Among the earliest monuments of the Buddhist faith as propagated through India by king Asoka in the third century B.C. is a peculiar class of structure known as a stupa, and since Fergusson (1) first put forward the idea at the end of the last century it has been vaguely realized that these monuments were in all probability a formalized version of nothing more or less than a specialized type of prehistoric (and pre-Buddhist) round cairn. The possible implications of this prototype's peculiar features in reference not only in oriental, but in European archaeology, were pointed out by Mr Harold Peake with characteristic acumen (2), but no convenient summary of the relevant Indian material has appeared in an English archaeological journal, and a recent discovery in Jaipur State has thrown most interesting light on the subject at large. It seems therefore desirable to bring the results of the Bairat excavations before a wider archaeological public than that reached by the original report by the excavator, the late Rai Bahadur D. R. Sahni, and to consider it in relation to the wider question of the origins of the stupa and of the curious features which are presented in formalized guise on the elaborate monuments which represent the supreme artistic achievements of the Sunga Dynasty in the closing centuries of the pre-Christian era. I am deeply indebted to Mr Peake not only for material amplifying his original thesis, but for stimulating discussion and correspondence on the whole question. The latter part of this paper is in fact to such a degree based on his ideas that it amounts to an appendix in which I have paraphrased views exprcssed by him and shared by myself.

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.

Field-Names, the common and convenient term for minor names which have not achieved the status of place-names, often preserve information important to the historian and to the archaeologist. Their value is well recognized by specialists but not always clearly understood by others. Since field-names are generally found in local, as distinct from national, records, local historians are especially qualified to help in the accumulation of a collection of such names. After a few sentences of advice to secure uniformity of method and to ensure co-ordination, the members of any local historical society, acting as a group or even singly, may build up a valuable collection of field-names. Such work, pursued on systematic lines, would be a real contribution to scholarship, and is already in progress in one or two areas. The following notes attempt to illustrate how the study of field-names may contribute to historical knowledge. They do no more than outline the possibilities and they are confessedly written in the hope that more non-professional Societies will add the formation of a field-name collection to the list of their activities.

In a recent number of ANTIQUITY (1) Prof. V. Gordon Childe discussed Mr Donald I McCown's study of the Iranian prehistoric sequence published last year by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (2), and in his article raised the question of the dating of the Hissar settlements, for which McCown argues a higher antiquity than that hitherto assigned. The dating of such a site must necessarily depend ultimately on correlations made with the centres of civilization to the southwest, but I hope to show that synchronisms and parallels may usefully be made from the opposite direction, and from that viewpoint in which the Middle East has to be studied as geographically the Middle West.

Apart from the Harappa Culture of the Indus Valley and the Punjab, with its famous brick-built cities, its undeciphered script and its individual glyptic art, the prehistory of western India and the Iranian borderlands has been an uncomfortable enigma to the majority of archaeologists owing to the combined causes of insufficient excavation, inadequate publication, and the inaccessibility of the actual finds to the western world, concentrated as they are in local site-museums or in the Central Asian Museum in New Delhi (3). The accident of war has enabled me to study most of this material at first hand, and in the notes which follow certain points bearing on McCown's thesis and Childe's commentary are given, with the arguments, especially those concerned with stylistic considerations, necessarily in an abbreviated form. Full publication of the evidence for the Indian sequence, and a detailed examination of the relations between prehistoric India and the lands to the west must await the end of the war.

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.

One of the many notable results of the Maiden Castle excavations was the formulation of the ‘Sling-stone theory’ to account for the building of multiple ramparts round Early Iron Age camps. The excavations revealed that the Iron Age A2 camp, at first on the eastern knoll only, but later extended to include the whole hill, was surrounded by a single rampart, and that this, at some period in the 1st century B.C., was suddenly reinforced and encircled by two outer ramparts, thus producing the massive defence works to be seen today. The nature of the construction of the new defences led the excavators to the conclusion that they were the work of a ‘foreign dynasty’ of, invaders of the fort, and not of the A2 inhabitants. It was found, however, that this ‘sudden structural change’ was not associated with a similar sudden cultural change, as might have been expected. There was a change, represented by the introduction of the first traces of Iron Age B pottery, but this was slight at first and only gained in importance with the passage of time. The A2 pottery remained but became more and more influenced by the B forms until the latter gradually became ‘dominant and characteristic’.

