We have frequently referred in our Editorial Notes to the state of archaeology in countries for whose government and cultural facilities the British Government is responsible, contrasting its attitude with that of some other countries. It seems therefore opportune to reprint in full (with the permission of the Nigerian Government) the ‘Annual Report of the Antiquities Section for the year 1946’, which is the latest to reach us. It is signed by Mr K. C. Murray, Surveyor of Antiquities, over the date 20 January 1947. Need we add that, in thus reprinting his Report, we hope to strengthen the hands of Mr Murray and those others who are struggling to establish a proper Department of Archaeology and Anthropology in Nigeria?—Eds.

The 1938–9 excavations at Calleva, of which Mrs Aylwin Cotton's report has recently appeared (1), show how much more can be learnt about a Romano-British town when modern scientific excavation technique is used to supplement the efforts of earlier antiquaries. George Fox, St. John Hope and Mill Stephenson (to whom all honour) achieved the complete plan, labouring from 1890–1908 each year for months at a time at the total excavation of the hundred acres within the city walls. Now Mrs Cotton by selective excavation and a study of stratigraphy has built up the outline chronology so urgently required : thus we have now both a Map and a Time-Chart for this city. Mrs Cotton's report shows that the original Roman city extended up to the outer earthwork, hitherto thought to be of pre-Roman construction, covering an area of some 230 acres (2), and that the walls with a slightly earlier bank behind them are a contraction of the latter half of the 2nd century A.D. (3) The evidence was clear ; the metal of the streets and layers of dark occupation soil of Hadrian-Antonine date continued under the bank (4)) and the streets continued on the same alignment in the space between the wall and outer earthwork (5). Of the street plan Mrs Cotton observes (6) inter alia that the chessboard ‘ is singularly rectangular ’ and that ‘ it did not exist, at any rate in its later form when the Bath Building in Insula XXXIII was built about the reign of Nero ’. It was these two comments and their footnotes that sent me searching the shelf with Archaeologia ranged heavily along it, and that prompted this article.

It was from the Portuguese that Europe first learned something about India. Their 16th century literature abounds in information on the subject. Duarte Barboza, Tomé Pires, Castanheda, João de Barros, Gaspar Correa even, though he says that he will only write about the exploits of his countrymen, have each one given to the world many interesting facts regarding the ethnology, the customs and beliefs, and some account of the history of that baffling sub-continent which Portugal, of European nations, was the first to observe at close quarters.

Most statements on the subject of Aegean chronology depend and will continue to depend on the Minoan system evolved by Sir Arthur Evans, who based his absolute dating chiefly on synchronisms with Egypt according to the chronology laid down by Dr Eduard Meyer.

Fowling has seldom played a part in the food-quest at all comparable with that of hunting or fishing : the situation of St. Kilda, where during the 17th century the 180 inhabitants are held by Martin (1) to have consumed annually some 22,600 Solan Geese (Gannets) and of which the Rev. Macaulay exclaimed in 1758 ‘. . . deprive us of the Fulmar, and St. Kilda is no more (2)’, is an exception which only proves the general rule. Yet, we know that birds helped to vary the diet of most of the communities of prehistoric Europe and that catching them was an activity of economic importance, especially at certain seasons of the year. The only scientific way of estimating the part played by fowling in the economy of any prehistoric group is through an accurate knowledge of the total fauna represented in the food debris, with special regard to the relative proportions of the different species. While this is too seldom available, there is in the aggregate sufficient data to show how far prehistoric man depended on fowling to supply himself with food. As to the methods used, direct evidence of this is all the harder to come by, since these were mainly of a kind to leave little or no tangible trace behind them. Throughout prehistoric times fowling remained at a primitive stage of development, but fortunately the methods used still survived in Europe down to modern times and most are still practised to-day, whether among peasant peoples in the remoter parts of the continent or among poachers nearer home.

