When the Editor of Antiquity invited me to write some notes on the Zürich Congress, it was agreed that they could only be considered as personal impressions, and not a formal report. The unfortunate human limitation which debars one from being in two places at once is always irritatingly obtrusive on such occasions, and a decision on which of several simultaneous papers to attend is likely to be decided by spinning a coin at the last moment, so that one can do no more than record one's own impressions, and something of those of friends to whom one has talked.

By the term ‘classical rhinoceros’ I mean the rhinoceros which was known to the Greek and Roman world during the five and a half centuries between 300 B.C. and A.D. 250, which was shown from time to time at Alexandria under the Ptolemies and later on appeared regularly in the arena at Rome taking part in fights with other beasts and with men. Although the Indian rhinoceros seems occasionally to have been exhibited at Rome, at any rate in the early years of the Empire, I believe that the rhinoceros usually shown there came from Africa, and I have tried to analyse such evidence as is available to show firstly what species it was and secondly what part of Africa it came from.

There are, of course, two quite distinct kinds of African rhinoceros, the square-mouthed and the prehensile-lipped, popularly known respectively as the White and the Black Rhinoceros. Until recently their scientific names were Rhinoceros simus and Rhinoceros bicornis, but systematists have now separated them into two genera, calling the former Ceratotherium simum and the latter Diceros bicornis ; denying to both the title of Rhinoceros which they reserve for the Indian rhinoceros and its near Asiatic relatives. For the sake of simplicity and brevity I shall retain the old names and call them simus and bicornis.

The popular misnomers of ‘white’ and ‘black’ are a legacy from the South African Dutch of the 17th century, who called simus ‘wit renaster’ and bicornis ‘zwart renaster’. They were not very particular about exact shades of colour and probably meant no more than that one species usually appeared much lighter than the other. The natural colour of both appears much the same to an observer a little distance away. The hide of simus may be slightly lighter. Perhaps the most accurate definition is given by Roosevelt and Heller who say that the true colour of simus is smoke-grey while that of bicornis is dark clove-brown.

The popular epithet for our pleistocene forerunners is still ‘cave men’. It gives the impression that they were as completely dependent on Nature’s bounty for shelter as for food. And of course that impression was originally intended by archaeologists themselves. Most remains of middle and upper palaeolithic cultures were, and still are being, collected from caves. Other sites that yielded similar relics have been designated ‘open stations’, with the inevitable, if not deliberate, implication of the absence of any shelter. Yet from many caves there have long been known engravings or paintings that seem to represent tents or more substantial structures and that have been designated ‘tectiforms’ for this very reason. Not all prehistorians accept this obvious interpretation, and few of those who do have realized its significance. Perhaps they were waiting with proper scientific caution for monumental evidence.

Such evidence is now available in plenty. But as it is mostly published in Russian, and badly at that, it has not been at all widely appreciated. Yet the construction of dwellings twenty thousand or more years ago is so striking a fact in cultural history as to justify a summary of the rather inaccessible accounts that have appeared.

Physical remains of the simple tent-like structures inferred from the commoner tectiforms have been identified at Gagarino and Kostienki on the Don in the Ukraine and at Mal’ta and Buryet on the Angara in Siberia. At Gagarino the ‘hut foundation’ was an irregular saucer-shaped excavation in the löss, nowhere more than .50 m. deep, and measuring some 5.50 by 4.50 m. across. A silo trench, dug by peasants, that had originally revealed the archaeological deposit, had cut right through its centre along the major axis thus presumably destroying the hearth and the entrance. Little evidence for the superstructure was left, but Zamyatnin noticed large slabs of stone and mammoth tusks lying near the margins of the depression. This dwelling was occupied by Gravettian mammoth-hunters as was a similar one subsequently discovered at Kostienki below the large ‘communal house’ to be discussed later.

By reviewing the bearing on Maori culture history of the excavation of Moa-hunter sites in New Zealand the previous chapter serves as an introduction to this account of the Wairau site, which is the most important Moa-hunter site yet recorded.

So haphazard is the progress of archaeology in New Zealand that although this camp occupies more than 15 acres and is situated on an accessible beach about seven miles from the town of Blenheim, it was not discovered until 1939. It was first ploughed about 1922, when the tenant, Mr C. Eyles, was surprised at the number of bones uncovered. Being unfamiliar with moa bones, he believed the larger bones were those of the bullocks formerly employed to cart wool along the boulder bank, and the smaller to be human. Presumably miscellaneous artifacts were also revealed by the plough but only a number of stone adzes were recognized and retrieved. Of these the only one saved is a massive example of Type 1, A one of the most distinctive Moa-hunter types.

