There is a large cemetery of barrows near the town of Novocherkassk, and one of the barrows, locally known as Khokhlach, was partly excavated about a hundred years ago. The finds from this Khokhlach excavation are generally known as ‘the Novocherkassk hoard’. In the autumn of 1962 a systematic study was made of the whole cemetery, and in August-September of that year two barrows standing close to each other (to the west of and 2.2 km. from the Khokhlach barrow) were excavated. One of them contained burials of Bronze Age date; the other turned out to be Sarmatian. The Sarmatian barrow is of the most exceptional interest as the finds from it are closely paralleled by the finds of ‘the Novocherkassk hoard’ from the Khokhlach barrow.

This Sarmatian barrow, known locally as the Sadovy Kurgan, was a low mound 2.20 m. in height. The top of the mound had been removed in recent times, and part of the remaining barrow had been ploughed away: the original dimensions of the barrow are therefore unknown. Excavation revealed one burial in a rectangular pit dug into the natural soil, covered with wooden planks which were in turn covered with reeds. This burial had already been robbed in ancient times, but during the original burial ceremony a ritual feast had taken place, and objects from this feast were preserved under the barrow on the original ground level. These included a large cast-bronze cauldron such as are commonly found in Sarmatian barrows, and a wrought-bronze cauldron decorated with an iron rim and ringshaped iron handles stood by the burial. Both cauldrons were covered in soot and clearly the food for the funeral feast had been cooked in them. Also placed around the burial pit were an ornamental bronze vase and a terra-cotta amphora which had once held the wine drunk at the feast. In the heaped-up soil of the barrow was a grey pottery hydria and also some other interesting objects. During the burial rites the barrow had been gradually heaped up, at first as a ring round the tomb, and then over the burial as well. During ail this the fire continued to bum, but when the feast was finished, several golden phalerae and eight silver bowls were placed in the mound. The silver bowls lay bottom upwards one on top of the other, and alongside were piled up the phalerae of gold (decorations for horses’ bridles). All this was covered by a silver louterion set upside down.

Archaeology as a branch of historical science has made new headway in the thirteen years since the founding of the Chinese People's Republic. The scale of its work has expanded and methods of research have been improved. Large numbers of young archaeological workers have been trained. In the course of the nation's gigantic economic construction, remains of ancient settlements and tombs have been uncovered in many places, yielding numerous important relics which have provided abundant data for archaeological research. Throughout the country, hosts of archaeological workers from research institutes, universities, museums and institutions for the preservation of ancient monuments are carrying out both field work and academic study and have already attained considerable success in their efforts to explore the history of ancient China on the basis of archaeological finds. All this has given further impetus to the advance of Chinese archaeology.

Archaeological finds made in New China are so rich that the present article can attempt to discuss only some of the most important problems.

Nine superposed cities were uncovered at the mound of Hisarlik on the northwest coast of Asia Minor, where Heinrich Schliemann’s visionary search for the Homeric Troy had led him. Soon the interest of Homeric scholars concentrated upon the two cities labelled Troy VI and Troy VIIa as the most likely candidates for the Troy of Homer. Both cities yielded Mycenaean pottery, showing connexions with mainland Greece in the centuries from 1400-1200 B.C., when Mycenaean power was at its height. Both cities had been violently destroyed. However, the brilliant excavations by the University of Cincinnati under the distinguished leadership of Professor Carl W. Blegen have been able to prove that Troy VI was undoubtedly destroyed by a violent earthquake about 1300 or somewhat later.

As I shall, if I live till mid- July, complete a century of life, the Editor has asked me to write some of my views on archaeology, for I have seen the growth of that subject A practically from its beginning. There was no study of the past unless heavily documented, and the Bible was implicitly believed from 'cover to cover'. Curiously enough the discovery in France of early stone tools could be easily accepted if they were called antediluvian, for then they were the remains of the wicked people who were drowned in Noah's flood. Darwin and Huxley were out-and-out atheists. Fortunately for me my parents were interested in these new ideas, and long residence in Calcutta, where my father was in business, had given them sympathy with non-Christian religions. They had equally free-thinking ideas as to education, which according to them should be a training of the child's mind to think. This of course applied to girls as well as boys. Ordinary subjects, such as arithmetic, geography, history I learnt at home, but specialist subjects like music, drawing, French and German, I learnt from specialists. I had no illusions as to my ignorance or my want of brains. This had been well drummed into me, for when we sat for exams my elder sister always passed among the highest, whereas I never once succeeded in getting enough marks to obtain even a pass. But my family had always been very tactful about my invariable failures and I never was allowed to feel my deficiency. So that when on a day in early January, 1894, I made my way to the Edwards Library at University College to join F. L1. Griffith's class on hieroglyphs, I was as full of enthusiasm for a new subject as if I had always been successful.

Twenty-two years after the close of his investigations in north-west Syria, Braidwood produced this massive and expensive volume which covers the archaeology of a part of the ‘Amuq plain from the advanced Neolithic period down to about 2000 B.C. More than a quarter of a million words have been penned, and there are many hundreds of illustrations, including ten coloured plates which are good reproductions of sixty-nine prehistoric potsherds. Such lavish and verbose treatment may unfortunately defeat the purpose of the volume, for those who can afford the money, and still more the time required for the mastery of its contents, must be few indeed.

The classification of the material described depends basically on the partial excavation of three mounds: Judaidah, Çatal Huyuk and Ta’yinat, of which the first named produced the most abundant evidence. These excavations were supplemented by operations on a smaller scale at the mounds of Dhahab and Kurdu and by the surface exploration of many other sites.

