The staple food crops of Saxon and Norman England included rye, barley, oats, millet, beans, and peas. Wheat also was not unknown. In fact, a few carbonized grains have been found upon Neolithic sites. But, even as late as the thirteenth century, wheaten bread in more than one region of England was a luxury food, enjoyed by the mass of the agricultural population only on boon days or religious festivals. The porridges and cereal soups, or flat-baked cakes and small loaves, which accompanied the peasants’ daily cheese, sausages or herring, were usually made from a coarse meal composed of rye, or rye mingled in some proportion with wheat, barley, oats or beans.

Before 1918 it was believed that India's contact with the western world began about 3000 years ago with the intrusion into a barbaric peninsula of the half-legendary Vedic Aryans. It was only with the Empire of Darius that India began to figure substantially in the historical records accessible to us. In 1938 we know in the Indus valley a fully-literate and very advanced urban civilization flourishing fully fifteen centuries before the supposed date of the Aryan invasion. We know too that the ancient Indus cities were in regular and intimate contact with the Sumerian cities of Iraq; a stream of Indian manufactures flowed into Mesopotamia, Indian ideas could travel by the same channels. I need not remind you how deeply modern Western civilization is indebted to the ancient Sumerian, how many of the fundamental inventions that make civilization possible are traceable to the Tigris-Euphrates region, how intimately, through the Hebrews and the Greeks, Mesopotamian traditions have been injected into the very core of our spiritual culture. There lie the roots of our mathematics and astronomy, of the myths that, through the Bible, colour our outlook from early childhood. But we can now infer that India too contributed to the formation of the cultural tradition we thus inherit.

The two volumes of rock-drawings from southern Upper Egypt collected by Dr H. A. Winkler, and published by the Egypt Exploration Society, together form a work of the utmost interest and importance to all interested in the archaeology and ethnology of North Africa. In the first volume, published in 1938, Dr Winkler included a selection of the material collected from the deserts east of the Nile and from the Nile valley itself. In the second volume, just published, the drawings and paintings are all from the deserts west of the Nile and cover three main regions : first the edges of the Nile valley itself from Qena to Aswan ; secondly the regions between the Nile and Kharga; and thirdly certain parts of the central Libyan Desert towards the extreme south-western frontiers of Egypt, in particular the mountain ‘ desert oasis ’ of Gebel ’Uweinat.

‘Im’Adiya lies about eight thousand feet above sea level, on the plateau known as the dhahir, near the precipice, four thousand feet in height, which separates it from the plain on the southern or seaward side. It lies within the territory of the ’Audhala tribe, near the Yemen border. It is ninety miles from Aden as the crow flies, or four days by camel. The nearest inhabited centre is Mukeiras, from which it is about three hours distant on foot, to the east. At Mukeiras the Royal Air Force maintains a landing ground and a rest-house, and the Government has a wireless telegraph station there.

The accumulation of specialized work and the publication of more texts calls for the constant modification of current conceptions of the history of medieval England. Of the means of achieving this readjustment the most satisfactory is probably the lecture, which affords scope for the individual interpretation of development over a wide field and yet does not lose its flexibility or arrogate to itself an authoritative character to which, owing to its very nature, no general survey can rightly lay claim. It is not suggested that the twentieth-century medievalist should ignore the printing-press altogether, but there is much to be said for concentrating on the printing of such works-in the main, editions of texts-as may possibly be of some value to future generations of scholars. To the demand for ‘brighter’ history it is we11 to turn a deaf ear, but the exigencies of time to some extent justify the publication of re-interpretations by those competent to undertake them, whether such text-books assume the form of the co-operative work with almost every chapter from a different pen, the many-volumed history with an expert in charge of each century or so, or a general survey of one or other of the compartments into which history is commonly divided. Of these the last might be deemed the least satisfactory, for the treatment of ‘constitutional’, ‘economic’ or ‘ecclesiastical’ history as a self-contained entity may seem a vicious and outworn practice, leading inevitably to distortion.

The primary purpose of this paper is to publish for the first time a complete set of plans and descriptions of the Dorset stone circles, and of certain allied monuments in which timber uprights may have played a part but whose visible remains today consist only of encircling banks and ditches. The existence of most of the sites described has been recorded, with full references, in the Ordnance Survey’s Map of Neolithic Wessex, but we have been able to add several new circles to those listed there. The field-work was undertaken and the surveys made in 1936 and 1937, while in certain instances use has been made of air-photographs to which Mr O. G. S. Crawford has drawn our attention.

