In an article in the Observer for 3 July, and again in the Listener for 27 October, 1960, Professor L. R. Palmer argues that the Linear B inscribed clay tablets found at Knossos date not from the end of the I 5th century B.C. but from a time some two hundred years or so later. These tablets according to the excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, belonged to the age of what he called the ‘Last Palace’, destroyed about 1400 B.C. But after the destruction of the ‘Last Palace’ the site was not abandoned ; it was reoccupied and inhabited for another hundred years or so. Evans thought that this re-occupation was due to ‘squatters’ who had made dwellings for themselves among the ruins of the old palace. But the character of what Evans found dating from this ‘Re-occupation period’ (as he called it) fits better in some ways with the idea of a restored palace than with that of an occupation by ‘squatters’. Evans himself was not unaware of this, and once at least hinted at the possibility of a palatial reoccupation, although he subsequently veered away from the idea. In the domestic quarter of the palace he noted ‘signs of attempts at restoration on a large scale (i.e. after the destruction of the “Last Palace”) which make it probable that dynasts of the old stock still maintained a diminished state on the palace site.’ It is therefore possible that Professor Palmer is right in believing that there was another palace on the site of the earlier Palaces at Knossos during the ‘Re-occupation period’ of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. But of this latest palace, if palace it was, owing to erosion and stone-plundering through the centuries, comparatively little had survived when Evans began to excavate. It was in any case almost certainly poor and mean compared with the other great palaces which had preceded it on the site. This was indeed a time, the 14th and 13th centuries B.C., of general impoverishment and decline throughout the civilized world including Egypt and the Near East.

In the last few years, widely ranging reconnaissance flights sponsored by the Committee for Aerial Photography in the University of Cambrike have been made over Wales for the purpose of archaeological and other research. Here Dr St. Joseph, the Curator in Aerial Photography at Cambridge, who planned these flights and undertook the photography, discusses some of the outstanding results of air photography in a region which has hitherto been neglected from this point of view.

As the Director of the Archaeological Survey of India for more than thirty years, at a time when new finds of Gandhāra art were constantly pouring in, as the excavator of Taxila, as an excavator in Gandhāra itself, Sir John Marshall has had a unique opportunity of building up first-hand knowledge of Gandhāra art. That his views on this great subject should be made known was most desirable, and the Department of Archaeology in Pakistan is to be thanked for having undertaken to publish this volume.

The illustration is abundant and, nearly all of it, excellent. It consists of 152 photographs, of sufficient size (in happy contrast with most of the pictures in Foucher’s Art grécobouddhique, and in some of Sir John Marshall’s own publications, Taxila included), carefully selected and arranged in order to exemplify the development of .‘the Early School’, as seen by Sir John. Many a piece is here properly reproduced for the first time. As a compendium of good pictures the volume will be most useful.

But the book is far more than just an album of well-chosen photographs, with commentary. As the subtitle says, it is a story. This story is told in twelve chapters. An introduction (Chapter 1) deals with the beginnings of Buddhism in India, and with the problem of how Buddhism fared under the Greek princes of the North-West during the second century B.C.… Among the myriads of Buddhist monuments that are preserved there is not one that can be referred with certainty to Greek authorship in that period (p. 4). Chapter 2 is about the Early Indian school of Art. Then come three chapters on the origins: Chapter 3, The Beginning of Gandhāra art: the Šaka period; Chapter 4, The Renaissance of Hellenistic art under the Parthians and its eflect on Gandhāra art; Chapter 5, Childhood of Gandhāra art. To Adolescence two chapters are devoted (Chapters 6 and 7), to Maturity four: Chapter 8 deals with the Period of Maturity in general; Chapter 9 with the Early Maturity period; the two following ones deal with the Later Maturity period, Chapter 10 with the reliefs, and Chapter 11 is about images and decorative carvings. Chapter 12 gives the conclusions.

