In the early winter of 1953, just after the debunking of the Piltdown fossil forgery perpetrated in the early part of this century near Uckfield, Sussex, a blizzard of correspondence descended on the British Museum (Natural History). Among the letters was a fairly ominous one addressed to Kenneth Oakley. Purporting to be a message from one 'Elihu Progwhistle', a professional medium whose seances were being monopolized by a spirit 'identifying itself as the solicitor Charles Dawson', the note angrily denounced the whole investigation. It relayed the ghost's warning that it would take violent extra-legal action against the Piltdown detectives unless they gave up the search.

Like many researchers since, William Stukeley in the mid-eighteenth century wondered why the site of Stonehenge had been selected for the Britons' most sublime temple. It was chosen, he decided, according to the ancient notion of placing temples 'in clean and distinct areas, distant from profane buildings and traffic' (Stukeley, 1740, 11) (Pl. xxiia). Two hundred years on, Stonehenge is set about with traffic, busy main roads running past on both north and south sides, and profane buildings have appeared—the Larkhill military complex on the northern skyline, and the Stonehenge car-park and visitors' facilities close by on the north-west.

For several centuries now, Stonehenge has been among the most visited of British ancient monuments. Records of tourist day-trips from Salisbury via Old Sarum (still a favourite outing) go back more than 400 years (Folkerzheimer, 1562), and Stukeley (1740, 5) talked of its 'infinite number of daily visitants'.

The south-western shoreline of Lake Garda is for the most part low and shelving, but at Manerba an outcrop of triassic limestone forms a dramatic, high promontory projecting into the lake (FIG. 1 ). This geological formation is stepped in two levels : the higher, inland part, called the ‘Rocca’, occupied during the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman periods, as well as being the site of a medieval castle (Borrello, 1973 ; Brogiolo, 1973), and the lower level, the Sasso, comprising a sheer cliff dropping some 90 m down to the lake edge, with, at its foot, a chalcolithic cemetery, as well as traces of both earlier and later use by man.

The inscription was found badly damaged and distorted by fire, and affected by various corrosive patinas which had to be treated by a specialized laboratory in the Museum of Barcelona. The plaque measures 44 × 21 cm and has six perforations (visible on the photograph) to fix it to a backing (PL. II).

In a letter to Dr Mead in 1738, Francis Wise discussed the location of Alfred's famous battle-ground of Ashdown and described it as ‘containing large tracts of down and sheep pasture where the great Western road passes at this day, being called the Rudge or Ridgeway’ (Wise, 1738). Sir Richard Colt-Hoare rode along the Ridgeway in 1815 and wrote ‘these ridgeways were the roads made use of by the earliest inhabitants of Britain as lines of communication between their different towns and villages. They generally followed the highest ridges of land on which also we find their habitations: they were not paved with stone and gravel as in later times by the Romans but their basis was the firm and verdant turf’ (Colt-Hoare, 1819). His description is the first itinerary of the route now followed with delight by thousands. He passed Wayland's Smithy, and Uffington Castle, following then with a long and speculative account of the battle of Ashdown. He was not immune to the enjoyment of a view. ‘Hitherto the ridgeway had afforded no attraction with respect to country or view, its chief interest was from a recollection of the important historical events which had transpired on its borders, but on proceeding eastwards the eye was continually amused by an extensive prospect over a rich vale extending to Oxford on the left, with numerous church turrets peeping forth amidst the dense foliage with which the country is overspread. The scenery at the right exhibited an open and cultivated extent of land. A few barrows occurred occasionally alongside the trackway but I did not see any other marks of ancient population.’

In 1972 Wm. M. Calder III pointed out that Schliemann's autobiographical writings are riddled with false claims and fictitious episodes (Calder, 1972). Subsequent research has confirmed and extended his findings. The purpose of this article is to show that Schliemann's mendacity was not confined to details of his personal life. The focus of our inquiry will be the famous incident towards the end of his 1873 excavations at Troy-the discovery of what he called 'Priam's Treasure'.

Schliemann described this momentous occasion in about a dozen different places. We shall restrict ourselves to four of the earliest versions. It will be convenient to refer to these early accounts as A, B, C, and D. A and B are two versions of Schliemann's 31 May report to his publishers, Brockhaus of Leipzig.