On 6 June I started from Southampton to carry out an investigation of the Roman roads and sites in Scotland from the air. For several years, as part of my official duties, I have been examining these on foot, in pursuance of a plan to publish a third edition of the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain. It is intended to prepare the way for this map (which may be published on a slightly larger scale—10 miles instead of 16 miles to the inch) by the publication of maps of special regions on the scale of 4 miles to the inch. The drawing of the first two of these (Scotland, Sheet 3 [Forth and Tay], and Sheet I [The Border]) had been finished; but many doubtful points remained even after intensive field-work, and it seemed probable that a short air reconnaissance under favourable conditions would solve some of them. This opinion was amply justified by results. About a dozen new Roman sites (including as ‘ sites ’ new stretches of Roman road) were discovered; about 50 new sites in all, including many native forts, were placed on the map; and valuable results of a general character were obtained.

The incident of the theft of the relics of Saint Petroc from his shrine in Bodmin priory church by a canon of Bodmin in 1177, their removal to the abbey of St.-Méen in Brittany, and their subsequent restoration owing to the vigorous action of Henry 11, is well-known. It is briefly referred to by the chroniclers Roger of Hoveden and Benedict of Peterborough. The long Vita Petroci in the newly discovered Gotha MS.; however, contains a full and detailed account of the whole affair by a contemporary writer of considerable literarypowers. It abounds in lifelike touches, and is one of the most interesting glimpses into the social life of the Middle Ages which we possess. It is here printed for the first time.

Transjordanien: voregneschichtliche Forschungen, edited by Hans Rhotert, with contributions by Prof. Franz M. Th. Böhl and Dr K. Willman. pp. XII, 251, 63 photographs, 294 line-drawings and 3 maps. Verlag Strecker und Schröder, Stuttgart, 1938.

During December 1932, a joint expedition of the Transjordan Department of Antiquities, and the American School of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, under the direction of Mr and Mrs George Horsfield and the reviewer, undertook a trip of archaeological reconnaissance through the desert of eastern Transjordan from Mafrak to Kilwa. The existence of ruins at Kilwa was known to us, and they formed the ultimate objective of our journey. Gertrude Bell seems to have been the first European to have visited these ruins on her way to Hayil in 1914, merely recording the fact in her Letters. We were able to establish the fact that the buildings there belonged to a Christian community of c. A.D. 1000. They housed a monastic settlement, marked also by numerous small cells in the vicinity of the main buildings, which existed in the midst of a Moslem world. The early Christian settlement at Kilwa was well situated.

I. La Civilisation d’Assur et de Babylone. By Dr G. Contenau, Conservateur des Antiquités Orientales au Musée du Louvre. Paris: Payot, 1937. 30 francs.

Fouilles de Telloh: sous la direction de H. de Genouillac. Vol. II, Époques d’Ur IIIe Dynastie et de Larsa. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1937. Vols. I and II. 400 francs.

The Music of the Sumerians. By F. W. Galpin. Cambridge University Press, 1937. 18s.

These three works, all published in the same year, form a trilogy with the Tigris and Euphrates as a background. The Land of the Two Rivers, as historians have aptly called it, was from the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C. a focus on which man converged from the cardinal points of western Asia. The earliest settlements were composed of farmers and hunters: in the south their pottery and the art of painting suggest that they were predominant with the Syrian hinterland and eastern Anatolia. Sometime before 3000 B.C. the invention of the wheel, of metal-working and writing produced an industrial revolution, which brought the young civilization of these early farmers to maturity. The beautiful painted pottery of A1 ‘Ubaid and Tall Halaf died out, partly because, as de Genouillac says, the invention of cuneiform writing made the pictorial writing of clay vases obsolete, and no doubt caused the skilful artisans of painted ceramic to apply themselves to the more paying craft of metallurgy, much as in western Europe in the first quarter of this century a horde of stable hands left the paddock for the garage and forsook the horse for the motor car.

West of the Provadia hills in Bulgaria is the valley of Shumen. The northern part of this valley belongs to the basin of the Provadia river, the southern to that of the river Kamtchia. The present railway line from Shumen to Kaspitchan serves as an ideal boundary between these two regions, but the two valleys are best known because of two historical sites, Preslav and Aboba (now Pliska).

The rivers of the Aboba plain have very little water during the summer season, but during winter and in time of heavy rains they overflow and cover great parts of the barren valley. The winter there is cold and severe, the surnmer dry and hot. In the plain, north of Kaspitchan railway station, are the ruins of Aboba. Eshberiich or Isperich (Asparuch), the younger son of Kurt (644–702), in his march southwards stopped there, and founded the first capital of the Bulgarian khans, later to become the magnificent Pliska.

Historians have known the ‘Gododdin’ ever since Skene's edition and translation in the Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868)' and have realized the possibility that its claim to be the work of a sixth-century British poet may be in some form true. The text however was so obscure and in parts corrupt, and hence Skene's and other translations so plainly unreliable, that few have cared to deal boldly with it. Now comes Professor Williams' life-work, his edition of and introduction to the Book of Aneirin, in which he establishes as satisfactory a text as is ever likely to be made, and solves the great majority of the difficulties of interpretation. The importance of this book cannot be overestimated, and since the whole is written in Welsh a full description is necessary.

