Ducation as a subject for post-war planning is on everyone’s lips today. E Public interest has never been higher. Yet it may be doubted whether even now the full measure of its importance is realized. Next to winning the war, nothing is of greater moment than the battle for enlightenment, for if this is lost the ‘victory’ will be vain and we may all prepare for an ordeal more terrible than the present, because fought out among still larger aggregations of political and military power. The whole of history bears witness to the corruption of power, the struggles of the few for spoil of the many, the ignorance of the peoples and its lethal consequences to themselves. Today, thanks for the most part to the heroism of the common man, whether citizen of a bombed city, defender of Stalingrad, peasant of China, inhabitant of oppressed Europe or member of the forces of liberation, we stand on the threshold of what could be a new world: whether we cross that threshold or are elbowed back into the dark passage that leads to another holocaust, depends primarily on our attitude to education, on the steps taken during the next few years to bring to the common man everywhere a realization of his inheritance as a citizen of the world and an awareness of his power to mould his own destiny. What is needed above all is an overriding sense of human solidarity such as can come only from consciousness of common origins. Divided we fall victims to tribal leaders: united we may yet move forward to a life of elementary decency.

It is more than thirty years since I first met George Reisner. He was then in the prime of life, a short sturdily-built man with a mass of straight black hair, I a closely clipped moustache and a determined chin. He was wearing spectacles with very powerful lenses and, as usual, had a pipe in his mouth. His fingers were short and stubby and it was rather terrifying to see him manipulating some delicate antiquity. There was nothing Germanic about him except his name—he was born in Indianapolis of a family which had migrated from Europe, I believe, in the Napoleonic era. Nor was there anything obviously academic; he looked and talked like a forceful 100% American of the breed of Theodore Roosevelt, strong, open and friendly. He used to say, probably with truth, that he might have made a fortune in business if he had not chosen a different career.

To most archaeologists Northumberland is noted chiefly for its remains of Roman military engineering, but the interest of these and the care with which T they have been studied have diverted attention from the less spectacular relics of the native population. It is seldom realized that the county still contains traces of about 400 of their forts, farms, and villages, together with about 100 destroyed sites the positions of which are known more or less certainly from place-names or other sources. The purpose of this paper is to give some account of these settlements. They are of interest in themselves, but they are also potentially important as comparative material, especially in relation to the archaeology of Ireland, the South of Scotland, and Western England. They are generally in good preservation, and the fairly frequent occurrence of Roman relics provides a better prospect of establishing some sort of chronology than in more remote areas.

When, Where and How the Wild Goose was first domesticated are questions which offer a wide field for speculation, and an interesting subject, should the opportunity occur, for archaeological research, Our present tame geese differ, generally speaking, in so small a degree from their wild congeners that we hardly need Darwin’s authority to assure us that they are all descended from the Grey-Lag goose Answ anser (Linnaeus). The very small change they have suffered under domestication, which is rarely more than an increase in size, a diminution in the warmth and intensity of their coloration, and a tendency, partial or complete, towards albinism, would suggest that the domestication of the goose took place at a comparatively recent date. The most cursory examination of the available evidence shows this opinion to be untenable. For example it is probable that, when in 390 B.C. the tame geese in the Roman Capitol saved a critical situation by being more wakeful than the men on guard, their establishment there was already an ancient institution and that they either possessed then, or else acquired by this salutary action of theirs, a semi-sacred character. Contrary to expectation the Romans attributed a particular sanctity to those geese which were white.

The valley7 of the Anchlome, a few miles east of Scunthorpe, in notthwest Lincholnshire, consists of a great stretch of flat, low-lying ‘Carrs’ between the Oolites of the Lincolnshire Cliff on the west and the Chalk Wolds on the east. The geological evidence suggests that in early times the river Ancholme was a tidal arm of the estuary of the Humber, being much wider than at present. Until the seventeenth century the area was flooded for several months in the year, for it was not until the sixteen-thirties that the first really serious draining operations were commenced, the main feature of this work being the construction of a ‘New Cut’, or New River Ancholme, which (together with the old river, now little more than a large drain) joins the Humber at Ferriby Sluice.

It is perhaps best at the beginning of this paper to clear away an illusion that readily I besets us, as we look back on the Dark Age that followed the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain-the illusion that there was something unique in the fate of our island. ‘The barbarians thrust us into the sea, the sea thrusts us back to the barbarians’,—and Aetius, the Roman Patrician, turns a deaf ear. As a matter of fact, Britain only suffered the fate that befell Dacia in the 3rd century, and Gaul, Spain, the Alpine and Balkan districts in the 4th to the 5th. One after another the provinces, once Roman, were overwhelmed under the barbarian tide. The only unique point in the case of Britain is her position as an island—twenty miles interval by sea may well be equated to a much greater distance by land. History, however, sometimes compenesates its blows. Britain, the lost island of the West, attracted the fatherly attention of the Popes of Rome earlier than some continental districts nearer home. She began to regain from Pope Gregory the Great what she had lost through Aetius.