brief interim account of the sites involved, and indicate a few of their implications for Bronze Age studies.

Looking back over a concern with archaeology which has lasted for half a century I am grateful to have been present through a crucial period in its development.

There were few advantages in my earliest days. On my father’s side I come from a line of farmers, land appraisers, bailiffs and the like which I can trace back in some detail for nearly three hundred years, living for the most part in Northwest Essex; on my mother’s side my ancestors were North Wessex peasants and inn-keepers, with a probable admixture of Welsh cattle-drover blood at the end of the eighteenth century. Wantage and Abingdon were their local centres. All with the exception of one or two backsliders were strict Evangelicals, often wavering on the verge of Dissent, and none ever aspired to any higher standard of education than one who entered the Congregational ministry in 1827. Any known interest in learning or antiquity showed itself more among the Wessex peasants than the clod-hoppers of Essex. My maternal grandfather, who was a native of the Vale of White Horse, was personally known to me and was interested in the many relics of the past observable about him, an intelligent man but with little formal instruction.

Mellaart is not the first, even in recent times, to query the Egyptian astronomical data, and in particular the reliability of the source for the Sothic date in Senusret 111’s reign which seems to offer the earliest independently fixed date in the Near East. In 1974, R. D. Long published an attack in the journal Orientalia, xLrIr, 261-74. This provoked a lengthy and careful response from the scholar whose name is most closely associated with the mathematical aspects of Egyptian calendars and chronology, R. A. Parker. This response provides a ready-made answer to Mellaart’s criticisms, and readers are referred to Parker’s paper for more detail (Parker, 1977). Mellaart makes two main points on this issue: the Egyptians may have made a mistake in the observation; the papyrus fragment in question is dated by indirect means and does not bear the name of the king in whose reign scholars have placed it.

The recent radar mapping discovery of widely distributed patterns of intensive agriculture in the southern Maya lowlands provides new perspectives on classic Maya civilization. Swamps seem to have been drained, modified, and intensively cultivated in a large number of zones. The largest sites of Maya civilization are located on the edges of swamps. By combining radar data with topographic information, it is possible to suggest the reasons for the choice of urban locations. With the addition of patterns elicited from rank-ordering of Maya cities, it is also possible to suggest more accurate means of defining Classic period Maya polities.

In 1972 Paul Johnstone initiated a project to build and sail a hide-covered boat which would embody the theories of those Norwegian scholars—in particular Professor Sverre Marstrander—who have classified the boats of the Scandinavian Bronze Age with the Eskimo umiak and the Irish curragh. Thanks to the publicity given the experimental model by the BBC ‘Chronicle’ series and the enthusiastic advocacy of Bregger, Marstrander and Johnstone himself (‘Bronze age sea trial’, Antiquity, XLVI, 1972), the skin-boat theory has become almost an orthodoxy in Britain and Scandinavia. In fact, however, the reconstructed boat itself clearly demonstrated the awkwardness of translating into the medium of a hidecovered frame the boat designs of the bronze age rock art, which include several features utterly irreconcilable with the requirements and norms of skin-boat construction.

For no type of boat before the age of photography has such a vast corpus of evidence been preserved as for the vessel that served the fishermen, traders and raiding parties of Scandinavia between 1200 and 600 BC (that is, the Bronze Age periods 111, IV and V). The boat is a favoured motif in thousands of rock carvings in southern Norway, Sweden, and the Baltic islands, and on at least 200 late bronze age razors from Denmark and North Germany.