In the long history of Minoan civilization two great catastrophes are discernible, of which the famous Cretan palaces themselves provide the chief source of our knowledge. Everywhere the catastrophes are seen to be contemporaneous. We can distinguish a period of the first palaces (MM) and a subsequent period of the second palaces (LM). There is no perceptible break in the development of the civilization as a result of these catastrophes. For this reason, the theories that the palaces were overthrown by invaders from abroad aroused opposition from the first. Usually the Achaeans—and even the Hyksos—were suggested as the destroyers. By this theory, however, it was not possible to explain two facts : the decorative arts continue on their way undisturbed, and the second palaces are built at once on the ruins of the first and are still unfortified. The Cretans would not have been so foolish as gratuitously to provide easy loot for fresh invaders.

It is now ten years since the French archaeological expedition under M. Claude Schaeffer first started digging at Ras Shamra, on the north coast of Syria. The present is therefore a suitable moment in which to take stock of what has so far been discovered.

Our best point of departure is provided by the series of annual volumes in which the excavator’s reports and the epigraphists’ primary studies have been conveniently gathered together from the pages of the periodical SYRIA. It must be borne in mind, however, that these excellent publications represent a preliminary and not a final stage in the interpretation of the materials. The literature grows from day to day, and the contributions made by other scholars are equally important for a correct appreciation of the subject. Among these special mention should be made of the work of Albright, Montgomery, Harris, Goetze and Gordon in America, of Ginsberg and de Vaux in Palestine, of Friedrich and Eissfeldt in Germany, of Hrozný in Prague, Aistleitner in Budapest and Cassuto in Italy. In this country studies have been published by the late Father Burrows, Dr J. W. Jack, of Edinburgh, Professor S. H. Hooke and the present writer.

N works on the evolution of plank-built boats attention has never been directed sufficiently to the technique of the methods followed in their construction. The universal habit has been to take the vessels as they are in their completed state and to apply morphological methods to their study from this limited aspect; precisely as the oldfashioned conchologist studied and classified his shells by outward form without regard to the soft parts—the essential criteria, as we now know. It is true nevertheless that in respect both of mollusca and boats, the study of the outward form has led, generally, to an approximation to the truth, but conclusions so reached are not to be accepted as correct without correlated verification dependent upon study of the kernel within the husk. Thus it is that nearly the same conclusions to which I come in this paper, have already been suggested tentatively by Brindley; but, owing to the fact that he did not utilize the internal evidence now brought forward, his suggestions were controversial hypotheses which he could not prove conclusively; nor was he able to state definitely whether the divergent forms noted were reached by means of diffusion and local variation, or whether they arose through independent invention, or by a combination of the two factors.

1. The Stone Age of Mount Carmel; Excavations at the Wady-el-Mughara. Vol. I. By D. A. E. Garrod and D. M. A. Bate. Clarendon Press, 1937. pp. 240, 55 plates, 8 text figures. 42s.

2. Lachish I: The Lachish Letters. By Harry Torczyner, Lankester Harding, Alkin Lewis and J. L. Starkey. Published for the Trustees of the late Sir Henry Wellcome by the Oxford University Press, 1938. pp. 221 (including plates, not numbered separately). 25s.

3. The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine vol. vii, Sela-Petra the Rock, of Edom and Nabatene. By G. and A. Horsfield. Published for the Government of Palestine by the Oxford University Press, 1938. pp. 42,74 plates, 10 text-figures. 5s.

4. The Annual of the American schools of Oriental Research vol. xv, Excavations in Eastern Palestine II. By Nelson Glueck. pp. 161, 38 plates, 45 text-figures.

5. Preliminary report of the University of Michigan Excavations at Sepphoris Palestine in 1931. By Leroy Waterman. University of Michigan Press, 1937. 2 dollars.

The group of books here under review is so varied in subject, that connected discussion is difficult. Apart from the importance of the subjects, however, there is a general interest and connexion in the illustrations they give of the comparatively new approach now being made to Palestinian Archaeology. The inevitably preponderant importance to most people of the association of Palestine with Biblical history has had two effects on the study of its archaeology. In the first place, periods outside that of the Bible have not received much attention, and in the second, it has rather often been the case that distinguished Biblical scholars have undertaken excavations without the supplementary training in field-work which modern archaeological technique now requires. Among the books under review are examples of how this tendency has in recent years been corrected. We see Palestine taking its place as an important connecting link between the great lands of the Near East, and we see how modern methods are now applied to all aspects of field archaeology. There is also unfortunately one example of how modern excavations should not be done.