The site of the Thracian city of Seuthopolis lies about 8 km. to the west of Kazanluk, in the famous Valley of Roses, between the Balkan Range and the Sredna Gora Mountains. A spacious terraced area was formed by the erosion of the River Toundja (the ancient Thracian Tonsus); this is bounded to the north and east by a sloping plateau, on the site of the villages of Koprinka and Dounavtsi; and to the south, the steep slopes of the heights (site of the village of Morozovo (formerly Gorno Cherkovishté), the last of the Sredna Gora foothills, dropped down to the river banks. The last and lowest step of this terraced area projects deep into the bends of the Toundja to the south, forming a peninsula, or tongue of land, the banks of which are 4 to 5 m. in height; to the west and south it is bounded by the River Toundja, and to the east the Golyama Varovitsa or Chiflikchiiska River, a small, but always swiftly flowing tributary of the Toundja, guards its approaches. The Thracian city of Seuthopolis was situated precisely on this spot, called ‘Chiflika’ (The Farm), on the left bank of the River Toundja, defended from the west, south and east by natural barriers of water (PLATE IX).

To trace the rise of archaeology is practically to write the biography of one man, Flinders Petrie.

I first went to University College, London, as a student of Egyptology in January 1894. Petrie was then in Egypt, digging at Koptos, having in the previous year electrified the learned world by his discoveries at Tell el Amarna. Dr J. H. Walker was in charge of the Egyptology department (then and for years afterwards known as the Edwards Library), and Mr F. Ll. Griffith of the British Museum came twice a week to take a class in hieroglyphs. When Miss Amelia B. Edwards founded the Edwards Professorship of Egyptology, it was with the intention that it should be for the training of students in Egyptian archaeology as distinct from the Egyptian language. She had a small but well chosen collection of Egyptian antiquities which she bequeathed as a nucleus of a teaching collection, and with it her Egyptological library. One show case held the collection, and two bookcases held the library. There were also three ‘cradles’ which held the enormous tomes of Rosselini, La Description de Z’Egypte, and Lepsius’s Denkmäler. It is difficult for any modern archaeologist to realize how few books there were on any archaeological subject. For Egypt there were the early volumes of the ‘Egypt Exploration Fund (including the disastrous Bubastis) and Petrie’s early volumes, including Kahun, with its shattering suggestion that certain peculiar painted pottery found in a Middle Kingdom site (c. 2000 B.C.) came from the Aegean. Mariette and Heinrich Brugsch were well represented in the Edwards Library, and the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology was the chief journal in which to publish short articles. Erman’s Aegyptische Grammatik, with its English translation by Breasted had just appeared and was being carefully studied by all Orientalists. Egyptian history began at the 4th dynasty, nothing was known of anything beyond Khufu and the Great Pyramid, except the fragments of Manetho’s history, the lists of Kings, of which the Tablet of Abydos was one, Herodotus, Josephus, and a few scattered items in other ancient authors. The Biblical record concerning Egypt dates from Abraham’s visit, but as the ruler of that country is called Pharaoh without his personal name the exact date is uncertain, but is definitely after the Old Kingdom.

We include here books which have been received for review, or books of importance not received for review, of which we have recently been informed. We welcome information about books, particularly in languages other than English and American, of interest to readers of ANTIQUITY. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its review in ANTIQUITY.

Since 1907 when Professor M. M. Vasić first posed the question of the south-eastem connexions of the Neolithic culture of Serbia, the investigation of this problem over a wider field and on a broader chronological footing has made material advances in the whole area from the Near East to the Lower Danube. It even proved possible to provide this problem with a more or less exact historical outline. These results have been produced by exceptionally fruitful but unco-ordinated, local research: uncertainties and apparent contradictions have still to be resolved.

There are many Roman dams in the Tripolitanian province of Libya; only a few of them have received the attention they deserve. This article attempts to explain the variety of purposes served by some of the numerous barrages to be found in a small part of northern Tripolitania.

The earliest thorough study of ancient hydraulic works in north Africa was made by La Blanchère in the Enfida of Tunisia. More ambitious surveys have been organized by Gsell in Algeria and Gauckler in Tunisia; they were based on somewhat superficial observations made by local officials and soldiers. Air photography has made the objective recording and presentation of intricate irrigation systems easier, especially when it is in the hands of experienced and patient observers in low-flying aircraft; and this helps us to work out the function of barrages associated with the canals and ditches.