Ex-Enemy territories, such as the Italian colonies in the Mediterranean, are administered on a care and maintenance basis so long as they remain under temporary allied control during the post-war interim period. It is on this basis that the U.K. undertook the administration of the Dodecanese, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica after British troops had entered those areas and, in one case, until a permanent government was established. The British Administrations set up in those territories have all established Departments responsible for caring for the ancient monuments, and these Departments have been expected to function on the same basis of care and maintenance. If the phrase were interpreted to mean care and maintenance of the antiquities as was done at the time of the Italian Administrations it would involve a very high expenditure, and this has not been possible. But a reasonable amount of work has been done. What has been achieved in two of the territories named is described briefly in the following pages. A short conclusion is added, making some recommendations for the preservation of ancient monuments, since this is a matter, especially in the Mediterranean area, which is not a private local affair but of interest to the whole world.

Swedish archaeologists have followed with great excitement and the most lively interest the already numerous writings on the remarkable Sutton Hoo excavations of 1939 and the exceptionally significant objects that came to light there.

Much surprise was occasioned by the news of the Coroner's Inquest—something unfamiliar to Swedes—at which the legal title to the find was decided with the help of the passages in Beowulf describing the passing of Scyld and the lavish furnishing of Beowulf's memorial mound :-

‘They left the wealth of nobles to the earth to keep—left the gold in the ground, where it still exists, as unprofitable to men as it had been before’.

A Swedish court of law would probably not let itself be influenced by, shall we say, quotations from the Edda. When, however, it was a matter of getting past the English law's not very clearly thought out definition of Treasure Trove, there was certainly good reason, and especially in this instance, to cite Beowulf. For it is generally accepted that Beowulf was composed in about A.D. 700, that is to say, while many of those who had witnessed the burial at Sutton Hoo were still alive.

Many years ago I was put in charge of the excavation of an ancient mound-site at Abu Geili on the Blue Nile near Sennar. Careful records were kept, but for reasons wholly outside my control it is only recently that I have been enabled to write a full account for publication. In the course of doing so I have constantly been brought up against first principles; in the present article I propose to consider how these principles apply, as I see it, to Sudanese archaeology at the present time.

The use of pairs of straight or curved timbcrs to support the ridge-pole of a primitive Td welling affords one of the most fundamental of all house types. In England, Scotland and Wales, it developed into the complex cruck framework which, although it has many close analogies in north-western Europe, is a unique feature of peasant architecture, Detailed studies of the cruck buildings of northern England have been made by Addy (1), Innocent (2) and, more recently, by the writer of the present paper (3)) whilst Sigurd Erixon has published an excellent comparative study of analagous types (4). The object of this paper is primarily to trace the evolutionary stages through which the cruck building and its allied forms passed.

British fish-spears fall readily into one or the other of two main groups. The first coqsists of ‘transfixing spears’, i.e. spears having one or more tines with barbed points which pierce and secure the fish. This group included salmon ‘leisters’, flounder-spears, pike-spears and, in fact, spears for most edible shallow-water fish. The type has a long history, being represented in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and prehistoric Europe (e.g. La Tène) (I). I hope in due course to trace its development in Britain.

Examples of Open Arable Fields in cultivation at the present time are so rare that it is strange that those in the Isle of Portland in Dorset have been overlooked by every writer on this subject, This omission is probably due to the isolation of Portland, thrust, as it is, far out into the waters of the English Channel. Its isolation, also, is probably one reason why these open fields have survived, for Portland is a district of survivals. The Court Leet of its Royal Manor still exercises real authority, and Portlanders are tenacious of their ancient rights and customs. They tolerate but are not over-fond of ‘foreigners’ from the mainland and they sturdily resent outside interference and direction.

In line with other endeavours expressive of the spirit of self-assertion aroused in the Danish people at the occupation of Denmark by foreign troops during World War II, the Danish National Museum, subsidized by the State Employment Department and the Carlsberg Foundation, undertook a series of thorough and methodical excavations of the two famous Royal Barrows at Jelling in East Jutland (FIG. I), dating from the middle of the 10th century A.D.