The site was not identified as of Moa-hunter age until some seventeen years later, when Jim Eyles, the thirteen-year old grandson of the former tenant, decided to emulate the spasmodic activities of local collectors who occasionally visited the site in search of ‘Maori curios’. He opened up a trench on the edge of a convenient mound and immediately found the first of seven burials each, as subsequently established, with a moa egg grave offering.

Some ten years ago Professor G. Montell published a well-illustrated and highly interesting account of the history of the Chinese game of t'ou hua or Pitch-pot. In this game, practised in China for many centuries, two contestants attempt to toss (t’ou) arrows into the mouth of a narrow necked vessel (hu) according to very elaborate rules of procedure. He began by quoting verbatim Legge's translation of the lengthy description of the game as contained in the Lichi,b taking this as evidence that the game ‘was perfected as early as the Chou period’. He surmised that the game survived the centuries although he knew of ‘no further mention of it in the literature until the time of the Sung dynasty’, his next source dating from the 11th century.

In a recent article in this journal Mr O. G. S. Crawford referred to the people of the Sudan as a people without a history, and he drew attention to the possibilities of filling some of the lacunae in their history by the excavation of sites south of Khartoum especially along the White Nile. It is, of course, true, as the responsible authorities are well aware, that a good deal of exploration remains to be done in the Sudan and awaits only the necessary funds. It is probable, also, that many ancient village sites in the area between the Blue and White Niles now lie beneath the cotton fields of the Gezira Irrigation Scheme. It is therefore the more unfortunate that some archaeological discoveries which have been made have either been inadequately published or their publication has been inordinately delayed.

In this latter respect archaeology has been singularly unfortunate in the district round Sennar, on the Blue Nile, a region which appears to have been important throughout the history of the Sudan. It is doubtful if the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom penetrated as far south as this, though their descendants may have done so in New Kingdom times ; but the area was certainly a centre of civilization in the heyday of the Meroitic kingdom, about the beginning of the Christian era, and, nearer our own times, it was the headquarters of the powerful Fung kings of the 16th to 18th centuries.

In 1925, Professor Dart of the Witwatersrand University described the well-known Taungs skull (Australopithecus). He pointed out that, in spite of the obviously ape-like proportions of the brain, there were certain features (particularly in the dentition) in which this fossil primate resembled Man more closely than do any of the known anthropoid apes. In general, other anatomists agreed that this certainly was so, but some regarded the resemblances as little more than interesting examples of parallelism having no particular reference to the origin of the human family (Hominidae). In 1936 and the following years, Dr R. Broom, F.R.S., of the Transvaal Museum, discovered many more remains of similar ape-like creatures, including teeth, portions of skulls and jaws, and parts of the limb skeleton. Incidentally, he believed these remains to represent two types closely related to Australopithecus but generically distinct, and he gave them the names Plesianthropus and Paranthropus. Whether this generic distinction will be accepted as valid is a subject of controversy. Actually, however, it is (for the moment) a matter of no great importance, for it is agreed that they all certainly belong to the same group, the Australopithecinae. Dr Broom's account of his discoveries (which were made at Sterkfontein and Kromdraai—not far from Johannesburg) was published in 1946. It became clear from his description and illustrations that the hominid traits of the Australopithecinae were even more remarkable than many anatomists had supposed. So much was this the case, indeed, that some of those who had shown a cautious reserve towards the Taungs skull now expressed their conviction that these extinct primates were by no means merely “ anthropoid apes ”. On the contrary, they agreed that they provided evidence of the utmost importance for problems of human evolution. But although this now became widely accepted, one or two critics continued to combat it with rather unusual (and also rather puzzling) vehemence. Meanwhile, unperturbed by these minor protests regarding his earlier discoveries, Dr Broom was quietly working away at his excavations at Sterkfontein, and in 1947 he came upon an astonishingly rich collection of Australopithecine remains closely packed together in a small and circumscribed locus of dense limestone. This new material proved to be much more complete and perfectly preserved than anything hitherto found in the area, and included several skulls or parts of skulls, many teeth, and an exceptionally fine specimen of a pelvic bone.

The first (1949) season of archaeological reconnaissance on the Foggia Plain in South Italy has confirmed, in the most striking manner, the existence of one of the densest concentrations of ancient sites to be identified in Europe in an area of comparable size. For readers of ANTIQUITY, their nature had already been foreshadowed in these pages.