In a previous paper (1) an attempt was made to describe the inter-relations of man and bear in Europe from early times to the present day. In many ways the influence of the wolf has been more important than that of the bear on the habits and thoughts of European man. Occasionally it has figured in a favourable light, as in the case of the she-wolf credited with suckling the twin founders of the City on Seven Hills (though even here the double meaning of lupa—applied in a transferative sense to ladies whose character would not bear close investigation—has led some authors to a conjecture which it might not have been politic to mention to any patriotic inhabitant of the grandeur that was Rome). But in general, whether in Italy or elsewhere, no animal has been so hated and feared. Among the ancient Greeks in the south—whose Lyceum at Athens and sanctuary of Apollo Lukeios at Sicyon may have originated in efforts to propitiate the wolves-as among the Letts of the north who, perhaps as late as the 17th century, sacrificed a goat each December to the wolves so that their other livestock might be spared(2) ; from Scotland where priests offered the prayer, quoted by Fittis (3) from the old Litany of Dunkeld, for deliverance ‘from robbers and caterans, from wolves and all wild beasts’, to Russia where peasants pronounced a spell on St. George's Day with the recurring plea, ‘God grant the wolf may not take our cattle‘ (4); the wolf was the great destroyer, the despoiler of flocks and herds and man's chief enemy in the animal world.

Les étonnantesm trouvailles retirées par la mission russe de Tsalka (direction B. A. Kuftin) des grands tertres funéraires ou kourganes de la vallée supérieure de la Khram dans la province de Trialeti, Géorgie centrale, à l'Ouest de Tiflis (1), ont causé une sensation dans le monde des archéologues (2). Comme, à l'occasion d'une étude d'ensemble sur la chronologie du Bronze au Caucase (3), nous venons d'étudier ces nouvelles trouvailles, il nous paraît utile de publier ici nos conclusions relatives à la date qu‘;il convient d'attribuer au kourganes de Trialeti. La question, en effet, intéresse au plus haut point l'archéologie du Caucase.

Disons tout de suite que Mr. Kuftin considère l'époque de la quatrième tombe à fosse de Mycènes et celle de Troie vi comme le terminus post quem des plus récentes des kourganes qu'il classe à la fin du Bronze Moyen. Il ne croit pas devoir envisager pour eux une date postérieure aux xvue siècle avant notre ère, tandis que nous serions en faveur d'une attribution de l'ensemble de ces kourganes aux xvie-xve s., c'est-à-dire au début du Bronze Récent.

In his two articles on querns (1) Dr Cecil Curwen has given us a really epoch-making contribution to prehistory and history. Not only has he provided the prehistorian with a new instrument for the establishment of chronology, but he has drawn the attention of excavators to a revolutionary but curiously neglected advance in technology. For the rotary mill is the first major application of rotary motion since the invention of the potter's wheel and the lathe in the remote Oriental Copper Age; it led on directly to the invention of geared machinery and the water-wheel and so to the first employment of inanimate motive power apart from the harnessing of the winds to the sail. Though this invention took place in the full light of history, the sole evidence for its origin, apart from a single reference in a writer so late as Pliny (2), is purely archaeological. Unfortunately it is still rather thin; excavators of classical and barbarian sites have generally been too preoccupied with statuary and art-objects on the one hand, with types accepted as chronologically significant on the other, to provide the historian of science with the data he craves. Truhelka for instance, generally so scrupulous in the full publication of all his finds, does not illustrate nor even describe a single quern from Dolja Dolina in Bosnia where he found plenty (3).

The immediate environs of Silchester consist of fields, which are either now under plough or else have been arable for many years in the recent past. Consequently there are few, if any, traces there of the Roman roads which led from the various gates to Dorchester, Speen and Cirencester, Sarum, Winchester, and London. A mile or more to the north and northwest of the Roman town, however, there is a belt of land, which is largely heathland except where trees have been planted. Here there are clear indications of the line of two Roman roads, one from the west gate, west-northwest to Speen and Cirencester, the other from the north gate to Dorchester (Oxon.)

