East of Amman in Transjordan lies the basalt area called the Harrat er Radjil (the centre is approximately 37 deg. 30 mins. east and 32 deg. 30 mins. north), and this area is archaeologically most interesting. (Fig. I). The country consists mostly of basalt broken up into blocks of various sizes, with mud-flats scattered in all the hollows. The mud-flats are fed by small watercourses which are generally deeply eroded, and although they are usually dry, water flows in them after heavy rain. Pools of water sometimes lie in the watercourses and on the mud-flats till the commencement of the summer months. Here and there rise small crater-hills, a few hundred feet high, of volcanic formation; and here and there the larger watercourses have eroded the country, leaving many small hills which, when seen from afar, are not unlike the crater-hills.

It seems amazing that an African negro should ever have been able with any sort of justification to style himself – Emperor of the World ', and perhaps even more so that he should have been an enlightened prince ruling a people who were in many ways quite as civilized as we are today. For though it might be easy to imagine a native military genius, it is difficult to picture him as a patron of the finer arts.

From the very earliest recorded times what is now the northern Sudan-in those days described variously as Nubia, Ethiopia, or Kushwas in close relation with Egypt; and between the two countries there was a continuous exchange, not only of produce and material, but also of ideas and customs.

The history of North Africa is dominated by the Sahara, which has always been a vital factor in the lives of the peoples of Barbary and the Western Sudan. The cultural and economic development of both has been profoundly affected by intercourse between the two. Yet they are separated by a desert which forms one of the world's greatest barriers to human intercourse.

A slight increase in the aridity of the Sahara would so extend the waterless stages that the caravan routes would become impassable to camels and therefme to men—leaving, of course, mechanical transport out of consideration. A correspondingly slight increase in rainfall would quickly multiply the waterholes and desert pastures and render man independent of the now necessary camel. The question of climatic change in historic times is therefore a matter of importance to the student of the history of northern Africa.

It is now 24 years since Dr Randall MacIver investigated the problems of the origin and age of the Southern Rhodesian ruins. Nothing of any scientific consequence has since been added to the evidence on the purely archaeological side, with the exception of the partial excavation of the so-called Western Temple of the Zimbabwe Acropolis.

In physical anthropology, we had, in 1924, Sir Arthur Keith's report on four ancient skeletons found in gold mines, and one from Zimbabwe itself. They were of Bantu type, but do they represent the original miners, and how old are they?

In the autumn of 1928 a German archaeological expedition began to excavate the site of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanid empire. Two years earlier the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft, which had successfully made excavations at Babylon, Assur, Farah and Warka, was informed by the Iraq Ministry of Education that the help of German archaeologists in carrying out research would be welcomed. The Society thereupon agreed to co-operate with the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft in the excavation of Ctesiphon and Seleucia.

The plates facing pages 385 and 452 of this number represent the culminating point of archaeological air-photography. They were taken by Pilot Officer Jonas, R.A.F., between I I and 12 o'clock on the 16th of May 1929, using a K.Z filter. The sites lie half a mile apart on the hill called Woodbury, less than a mile south of Salisbury Cathedral, between the Blandford and Bournemouth roads. Woodbury is three miles south of the aerodrome at Old Sarum, from which they were taken and where I found them when taking over obsolete negatives on behalf of the Ordnance Survey (where they now are). They were taken during pin-pointing, as part of the ordinary routine of training; but that these particular sites were selected for practice is due to the keenness of the photographic section at Old Sarum, which has been closely associated with the development of this branch of air-photography from its birth. (It was the Old Sarum section that obtained many of the first archaeological air-photographs ever taken, including those of the Stonehenge Avenue, in 1921, and of the Celtic fields round Winchester, in 1922). Regarded merely photographs, from a technical standpoint the negatives are as nearly perfect as possible. The wonderful definition of the crop-marks is probably due partly to the use of a K.2 filter, partly to the dry spell during the first half of 1929.

Ever since the first discovery of predynastic cemeteries in Egypt by Sir Flinders Petrie at Naqada in 1895 it was realized that the beginnings of civilization in the Nile Valley had not been found, and that remains of earlier stages might come to light. For nearly thirty years, in spite of active and more or less scientific excavation in all parts of Egypt and Nubia, no earlier settlements or cemeteries were discovered which could then be classed as older than predynastic. Flintwork of palaeolithic man abounded, especially on the high desert; and the flints of the Fayyum, in great variety, were recognized as mainly neolithic. But the ancestors or forerunners of the predynastic people seemed to have left no other trace. Probably the advance of the cultivation with the gradual rise of the mud level had obliterated all that they had left behind them. Steep slopes of desert are obviously covered less quickly than the flatter areas. The eastern desert fringing the cultivation in the Badari district of Middle Egypt presents a succession of more or less high spurs intersected by dry watercourses or wadys running down from the cliffs to the fields. It is here, and so far here only, that the much sought for precursors of the predynastic Egyptians have been revealed to us. They have been called Badarians to distinguish them from the well-known predynastic people (Amratians, Gerzeans and Semainians) with whom they are closely akin both in culture and physical type.