In the sixth millennium the more open soils of France were peopled by Tardenoisian hunters and gatherers. In the north there were groups along the coasts, particularly in Picardy and Brittany, and inland on the sandy soils of the Plain of Flanders and the Ile de France and on the granitic soils of the Armorican massif. Such groups continued to exist alongside farming groups until well into the third millennium.

Immediately to the north of Australia, the island of New Guinea forms the largest single land mass in the cultural area known as Melanesia (FIG. I). Politically the island is divided; to the west is the Indonesian state of West Irian, to the east is the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, at present administered by the Australian Government. While such political boundaries are disregarded as a matter of course in attempting to reconstruct the prehistory of the area, the development of archaeological research reflects, and has been impeded by, this artificial division.

For some years it has been obvious that the new tree-ring-calibrated radiocarbon dates would necessitate a drastic revision in conventional time scales and in the whole structure of cultural relationships developed for the European Mesolithic and Neolithic. The full assessment of the new pattern, however, has to await the time when relative archaeological sequences, based on stratigraphy and supposed cross-datings, become supplemented with or replaced by approximately absolute chronologies covering each of the major cultural provinces of Europe.

The Pietroasa treasure is a late fourth-century hoard of jewellery and gold plate; it is normally associated with the Visigoths, and is thought to have been buried at the time of the advance of the Huns into Europe. The surviving pieces of the treasure were shown in the splendid exhibition of ‘Treasures from Romania’ in the British Museum last year; the objects were briefly described in the exhibition catalogue and many were illustrated, but there were no details of the finding or significance of the hoard, and the visitor was left to speculate on the very battered state of many of the pieces. In fact, when found, the treasure comprised 22 pieces and, by all accounts, all were in excellent condition; the poor state of the twelve survivors is due to an unhappy chain of events.

It would be presumption for a non-medical man to comment upon the anatomical findings of Professor Harrison and Dr Abdalla until the facts and the inferences that can be drawn from them have been fully published. This article, then, cannot claim to be more than a commentary and speculation on those facts that are at present available.

Zambujal is c. 40 km. NNW of Lisbon, 11.5 km. from the Atlantic coast. A farmhouse (casal) of this name is situated on a steep inland promontory above the Ribeira de Pedrulhos. This stream flows into the Rio Sizandro near its mouth. The location of the settlement is one of easy access from the coast; at the same time it is far enough from it to be safe from surprise attacks from that direction. When approached from the coast or along the valley, the casal is not immediately visible. Its position on the mountain ridge was presumably advantageous for the fortified settlement too. From the site itself one has an excellent view of the region, including the approach routes and a strip of the coast.

Anyone who tries for long to penetrate the fascinating world of the prehistoric Aegean becomes aware very quickly of a certain malaise in the works of modern scholars. It is now a century since Schliemann first dug at Troy, and the mass of archaeological evidence continues to increase at an almost alarming rate. I say ‘alarming’ because the pace of excavation threatens to outrun our ability to assimilate and control the evidence.

In April and June 1972 Sotheby’s auctioned part of the most valuable antique treasure yet recovered from an historic shipwreck around the British Isles, and yet despite extensive publicity in the months before, in which the value of that part of the treasure was estimated at £ 1OO,OOO, not one museum approached the divers to discover what they had found. Had this been done the museum would have discovered, amongst many other things, fragments of the oldest known octant, predecessor of the sextant, and the first accurate navigation instrument, as well as one or two previously unrecorded silver coins.