It is probably no exaggeration to say that for not a few archaeologists the examination of skeletal remains means the measurement of the cranium with the object I of establishing ‘ race ’. Indeed there may still be some who believe (or who have been led to believe) that the physical anthropologist can with confidence diagnose the ‘ race ’ or even ‘ subrace ’ of a single skull. What is perhaps worse is the idea that race allocation represents the entire potential biological interest of skeletal material or the sole activity of the physical anthropologist. These views are happily not so prevalent as they were not long since. There is a better appreciation of the scope of physical anthropology and of its greater concern with the general biology of human communities, their genetics and ecology-an approach which is necessary if the maximum biological information bearing on the life of extinct groups is to be extracted from the refractory material offered by skeletal remains. Human bones and teeth often give some insight into the conditions of life affecting the community as well as (sometimes) an indication of the origin and affinities of the group. For the skeleton is susceptible to modification both by the action of environmental agencies and by genetic factors. It is known, for example, that identical twins reared in different environments vary more in such ‘ classical ’ measurements as head length, head breadth and cephalic index, than do twins brought up in the same environment (Newman, 1940). The effect of change of environment in altering the head and body shape of descendants of immigrants has been demonstrated also by Shapiro (1939) and Lasker (1946) much more convincingly than was done in Franz Boas’ pioneer investigation which was subsequently criticised by Morant and Samson (1926). But much more work is clearly necessary before a genetic analysis of such polygenic characters as bone size and shape becomes available and we may hope that the current interest in studies of growth and physique in the living will provide the necessary information.

Serious and sustained archaeological broadcasting began only after the end of the 1939-45 War. It was the result of the general purpose of the S Third Programme and the particular endeavour of the West Region in the persons of Frank Gillard, Head of Programmes at Bristol, and Gilbert Phelps, one of the talks producers there. There had of course been archaeological broadcasts in the pre-war years, and Sir Leonard Woolley’s best-selling Digging up the Past began as a series of talks ; but it was not until The Archaeologist was created by the West Region, and taken over, first by the Third Programme—it was actually the first series of talks to appear on that programme—and then by the Home Service, that archaeology began to have a recognised and acceptable place in sound broadcasting. There have been plenty of archaeological broadcasts outside this series, and so there should be ; but it was the existence of a regular series providing for the discussion of current discoveries, new techniques and new ideas and demanding thought on the part of producers and editors that, to my mind, really put archaeological broadcasting on the B.B.C. map.

When I wrote a short history of archaeological and other air-photography in 1928 the earliest examples quoted were those taken by Major Elsdale between 1880 and 1887 ; this information was given me by the late Colonel Sir Charles Arden-Close, himself a pioneer of the craft. Since then two earlier instances have come to light. The Science Museum, South Kensington, has exhibited an air-photograph of Boston, Mass., taken in 1877 ; but unfortunately it has no history. In a book published in 1930 there is reproduced a photograph taken above Paris from a captive balloon, taken by that photographic genius who called himself Nadar. Through the good offices of Professor Vaufrey, editor of L’AnthropoZogie, prints were obtained from the Service Photographique des Monuments Historiques, and two combined are here reproduced on PLATE III. They look towards the Arc de Triomphe, and have on the left the Avenue du Bois de Bouiogne (Avenue Foch) and on the right that of Victor Hugo : note that these splendid thoroughfares, then only a decade old, were still only half built-up (the left hand part of the photograph is defective). Photography itself was not much older, Fox Talbot’s first efforts having been made from 1842 onwards.

In the autumn of 1953, with the support of the Archaeological Society of Athens, work I was continued in the LM II cemetery at Katsaba east of Heracleion. Test-trenches led to the finding of four tombs (T, ∆, E, Z) cut in the rock close to the other two (A, B), which in 1951 produced the alabaster amphora of Thutmose III. One of the new tombs had been robbed, but the other three yielded many finds. Of outstanding significance was Tomb Z ; it contained three bodies in wooden coffins, and a group of vases (PLATE VII), of which the most important were a bridge-spouted jug with patterns of birds and fish, a beaked jug with papyrus-flowers, and a three-handled amphora of the Palace Style with representations of the boars’-tusk helmet (PLATE VIII). A preliminary report of the excavation is given in the ‘’ 1953. The representations of the helmet are important enough to become the subject of a separate article in ANTIQUITY.

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.