The ancients built dams in other parts of the dry zone lying south and east of the Mediterranean, in conjunction with schemes of irrigation or town water supply. A few of them are very old; while in places the Romans took over a perfected system of soil and water conservation, complete with dams that merely needed repair and maintenance.

Just over sfty years ago the puzzling Red Hills on the coast of Essex were arousing considerable interest among English prehistorians (PLATE XXII (a) and (b)). Already in the spring of 1906, under the chairmanship of J. Chalkley Gould and supported by the Essex Field Club, the Society of Antiquaries of London had formed a ‘Red Hills Exploration Committee’, which counted among its members not only archaeologists but also geologists, botanists and chemists, and had ample means at its disposal. Eminent specialists and scholars examined suitable hills with the utmost care and published their findings and conclusions in comprehensive papers.

But in what consists the peculiarity and the riddle of these Red Hills, which obviously date back to prehistoric times and have since time immemorial lain in close proximity to the coast of England? The striking way in which they are built of loose red burnt clay unmistakably points to a human-made origin. As a rule these mounds rise by only as much as 18 in. to 6 ft. above their surroundings, and their extent varies between a few square yards to several hundred. How did these numerous and extensive heaps of burnt clay come about in prehistoric times?

The object of this paper is to show that certain Early Bronze Age sites in the Iberian Peninsula are actually colonies established by people coming from the Eastern Mediterranean.

The term ‘colony’ is used here in contrast to the term ‘culture’. It is selected because, besides being the term used by Siret, who believed that Los Millares was a Phoenician colony, and the Leisners (Factorei), it is the term which best describes these sites. The following account will demonstrate that they were solitary, heavily-defended settlements situated in a culturally foreign environment. Their best parallels are to be found in the East Mediterranean area, where, from very early times politically independent city states which owed their existence to either a rich hinterland or to trade and commerce, are known. These sites in the Peninsula may, in fact, be regarded as primitive examples of the types of colonies established later by the Phoenicians and the Greeks.

For its Exhibition of Forgeries and Deceptive Copies, on view in the Department of Prints and Drawings since February, the British Museum has produced many fascinating objects which normally it keeps hidden away: with the passage of time, it can afford to indulge its sense of humour. As Sir Thomas Kendrick is reputed to have said when viewing the exhibits: ‘What fun it is when someone takes an immense amount of trouble to be really naughty.’

Contributions from the various Departments and from borrowed sources include Antiquities of all kinds, Ethnographical material, drawings and other examples of the Graphic Arts, Manuscripts and Printed Books, Music, Coins and Medals, and Postage Stamps. The Natural History Museum has also contributed a very popular section.

The only criticism of this entertaining and enlightening venture is that it would have been improved by concentrating on Forgeries and leaving out the Deceptive Copies. Few of us, except the specialist, can avoid boredom when confronted with rows of water-colours after Turner, or drawings after Canaletto. Works of the innocent copyist, or the conscientious restorer, even though exploited later by unscrupulous dealers, are in quite a different category to the productions of any forger worthy of the name. We may marvel at the technical skill of copyists, but it is the original and imaginative fakes that are interesting.

In this article, Professor Bruce Dickins, Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge and sometime Director of the Survey, takes the opportunity of the publication of two general surveys of English Place-Names and of three volumes of the West Riding Survey, to discuss the development of English Place-Name Studies in the last sixty years. The books he here discusses are:–

THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES by P. H. Reaney. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960 (second impression 1961). pp. x + 278. 32s. net.

ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES. By Kenneth Cameron. London, Batsford. 1961. pp. 256 and 8 plates. 30$. net.

THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE. By A. H. Smith. Parts I-III (English Place-Name Society, Vols. XXX-XXXII). Cambridge, University Press, 1961. pp. xii + 346 + map, pp. xii + 322 + map, pp. xiv + 278 + map. 35s. net per volume.