The early Christian monuments of Scotland have not received the attention which they deserve since Romilly Allen published his descriptive catalogue in 1903. New discoveries since that date, and a fuller study of the analogous carvings in neighbouring areas, have made necessary some revision of the ideas then current. The investigation is rendered more difficult by the individual character of the series and by the rarity of stones bearing inscriptions. Mrs Curle, in a recent paper has boldly attacked the main problem, that of the monuments north of the Forth, the symbol stones and cross-slabs generally attributed to the Picts. Her thesis does not attempt to cover the whole field but is rather ‘an endeavour to establish a classification and a tentative chronology and to review the comparative material’ (p. 60). The conclusions to which her survey have led the author show a wide divergence from those of earlier writers, and the chronology proposed is revolutionary.

In the Geographical journal for August 1940 I published a brief summary of the ‘Evidence for Ancient Mining’, one illustration for which was taken from a Japanese colour-print by Hiroshigi of the interior of a gold mine. As a result of reading this article, Dr H. J. Osborne White, a well-known geologist, sent me the scroll which forms the subject of the present paper. It is about 22 feet long and I foot broad and illustrates, in a series of attractively coloured drawings, every process from the extraction of gold-ore in the mine on Sado Island to the minting of refined gold. Mr Matsumoto of the Japanese Embassy kindly examined the scroll and was able to translate most of the captions to the pictures and other writings. Though the archaic script sometimes puzzled him, the fact that his family had been connected with mining for several generations was a compensating advantage.

The cult of the war-hero which may be considered as a variation upon that of ancestor-worship, is found in India in its fullest development among the Rajputs. The clans of these people, together with those of their numerous offshoots, claim to represent the Vedic Ksatriya or warrior caste, ranking next in order to that of the priestly Brahmans in the Hindu hierarchy of caste. By virtue of this (presumed) high social position the Rajput despises manual labour as beneath the dignity of his ancestry, often his sole inheritance. Until the Pax Britannica brought lasting peace. and order to the land, war and forays were the Rajputs' main occupation and pastime. Warlike virtue was esteemed above all else; the martial deeds of great warriors formed the dominant theme of the songs of the tribal bards. A code of chivalry was evolved, acknowledged and practised generally, and this in great measure moderated the trials and alleviated the hardships suffered by the defeated and despoiled.

In 1920 a research laboratory was established by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at the British Museum under the direction of Dr Alexander Scott, F.R.s., to carry out a particular task, namely, the restoration of museum objects which had suffered as a result of an enforced evacuation underground during the last war. Several years were required to complete the work, which involved the development of safe methods of arresting the decay of materials as diverse as paper, vellum, leather, wood, bone and ivory, stone, fur and feathers and metals.

As purveyors of honey and wax, substances rated high by early man, bees would seem to deserve more attention from archaeologists than they have in fact received. In this respect they serve to point a moral. The tendency has all too frequently been to concentrate on those aspects of ancient cultures which lend themselves most easily to classification, to the neglect of those which promise the closest insight into the working of the societies under review, thus inverting the true outlook of the archaeologist and turning him away from the activities of human beings towards a world of abstractions. The thesis one would like to urge is that the prime concern of archaeology is the study of how men have lived in society, of how within the social frame-work they have striven to satisfy and multiply their wants. From such a standpoint the means adopted to gratify the taste for sweet things, a taste shared by man and beast and physiological in its basis, merits at least as much attention as current fashions in safety-pins and other topics beloved of ‘museologists’

The publication of Dr Daniel's last essay on the typology of British chamber tombs seems to make it desirable to offer such a note as present circumstances allow on the writer's excavations in the Hebrides, subsequent to the publication of his papers on the Rudh' an Dunain tomb in Skye and the Clettraval tomb in North Uist. For to Dr Daniel the Hebrides are something of a mystery, and a good deal of an embarrassment, lying as they do between the Clyde group of tombs and the groups of Caithness and the Orkneys, and yet not playing the part that could be desired in any line of typo-logical development. To Dr Daniel the area is one of mixed culture but the explanation, though it may be true, is a little like a confession of uncertainty—a little like the late M. Reinach's ultimate explanation of Glozel. Fresh facts would, it is felt, be welcome.