Earlier excavations here, in 1821 and 1861 (1), had been inconclusive. Ample room still remained for hypotheses and suggestions, and divergent views gradually produced quite a literature on the subject (2). Through the recent examination, the most extensive excavations of their kind in Scandinavia, of the southern barrow, the so-called King Gorm Mound, excavated in 1941, and the northern barrow, the so-called Queen Tyre Mound, in 1942 (3), it became possible to eliminate several doubtful points which had confronted people interested in history for more than a hundred years. At the same time, a solid foundation was laid for the future understanding of the Jelling monuments—the barrows and the runestones—the most significant in Danish history, because they bear witness to the kings who united the smaller Danish Kingdoms into one realm (4).

In the present state of our knowledge of the true extent of the Phoenician accomplishment in their homelands in the Mediterranean, it may seem foolhardy to try to evaluate their achievements in West Africa, or indeed anywhere else on the periphery of their sphere of influence. The attempt has, however, been made in the past, nearly always from the purely historical aspect, and my excuse for essaying it once again is that the time seems to have come to emphasize how archaeology could help to shed light on their colonial and mercantile activities in those regions.

Before 1200 B.C. the Phoenician cities on the Syrian coast had sent out colonies to Cyprus, Rhodes and possibly Crete, and, not much later, farther west to Utica and even Gades, if we are to believe our ancient sources (1). These colonies and others, situated at the most strategical points in the Mediterranean, were important vantage-places from which to curb the Greek spread westwards. They kept the Greeks from any real foothold west of a line drawn from Cumae to Selinus, apart from an enclave in the Gulf of Lions.

In 685 Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, led an expedition against the Picts. North of the Tay, at Dunnichen near Forfar, he was slain and his army was destroyed by the forces of Brude mac Beli King of the Picts. The battle was fought near a loch, Symeon of Durham's ‘Nechtanesmere’, which scholars of the 19th century believed to have existed in the mosslands of Dunnichen. The site of the battle is not known, the loch itself has now disappeared, and the accounts of local historians and others, neither properly checked nor fully assimilated by national historians, are not all easily accessible. Floods which followed the winter of 1946–47 temporarily restored at least part of the old loch or mere, and in the summer of 1947 the flood-marks in the fields could still be seen. It seemed worth while to try to indicate on a map the extent of the vanished loch and this, with the aid of photography and a field-survey, has been possible. It seemed worth while also to sift the meagre scraps of evidence provided by chroniclers and, often unintentionally, by local writers of the last century, for these scattered scraps deserve to be brought together and re-examined.

It is a mark of a discipline's maturity when scientists begin to show an interest in I the history of their science. This book by a distinguished archaeologist.might then be welcomed if only as a mark that archaeology has reached that degree of maturity. But of course the book's merits go far beyond that and will indeed appeal to many who are not archaeologists in any sense.

The story of archaeological exploration in Mesopotamia is highly instructive and romantic, but also tragic. The author tells it well in an attractive prose style with a few happily chosen illustrations reproduced from early 19th century originals. More than half the volume is occupied by biographical accounts of those who laid the foundations of Western knowledge of the monuments of Iraq, from 16th century merchant-voyagers who casually mentioned them to Botta and Layard who began to excavate them. Lloyd has the power to pick out and vividly recapitulate such incidents in the actors’ lives as shall bring out their characters without distracting attention from the central theme. At the same time he uses their descriptions of scenery and customs, often sharply contrasted with those he knows so well today, to build up a rich and variegated panorama of the natural and human background of Mesopotamian archaeology. Students of Near Eastern civilization who have not themselves had the opportunity of visiting even Mosul, Baghdad, Ur and Basra will find these passages, in which 19th century observations are illuminated by comparison with contemporary experiences, extremely helpful.

In Antiquity for 1942 (1) Iorwerth Peate made a stimulating contribution to our understanding of the iron fire-dogs which are such a striking feature of British Iron Age craftsmanship, and in these notes that follow I hope to show that Mr Peate’s thesis can be further substantiated by additional evidence from archaeology and modern folk-life. It is his central idea that I have followed: my paper is a postscript to his.