During recent years, writers in this Journal and elsewhere have been much concerned with forms of archaeological field-research which do not in themselves involve actual excavation. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to one in particular of these : namely the regional surveys of mounds which, in the Middle East, have gained so much usefulness and significance during the past two decades. Reference will be made to the complementary relationship between surface-explorer and excavator, especially insofar as it would appear to have been emphasised by a recent instance of their collaboration. This was in the case of a mound-survey in southern Anatolia, undertaken by Mr J. Mellaart, sometime Scholar of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, which led to the discovery of the site called Beycesultan and its excavation by the same Institute in the spring of 1954.