Lothal is an important harbour-town of the Indus Civilization at the head of the Gulf of Cambay on the west coast of India (FIG. 1). During the recent excavations there, a circular steatite seal has been found which is neither wholly Indian nor Sumerian in workmanship (PL. IX). On the other hand, it closely resembles the seals from the Persian Gulf islands found by the Danish expedition led by Professor Glob and Dr Bibby. Sir Mortimer Wheeler has named them 'Persian Gulf' seals which, according to him, 'appear to have been made at the various entrepôts (such as Bahrain itself) of a cosmopolitan Persian Gulf trade of the kind which has been analyzed by A. L. Oppenheim from Larsa tablets' (note I). Commenting on these seals, the late Col. D. H. Gordon wrote: 'The problem of Bahrain is a very interesting and important one, and it is possible that these seals may help to solve it. Some day such seals may come to light in India, but so far they have not; Bahrain may have been Dilmun and it was almost certainly an entrepôt on the trade route to India, and so it is possible that seals of this kind were carried on to the Indus or to ports in Kathiawad and will some day be found in those localities, though this will not necessarily make them Indian or even of Indian style' (note 2). The hope expressed by Gordon has now been fulfilled by the discovery of a 'Persian Gulf' seal at Lothal, thus providing the first real evidence of trade contacts between India and the Persian Gulf.

The difticulties surrounding the proper excavation and display of poorly preserved skeletal remains are well known to excavators. Where the bone is moist and friable, care is required to avoid touching it until it has dried and hardened. When it is stained as well, so that there is little contrast between bone and soil, then the excavator's task can indeed be difficult. In such cases photographic presentation often shows less than was seen by the excavator since differences just perceptible to the eye are likely to fall well short of the contrast level which can be recorded satisfactorily by the camera. Those sandy soils in which the stain is well displayed are the fortunate exception. In an endeavour to overcome these difficulties ultra-violet radiation has been tried.

The light of the visible spectrum extends from a wavelength of 7,000 Å at the red end to 4,000 Å at the blue end (n. 1). The shorter wavelengths extending to 140 Å form the ultra-violet region, but most of this is lost for present purposes since ordinary optical glass absorbs all radiation below about 3,500 Å. However, phenomena which can be used are found in this band between 3,500 Å and 4,000 Å. Emissions of these wavelengths are not visible to the human eye but some substances possess the property of absorbing such radiation and in turn emitting new radiation at longer wavelengths, including those which are visible. This is the phenomenon known as fluorescence.

The chambered cairn at Dyffryn Ardudwy is one of the principal tombs in a group of six surviving monuments that stand at medium altitudes above the sea coast in this vicinity which lies midway between Harlech and Barmouth. The cairn stands close to the village school in Dyffryn Ardudwy, and the questionable safety of the capstone of the larger chamber was the principal reason for undertaking excavation and consolidation. The work was carried out by the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology of the University of Liverpool on behalf and with the close assistance of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments for Wales. The monument has been well-known since Crawford's plan of 1920, and has been described by Grimes and Daniel in so far as surface inspection would allow.

In an attempt to halt the serious inflation in the later Roman Empire, Diocletian (n. 1) in A.D. 301 issued, in the form of an edict, a tariff-list of maximum permitted prices for consumer goods and of minimum wages for certain classes of labourer. He addressed it to the provincials of the whole empire (n. 2) (orbi universo) and appealed for their wholehearted co-operation in carrying it out. For us, it is a mine of vital information about the economic and social conditions of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. Among the woollen textiles listed in chapter XIX appears the byrrus Britannicus (n. 3) which is of some local interest for Roman Britain. It is with this that we shall concern ourselves in the following discussion.

One of the battles of the Hundred Ýears’ War was fought in Portugal on the 14th August, 1385, on the so-called ‘Cumeira de Aljubarrota’, about 80 miles north of Lisbon. There, the small army of King D. Joao I, led by Constable D. Nuno Àlvares Pereira, faced the greater forces of D. Juan I of Castile. Under the Portuguese flag, as Professor Peter Russell has shown, about 700 English archers fought, and on the enemy's side were many subjects of the King of France (n. 1). There are different contemporary versions of the battle which have caused a certain perplexity among historians. Froissart's chronicle tells us that D. Nuno Àlvares Pereira's men had fortified the battlefield; this assertion figures in another narrative known as the Cronica del Despensero, and also in the well-known letter written by D. Juan I of Castile, dated the 29th August, 1385. The Castilian Chronicler, Ayala, an eye-witness of the battle, says nothing about it however, and this fact must have prompted another chronicler, Fernão Lopes, who wrote 60 years after the battle, to assert that there was nothing to be said about the defensive system, even giving us to understand that it never existed. This conflict in the evidence had made it impossible to make a thorough investigation of a battle which is fundamentally important to Portuguese history. To overcome this, in February, 1960, the Ministry of War ordered the Commission of Military History to submit the battle to an intensive study and to make an attempt to evaluate the contradictory versions.

I Seem to remember Mr Bruce-Mitford telling me that when he was in the Laurentian Library in Florence, he asked to have that monster of all manuscripts, the Codex Amiatinus, weighed for him. I do not know what the result of the operation was. But perhaps he will forgive me if I say that, when faced with the impressive text codex which comes as a companion to the facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels, I was seized with the same awed curiosity, so that my first impulse was to put it on the scales. The net result is: eleven and a half pounds. No need to say that such a formidable array of letterpress is difficult to grasp in its entirety, and that only some aspects of it can be dealt with in a short article-perhaps of necessity those closest to the personal preoccupations of the present writer.