The long-standing debate on the military use of chariots in Late Bronze Age Greece was joined in 1973 by P. A. L. Greenhalgh. In his provocative book, he argued that Mycenaean warriors using thrusting spears had fought at speed from massed chariots. At the same time he rejected as unrealistic Homer's descriptions of chariots as conveyances for warriors who dismounted to fight on foot.

These opinions were recently briefly restated in ANTIQUITY, where Dr Greenhalgh reaffirms his theory, using the well-known metal panoply from chamber tomb 12 at Dendra as additional evidence (Greenhalgh, 1980). In doing so, he disregards the objections that have been raised against his position (Littauer, 1977; Anderson, 1973; 1975).

The history of Maya archaeology generally can be divided into five successive periods (Hammond, 1982, 33–66): during the first two of these, the periods of the Spanish travellers (1524–1759) and the Spanish explorers (1759–1840), Belize remained unnoted, even during the visit of Stephens and Catherwood in October 1839 on their first expedition to Central America, and even though that visit stimulated an expedition from Belize City, led by Patrick Walker, ‘secretary of the government and holding besides such a list of offices as would make the greatest pluralist among us feel insignificant’ (Stephens, 1841, I, 14), in an attempt to beat Stephens to the ruins of Palenque on the far side of the Yucatan Peninsula (Pendergast, 1967).

It has long been a source of pleasure to us both that the author of the first of these Archaeological Retrospects, Charles Phillips, should share with me independent boyhood contacts with the Vale of White Horse, then in Berkshire but since 1974 in Oxfordshire (Phillips, 1980). Piggotts had been around in Marcham, Hatford and West Challow since the early seventeenth century, and the families died out or slipped quietly downhill to the status of farm labourers or at best small peasant farmers. My great-grandfather was one of these, in Uffington beneath the famous hill-figure, and my grandfather at the age of 10 was taken up to the last of the traditional festive 'scourings' in 1857 by Thomas Hughes of Kingston Lisle, best known as the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, who wrote up the event as The Scouring of the White Horse (1859). Among the festivities were wrestling and back-sword play: these sports 'were kept up there perhaps as long as in any portion of Middle England' wrote the son of a rector of Childrey, a village a few miles from Uffington, who came there in 1882. 'The Childrey schoolmaster', he goes on, 'when he was a boy at Uffington, could throw all his schoolfellows' (Cornish, 1939, 80). The schoolmaster was my grandfather, and my father was born in the village in 1874.

Between 1880 and 1893 General Pitt Rivers excavated two Bronze Age sites inside his park at Rushmore. In 1880 and 1884 he investigated a cemetery of six barrows at Barrow Pleck, and in 1893 he went on to examine the small enclosure known as South Lodge Camp, which is situated about 130m to the south. These excavations are reported in his volumes on Cranborne Chase, which are still referred to as a model of 'total publication' (Pitt Rivers, 1888, 1898; Alcock, 1978). The results of this work raised the possibility that here was a rare case of a prehistoric settlement associated with its cemetery, but other aspects of the sites, in particular the nature and chronology of the enclosure, have aroused greater interest among later generations of archaeologists. Until recently, it has been uncertain how far this published record can be reinterpreted. Since 1977 we have carried out fresh excavations on both sites. These have taken in the entire enclosure, parts of its field system and selective re-examination of the barrow cemetery. With the completion of that work we are able to offer a summary of the results and a comparison between our findings and those of the General. The first section of this account reconsiders Pitt Rivers's excavation and summarizes our main conclusions concerning his working methods. It is also a contribution to the current debate on the nature of archaeological publication. The second part describes the results of our own work on these sites between 1977 and 1981.

Hodder Westropp wrote what is probably the first Handbook of Archaeology ever produced, added to Petrie's work on Irish Round Towers, and defined the term Mesolithic. Yet he is virtually unknown and is given only a brief mention in modern scholarship (Daniel, 1967, 260; Wilkins, 1959, 130–1). The purpose of this article is to provide a brief biography of this remarkable figure and to look in greater detail at some of the major events of his career.

I chose to look at the work of Hodder Westropp for my BA dissertation. This proved to be quite a challenge since the usual channels—the British Library Catalogue, Index to the Times Newspaper and Citation Indices—were soon exhausted.