The cult which is the subject of this paper centres round that magnificent snow-white gastropod shell called Chank by Europeans, sangu by the Tamil divers who fish it in the Gulf of Mannar,. and sankha by the people of Aryan speech in the north of India. To zoologists it is known as Xancus pyrum (L.), a name which replaces the former ones of Turbinella pyrmm and T. rapa. It is strangely local in distribution ; its main habitat is the sands between and around the rock-strewn pearl-banks of the Gulf of Mannar; here it thrives best, is most abundant, and grows to the largest size and most symmetric shape (FIG. I). Another centre where the same form is found is the northwest coast of Kathiawar but here its numbers are relatively few. A somewhat stunted variety or sub-species exists in Palk Bay and Strait and along the Coromandel Coast, with another in the Cape Comorin region, while one, sufficiently distinct to be given specific rank, occurs in the Andaman Islands. Nowhere outside of India is the chank found; neither in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, nor in Malayan and Australian waters does any closely related species occur.

Malta has never lacked history. That melancholy fact is indeed all too apparent today and must be held to justify the publication of the necessarily ill-digested record of a preliminary survey of its antiquities undertaken during the six months before the outbreak of war. If further excuse be needed, it must be sought in the intrinsic interest of the prehistoric remains, as well as in the important bearing which they have upon wider problems of Mediterranean archaeology. Much work still remains to be done on these remains; but a brief summary of the results achieved in the last twenty years is not perhaps out of place at the present time.

The situation of Southampton has many geographical resemblances to that of London. Both are at the head of estuaries to which the main drainage systems of their hinterland converge. Both towns were separated from that hinterland by large tracts of forest and scrub, and both are built on hard ground near channels of deep water. Southampton has, throughout most of its history, been a Channel port, looking across the Channel to France and Spain whence came the traders and raiders of the Middle Ages, just as London looked to the Low Countries.

If we mark upon a map the sites of those caves and rock-shelters which contain examples of palaeolithic paintings and drawings we find that in the Franco–Cantabrian region (which comprises southwest France and northwest Spain) they fall naturally into three well-defined groups, the particular district in which each group is situated being decided accidentally, or rather geologically, by the occurrence within it of a number of limestone caverns no great distance from each other. And when we make a more detailed study of these groups we find that there is in each group one cave wherein the art of the district is at its best—a cave that we may consider the art-centre of its district. The three cave-groups in question are to be found respectively in the Dordogne district, of which the outstanding cave is Font de Gaume; in the northern Pyrenees district, wherein most of the best art can be found at Niaux ; and in the Cantabrian district of northwest Spain, where the cave of Altamira is pre-eminent by reason of its wonderful painted ceiling.

In 1937 the writer described in ANTIQUITY a series of cottages—the dwellings of crofters—in Llanychaer and adjacent parishes of northern Pembrokeshire. These were two-roomed stone structures with a central doorway on one side: the door opened into the living room where the most striking sight was the great open fireplace at the gable end, the chimney structure of which projected into the room. A number of such dwellings has recently been examined in a coastal district of the same county to the south of Milford Haven, in Castle-martin parish. These show variations in the character and plan of the open fireplace, which are of interest, and probably also of cultural significance; they also provide fresh evidence of the hearth-dairy association manifested at Llanychaer.

The youthful adventures of Sigurd the Volsung, before his fateful meetings with Brynhild and the sons of Gjuki, have given plenty of opportunities for argument and the weaving of contradictory theories. To some it has seemed that here we find ourselves with the tangled remains of a myth; to others that we are dealing with the elaborated version of a widespread folk-tale. The complex series of hypothetical lays and sagas traced out by scholars to form the ancestry of the Old Norse version of the story has become a spider’s web of bewildering possibilities, a rather depressing prologue to what at first sight seems merely a rousing story of a young hero who kills a dragon. The question of literary antecedents and the problems of textual history have been fully and ably followed up, particularly by Heusler and Schneider; in this brief study I intend to approach the subject from a different direction.

The faunal environment of man, as is well known, has profoundly affected his mental as well as his physical life. The Altamira and other animal-drawings made by Palaeolithic man, whether regarded as disinterested efforts at pure art or as magical symbols intended to ensure success in the chase, are sufficient evidence of the extent to which the cave bear, the bison, the mammoth, and other great beasts figured in the minds of their human contemporaries. Professor Othenio Abel considers that Mousterian man associated certain cult-conceptions with the bears he had killed, and kindred ideas are still found in remote parts of the world. Finds of actual bear remains in more or less clear association with human remains or artifacts are of course numerous. Confining ourselves to Great Britain, bones attributed to Ursus spelaeus were ‘ very common ’ at Paviland cave, Glamorgan, which yielded also artifacts covering the period from Mousterian to the end of Aurignacian times. Cat’s Hole, Long Hole, and Hoyle’s Mouth, all in South Wales ; Kent’s cavern in Devonshire ; King Arthur’s cave in the Wye valley ; Aveline’s Hole, Gough’s cave, and Wookey Hole in the Mendips ; Ffynnon Beuno cave in the vale of Clwyd ; the Victoria cave in Yorkshire ; Creswell Crags and Langwith cave in Derbyshire ; are other sites which have yielded both remains of bear and human artifacts of various periods.

