The most original and useful contributions that I may have made to prehistory are certainly not novel data rescued by brilliant excavation from the soil or by patient research from dusty museum cases, nor yet well founded chronological schemes nor freshly defined cultures, but rather interpretative concepts and methods of explanation. So it is the genesis and development of these to which this autobiographical note is devoted.

Like Gustav Kossinna I came to prehistory from comparative philology; I began the study of European archaeology in the hope of finding the cradle of the Indo-Europeans and of identifying their primitive culture. Reading my Homer and my Veda with the guidance of Schrader and Jevons, Zimmer and Wilamowitz-Moellendorf I was thrilled by the discoveries of Evans in Prehellenic Crete and of Wace and Thompson in Prehistoric Thessaly. Indeed I hoped to find archaeological links between the latter area and some tract north of the Balkans whence similar links might lead also to Iran and India.

A YEAR before the first number of ANTIQUITY appeared, its founder reviewed a new publication for the Antiquaries Journal. ‘This book,’ he began, ‘is the most important of its kind that has hitherto been published…. Never before has the whole field of European origins been surveyed by a specialist who can also generalize, who writes clearly and intelligibly, and who is apparently familiar with all European languages. Its publication brings us appreciably nearer to the ultimate goal of our study.’

Crawford saw that Gordon Childe’s The Dawn of European Civilization, in its first edition of 1925, marked the beginning of a new era in archaeological studies in this country. I suspect that he was one of the very few British prehistorians at that time who realized the fact and appreciated the implications. More than thirty years later a revised sixth edition has been published, appearing almost simultaneously with the tragic news of the author’s death in his native Australia. For a full generation The Dawn, as we have all affectionately called it, has been with us, the indispensable reference-book for student, teacher and interested layman, our Ariadne-clue in the labyrinth of Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age Europe.

The peloponnesus came so near to being a true island (Island of Pelops) that the neck of land (FIG. I) which joins it to the northern half of the Greek peninsula is less than five miles wide. This became a natural crossroads of the Greek world. Several routes converging on this landbridge connected the Peloponnesus with the rest of Greece. Communications by sea between the east and the west, through the Saronic and the Corinthian Gulfs, were interrupted by the Isthmus, and attempts were made early to pierce or overleap the barrier. The southern sea-lane encircling the Peloponnesus was much longer, and weather conditions made the journey hazardous. For this reason cargoes were unloaded at the two harbours, Kenkreai on the Saronic and Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf, and carried by land across the Isthmus. Naval vessels, and perhaps the empty freight carriers, were transported over a paved roadway called Diolkos. The western end of this portage has long been recognized on the Peloponnesian side of the Corinth Canal, and recently longer stretches of pavement have been laid bare on both sides of the Canal. The Diolkos here did not run straight but ascended the steep slope in great sweeping curves (FIG. I and PLATE IX (c) ). The pavement has a width of 3-50-5 m. and is made with large poros blocks well fitted together. Two deep ruts, 1-50 m. apart, show that the ships were hauled on wheeled cradles, not on rollers, as was formerly assumed. The excavation, conducted by the Archaeological Service of the Greek Government, is still in progress, and the exact course across the Isthmus will not be known before this work is completed.