These discoveries were first made from British air photographs taken in June 1945, which revealed the plans of settlements, farms, roads and field-systems existing below the surface of the ground or clearly visible to the air camera. They were distributed across 3000 years of Italian history, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, and illustrate from the archaeological record three principal stages in the rise of a European peasantry. This is a theme that affords ideal ground for the conjunction of Archaeology and Ethnology ; and it is appropriate that the Expedition should be based on the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, which was founded on this very principle.

Now, thanks to the Apulia Committee, set up under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries and representing the University of Oxford and learned societies, it has been possible to proceed to the second and fundamental stage:—namely, to carry out the first systematic programme of archaeological investigation based on air photographic data ever conducted in Italy. This also included the first British excavations there for a number of years, with the permission and helpful co-operation of the Italian authorities, and the support of the British School at Rome.

It is but rarely that we light upon any trace of those articles of furniture which must have been in daily use in every Romano-British home. The purpose of this article is to call attention to a series of objects which contribute something to our scanty knowledge of this subject, namely the carved fragments of Kimmeridge shale occasionally found during the excavation of Romano-British sites. Of these no less than seven are on view in the Dorchester Museum. All were found at or near Dorchester, and there seems no reason to doubt that they were made locally, as a shale industry is known to have existed in Dorset since Neolithic times.

The best known piece is probably the one discovered at Colliton Park, Dorchester, in a rubbish pit 16 feet deep, lying beneath the hypocaust of one of the houses of the Roman town of Durnovaria (PLATE I, I) . It consists of the leg of a piece of furniture with a tenon top made to fit into a mortise in some flat surface. The upper part of the leg is carved to represent an animal’s head with an open mouth and a lolling tongue, the latter being extended in an unrealistic manner to join the leg, which swells out to meet it. Below the animal’s head the leg is cut away in a semi-circle at the back and shows in front a fluted band which may perhaps be a reminiscence of some form of foliate ornamentation. Behind the animal’s head is a small notch. The leg itself terminates in a claw foot. Part of another leg of this type, a little smaller in size, was found on the villa site at Frampton near Dorchester (PLATE I, 2). This is carved with a head resembling that on the Colliton Park leg, but here a space has been hollowed out between the elongated tongue and the animal’s neck, and the band of fluted ornamentation is missing. A third example was discovered during the excavation of the villa at Preston, near Weymouth (PLATE 1, 3) . Of this fragment only the left-hand side is intact, the right-hand side having split away in an almost straight line. The head survives, but the tenon has been broken off, and most of the animal’s tongue has disappeared. On the fragment of a fourth leg which comes from South Street, Dorchester, the extended tongue survives, although the carved head itself has unfortunately been destroyed. The lower parts of two legs ending in claw feet were also found in South Street, and another foot of the same type was recovered from the Roman level at Maiden Castle .

During the war and in the immediate post-war period the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force undertook a considerable air survey programme covering Burma, Siam and French Indo-China. In Siam the initial cover was restricted to large-scale (1:15,000 and better) photographs of towns, airfields and communications. Later a more ambitious programme of survey cover (scales 1 : 50,000 and 1 : 25,000 with a few towns and beaches at larger scale) was undertaken, and practically the whole of the country has been covered by air photographs of one scale or another.

It has been my privilege to serve with the R.A.F. in Siam on both ground and flying duties and, more recently, to be in a position to examine most of the photographs taken. A very considerable number of archaeological sites have come to light, many being noted for the first time ; and it is my intention in this initial paper to comment briefly on one particular type of earthwork which appears to have a limited distribution in eastern Siam. The air photographs are reproduced with the sanction of the Air Ministry.

It must be emphasized that although Siam, the meeting place of Indian and Chinese cultures, is rich in archaeological sites very little systematic work has yet been undertaken. On the one side the natural reluctance of the Siamese to disturb ancient sites and, on the other, comparative absence of trained archaeological research workers have been contributory factors. Detailed ground information generally is lacking and it follows that these notes are based on air photographic evidence, in most cases without ground checking, an impropriety of which the writer is only too well aware.

This appreciation of George Grant MacCurdy does not purport to record either the main facts or the details of his long and fruitful life. It is merely the appraisal of the man, the teacher, and the scientist by one who was his junior friend and colleague for more than a third of a century. It is designed to supplement the admirable biographical sketch written by Dr Hugh Hencken for the Bulletin $16 of the American School of Prehistoric Research.