The Book of Aneirin, which contains all the verses that go to make up the Gododdin, is a manuscript written on vellum about the year 1250. It is incomplete, ending at the bottom of folio 38 and at least three or four folios are missing. The condition of the manuscript suggests that the existing folios have been re-arranged. The various later copies of the poem on paper are not worth further study, for they are not evidence of better texts, but of the carelessness of copyists. The manuscript is in two different handwritings, which may be called-A and B. The body of the work is in A and was written first. As well as the Gododdin verses, it contains four other poems, the last of which is attributed to Taliesin. The verses in the second handwriting B were added afterwards on the empty pages of the manuscript, and are nearly all variant versions of ones already given in A.

The regions of England in which the Anglo-Saxons first settled have their separate histories. In more than one of these recent archaeological discovery has brought new ideas of how the invasion took place; in the East Midlands, however, what may be called the standard interpretation of the invasion lags somewhat behind the general structure of theory which has been accepted for other areas. As offering a new approach to the study of this region no apology is proffered for the submission of fragmentary evidence which has by chance come to light, incomplete though any form of archaeological study must necessarily be in time of war. It does not, however, follow that no apology is due for the temerity with which the facts have been interpreted ; for this latter only indulgence can be claimed, in that the time and circumstance justify some hazarded interpretation which may be fortunate enough to survive until more adequate examination and digestion are possible.

The incised slabs of the rectangular cist in the cairn at Kivik rank with the Hagia Triada sarcophagus in being among the most important discoveries so far made of evidence bearing on the funeral rites of the Bronze Age in Europe, and it seems certain that pending further discoveries these two monuments form the foundation on which our study of Bronze Age funeral customs must be built.

Before discussing the Kivik cairn itself it is well to glance at the archaeological setting of Kivik and the surrounding country, for on this the correct interpretation of the Kivik slabs depends.

In the first published description of the Capel Garmon fire-dog (PLATE, p. 64), J. Evans quotes a view concerning its use: ‘I would suggest that this instrument is intended to hold the spits for roasting fowls, game or other small animals. … The loops on the side are evidently intended for that purpose, and it is probable that the horns of the two heads are intended for supporting a larger one’.

On the other hand, in the latest description of the same fire-dog, it is suggested that this fire-dog formed one of a pair: ‘The evidence of the Welwyn and other finds suggests that two fire-dogs was the normal equipment of the Celtic (central) hearth, whether secular or sacred, and it needs little imagination to appreciate the effect of a pair of “Capel Garmon” fire-dogs with flaming logs between’.

The inhabitants of the wooded plain of northern Europe that in early post-glacial times extended almost uninterrupted from the Pennines to the Urals were distinguished from their meso-lithic contemporaries, the Azilians and Tardenoisians, as well as from their best-known palaeolithic precursors, by the possession of a kit of heavy tools suitable for wood-working. This distinctive equipment was an adaptation and response to the dominant feature of the northern environment of those days—the great Boreal forest. So I have termed the cultures characterized thereby (Duvensee, Maglemose, Kunda, Broxbourne, etc.) the Forest Cultures. From this point of view the most significant diagnostic traits in all of them are not their fishing and hunting tackle that form the most spectacular among their relics, but their heavy tools of bone, antler and stone. In 19311 I discussed the development of this heavy industry in the central area round the Baltic as an adaptation to the forest environment, a manifestation of a distinctively woodland culture-pattern, to use an American expression. In 1937, thanks to fresh discoveries in England, Esthonia and the U.S.S.R. I was able to trace the same wood-working equipment throughout the whole woodland-zone from Russia to England. But all these studies of adaptation were in fact inspired by a hint from Dr Schwantes (then of Hamburg); for to him belongs the credit of first recognizing the antler objects I discussed as wood-worker’s implements.

In his article on ‘The Strategy of Anglo-Saxon Invasion’ in the March number of ANTIQUITY,1 Mr K. D. M. Dauncey discusses the cremation cemeteries of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and endeavours to draw from their distribution and their supposed relationship to the inhumation and the mixed cemeteries of the same and neighbouring areas certain conclusions which, if justified by the available evidence, would be of considerable historical importance. His claim is that the pure (or nearly pure) cremation cemeteries of this region can be regarded as ‘ primary’, not only from the chronological standpoint, compared With the inhumation or mixed cemeteries, but also socially, as indicative of military rather than civilian settlement. Their distribution is thus held to reflect certain strategic conceptions determining the course and the character of the earliest Anglo-Saxon occupation of the eastern Midlands.