The discussion on archaeology's nature, destiny and philosophy, which the Editor wants me to continue (1973, 93), might risk becoming a bore unless I am brief. I will try to be. The prior articles he mentions, of course, are only the three most recent; he has printed others earlier, and now has added further letters (93-5) from Drs Salway, Myres and Webster. The best of the articles certainly seems to me to be Cecil Hogarth's (1972, 301-4). But I sympathize with David Clarke, in his 'Archaeology: the loss of innocence' (1973, 6-18), because of his scorn of claimed results from 'instinctive excavations', of the 'immortalization of subjective classifications', and of people who come to constitute 'élites'. Instinctively, even if innocently, I greatly want to agree.

Scattered throughout North Britain, from Aberdeenshire to Northumberland and westward to Cumberland and Kirkcudbrightshire, is a group of long cairns which, from field inspection, lack the usual stone chamber or chambers normally associated with such long cairns. Some of these sites might still have chambers preserved beneath their covering mounds. At others, where the cairn has been robbed, the former or present existence of stone chambers seems unlikely.

This letter had its origin in an after-dinner discussion with fellow-scientists, in which the trials of working with archaeologists were ruefully compared in full and horrendous detail. Being the only one present with formal training in archaeology as well as in science, I found myself to some extent playing the role of devil’s advocate, but it still seemed to me regrettable that while the scientists were making genuine efforts to understand and illuminate archaeological problems, many archaeologists make little effort to understand the limitations and difficulties of scientific techniques.

Rudolf Karl Ludwig Virchow was born in Pomerania on 13 October 1821 of German parents. He became a pathologist, the leading medical scientist in Germany, and attained world-wide fame through establishing the correctness of the ‘cell theory’ that now underlies all biological and medical thought. He was also a radical politician, in the 1860s one of the few effectual opponents of Bismarck, and for 25 years chairman of the Finance Committee of the Prussian Landtag.

In the parish of Britford SW of Sailisbury are two enclosures which were discovered as the result of a chance aerial photograph. The larger settlement was called Woodbury and to avoid confusion, the smaller settlement 500 m. to the east was named Little Woodlbury. The latter was selected by the Prehistoric Society as the site for a research excavation because its size made feasible a total exploration.

This monumental volume consists of eighty-six separate papers (including an ‘Introduction’ and a ‘Conclusion’) and represents the work of about that many individual authors. (Some participants presented more than one paper, but this is balanced by a few instances of joint authorship.)

With their latest publication Joseph Needham and his collaborators, according to the plan announced in the first volume, have reached the midpoint of their magistral undertaking, and their 4,016 th page. One can only guess how many more books are to be expected, since the present one covering roads, building, bridges, hydraulics and nautics in 931 pages is only part three of volume four. Themes 30-31, military and textile technology, paper and printing, will presumably occupy part four of the same volume and three volumes will be still to come.

Even before Manching first graced the pages of ANTIQUITY it had achieved the status of a key-site in the prehistory of Europe. The small La Téne B-C cemeteries of Steinbichel and Hundsrücken, the latter within the area enclosed by the ramparts of the later oppidum, have become the type-sites for their period in Southern Germany, but more important they could be seen to overlap chronologically in La Téne C with the beginning of the Late La Téne settlement that has been the subject of the recent excavations. With this continuity of occupation Manching offers a unique opportunity to study the origin and development of one of those settlements whose size, trade and industry justify their claim to be the earliest truly urban settlements in Temperate Europe.

When Mr P. P. Griffiths of Pen-y-wyrlod Farm, Talgarth, Breconshire rang the National Museum of Wales in June 1972 to announce the discovery of human remains in a stony mound on his farm, not previously recorded as an antiquity, I assumed that this must be one of the not uncommon new discoveries of Early Bronze Age round cairns. To my consternation, the following day, I was shown, in a field close to Pen-y-wyrlod (SO 151316) a long cairn far more substantial then any other previously recorded member of the Cotswold-Severn group in the Black Mountains area: it was fully 60 m. long, 25 m. wide at the widest part, and about 3 m. high—but, alas, already severely damaged by the growth of a small quarry which the farmer had been developing, in all innocence, for several years past, as a source of rubble for his yards and gateways. After all, as the farmer pointed out, the site is not recorded as an ancient monument on any map and he had concluded, as the Ordnance Survey must also have done, that it was a natural feature.