The road to Speen (FIG. I) was formerly thought to follow closely the modern road along the northern side of Silchester Common and thence to run along the straight county boundary between Berkshire and Hampshire. In recent years, however, Mr O. G. S. Crawford has shown that the road, instead of following this traditional line, ran west-northwestward to cross the river Kennet near Brimpton Mill. It is traceable as a raised camber or a deep hollow way from Catthaw Lands Copse, about half-a-mile from the west gate of Silchester, to the western side of Hungry Hill. Further west, in Decoy Plantation, and again beyond the road from Padworth Common, i.e. in Keyser's Plantation, it is clearly seen as a broad cambered way (o.s. 641-1. Berkshire XLIV, SE, Hampshire IV, SE). Beyond this point the present writer has not followed it, but Mr Crawford has noted its continuation.

In a well-known passage Plutarch (quoting Dikairchos) tells us that when Theseus landed in Delos with Ariadne, daughter of Nlinos, on his return from Crete, he and his young companions danced a dance which was called ‘The Crane’. This dance, as I hope to show, was an integral part of a cultural pattern of sacrificial and funerary ritual which was widespread throughout Europe and Asia and extended in modified form at least as far as Malekula in the New Hebrides. Unquestionably it was associated with the Labyrinth. Its winding figures represented the hero's wanderings in the Labyrinth on Crete.

The alphabet is the most highly developed, the most convenient and adaptable form of writing. It consists of a number of purely conventional signs or symbols called letters, each one denoting a single sound, at least theoretically. Alphabetic writing is now universally adopted by civilized peoples; its use is acquired in childhood with ease–it is obviously much easier to learn 22, 24 or 26 signs than, for example, 45,000, or 10,000, or even 3000 Chinese symbols. The alphabet may also be passed from one language to another without great difficulty. It is no longer an exclusive prerogative of the priestly or other privileged classes, as ancient ideographic scripts were. Education has become largely a matter of reading and writing and is possible for all.

Many attempts have been made to elucidate the problems created by a critical examination of the obscure constructional methods employed by the Ancient Egyptians when building sailing craft for use on the Nile and, alternatively, at sea. None has proved entierly satisfactoy. Two reasons are chiefly responsible; the first is lack of adequate knowledge on the part of most writers of the mechanical principles governing ship designing at the present day; the other is a similar lack of any wide and intimate acquaintance with the designs followed and methods employed by peoples who retain primitive features in the construction of their sailing craft, particularly on the Nile in its upper reaches beyond the confines of Egypt. That it has been my good fortune to have had opportunities to study at first-hand the construction of sailing craft in every important quarter of the world, and, in especial, that of those in use on all sections of the Nile from its mouths to its source in Uganda, is my excuse for the present attempt to explain away some of the difficulties that have troubled or misled so many previous writers on this subject.

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 article by Mr J. N. L. Myres in Antiquity (December 1942), discussing the earlier articles by Mr K. D. M. Dauncey (March 1942), and by Mr Dayrell Reed (June 1942), has revived, among other matters, the vexed problem whether the Hengist and Vortigern story is true, and whether the earliest settlement of Saxon invaders in this country was in Kent or elsewhere.

Mr Dauncey claimed that the evidence from the cremation cemeteries of Norfolk and Lincolnshire indicated a primary military settlement in those areas. Mr Dayrell Reed, while rejecting the specific conclusions of Mr Dauncey, proceeded to assert, largely on the strength of citations from medieval writers, that the cremation cemeteries in question were evidence that Hengist's mercenary army was established by Vortigern in that region to fight against the Picts shortly after the year A.D. 446.

From 29 August to 5 September 1942, some four hundred and fifty persons, members of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and of the Classical Association and their friends, met in conference in Oxford to hear lectures, papers and discussions and to study special exhibitions of classical MSS, rare printed books and photographs and the cream of the Evans bequest of ancient coins. No one could doubt the motive which had brought them there, as they flocked day after day to the Sheldonian Theatre, the Divinity School, Christ Church Chapter House and other University lecture-halls to partake hungrily of the choice and varied fare spread before them. This was no mere gathering of professionals, but a congress of cultivated men and women of many walks in life and of all ages, bound together by devotion to our common heritage and all enjoying something of the very best from scholars of British and other nationalities, each a specialist in his own part of that all-embracing field of humane letters, art and thought which is the Classics. The dynamic, as opposed to static, character of classical studies was stamped upon all the lectures.