There is a large cemetery of barrows near the town of Novocherkassk, and one of the barrows, locally known as Khokhlach, was partly excavated about a hundred years ago. The finds from this Khokhlach excavation are generally known as ‘the Novocherkassk hoard’. In the autumn of 1962 a systematic study was made of the whole cemetery, and in August-September of that year two barrows standing close to each other (to the west of and 2.2 km. from the Khokhlach barrow) were excavated. One of them contained burials of Bronze Age date; the other turned out to be Sarmatian. The Sarmatian barrow is of the most exceptional interest as the finds from it are closely paralleled by the finds of ‘the Novocherkassk hoard’ from the Khokhlach barrow.

This Sarmatian barrow, known locally as the Sadovy Kurgan, was a low mound 2.20 m. in height. The top of the mound had been removed in recent times, and part of the remaining barrow had been ploughed away: the original dimensions of the barrow are therefore unknown. Excavation revealed one burial in a rectangular pit dug into the natural soil, covered with wooden planks which were in turn covered with reeds. This burial had already been robbed in ancient times, but during the original burial ceremony a ritual feast had taken place, and objects from this feast were preserved under the barrow on the original ground level. These included a large cast-bronze cauldron such as are commonly found in Sarmatian barrows, and a wrought-bronze cauldron decorated with an iron rim and ringshaped iron handles stood by the burial. Both cauldrons were covered in soot and clearly the food for the funeral feast had been cooked in them. Also placed around the burial pit were an ornamental bronze vase and a terra-cotta amphora which had once held the wine drunk at the feast. In the heaped-up soil of the barrow was a grey pottery hydria and also some other interesting objects. During the burial rites the barrow had been gradually heaped up, at first as a ring round the tomb, and then over the burial as well. During ail this the fire continued to bum, but when the feast was finished, several golden phalerae and eight silver bowls were placed in the mound. The silver bowls lay bottom upwards one on top of the other, and alongside were piled up the phalerae of gold (decorations for horses’ bridles). All this was covered by a silver louterion set upside down.

The difticulties surrounding the proper excavation and display of poorly preserved skeletal remains are well known to excavators. Where the bone is moist and friable, care is required to avoid touching it until it has dried and hardened. When it is stained as well, so that there is little contrast between bone and soil, then the excavator's task can indeed be difficult. In such cases photographic presentation often shows less than was seen by the excavator since differences just perceptible to the eye are likely to fall well short of the contrast level which can be recorded satisfactorily by the camera. Those sandy soils in which the stain is well displayed are the fortunate exception. In an endeavour to overcome these difficulties ultra-violet radiation has been tried.

The light of the visible spectrum extends from a wavelength of 7,000 Å at the red end to 4,000 Å at the blue end (n. 1). The shorter wavelengths extending to 140 Å form the ultra-violet region, but most of this is lost for present purposes since ordinary optical glass absorbs all radiation below about 3,500 Å. However, phenomena which can be used are found in this band between 3,500 Å and 4,000 Å. Emissions of these wavelengths are not visible to the human eye but some substances possess the property of absorbing such radiation and in turn emitting new radiation at longer wavelengths, including those which are visible. This is the phenomenon known as fluorescence.

One of the battles of the Hundred Ýears’ War was fought in Portugal on the 14th August, 1385, on the so-called ‘Cumeira de Aljubarrota’, about 80 miles north of Lisbon. There, the small army of King D. Joao I, led by Constable D. Nuno Àlvares Pereira, faced the greater forces of D. Juan I of Castile. Under the Portuguese flag, as Professor Peter Russell has shown, about 700 English archers fought, and on the enemy's side were many subjects of the King of France (n. 1). There are different contemporary versions of the battle which have caused a certain perplexity among historians. Froissart's chronicle tells us that D. Nuno Àlvares Pereira's men had fortified the battlefield; this assertion figures in another narrative known as the Cronica del Despensero, and also in the well-known letter written by D. Juan I of Castile, dated the 29th August, 1385. The Castilian Chronicler, Ayala, an eye-witness of the battle, says nothing about it however, and this fact must have prompted another chronicler, Fernão Lopes, who wrote 60 years after the battle, to assert that there was nothing to be said about the defensive system, even giving us to understand that it never existed. This conflict in the evidence had made it impossible to make a thorough investigation of a battle which is fundamentally important to Portuguese history. To overcome this, in February, 1960, the Ministry of War ordered the Commission of Military History to submit the battle to an intensive study and to make an attempt to evaluate the contradictory versions.

The importance of the Greeks in the history of alphabetic writing is paramount. All alphabets used in Europe today stand in direct or indirect relation to the ancient Greek. Several other alphabets—some long out of use—were also of Greek origin. That the Greek alphabet was not an original invention, but was in fact directly adapted from that of the North-west Semitic peoples (including the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, and the ancient Hebrews), is now the opinion of all serious scholars. That the adaptation took place in the first two or three centuries of the 1st millennium B.C. is the increasingly accepted view, though scholarly dispute on the subject, complicated by an almost total lack of positive evidence, remains intense. It is worth adding that no evidence has hitherto been found that writing of any kind was employed in Greece between the time of the Linear B tablets of Pylos (c. 1200 B.c.) and the taking over of the North-Semitic alphabet.

This investigation has been carried out to determine if any useful archaeological information can be obtained from the pathological features to be found in ancient human dentitions. Variations in dental decay, attrition, ante-mortem loss of teeth, and malocclusion have been observed in skulls from the Neolithic to Anglo-Saxon periods. Diet has been shown to be a major factor in the aetiology of dental disease and since diet is also related to social conditions it ought to be possible to derive some information from teeth concerning culture.

An intractable difficulty in this study is that the skeletal remains of the more ancient civilizations are comparatively rare (n. 1). The material that does exist is often unsatisfactory because of fragmentary condition and sometimes inadequate excavation reporting. Data has to be derived from small samples which may give a misleading picture. Another difficulty lies in the definition of pathological features; for example, the term malocclusion allows broad interpretation which has resulted in wide variations in frequencies observed. In this case specialist orthodontists tend to find a much greater incidence for a particular period than less experienced operators (n. 2). Post-mortem changes may also confuse the picture since in some soils erosion occurs which may simulate caries. Archaeological samples are nearly always drawn from widely differing backgrounds so that the size of the sample and the length of the period it represents may vary greatly. Brinch and Moller-Christensen say it is quite unjustifiable to compare results drawn from such samples (n. 3).

It is commonly held in the existing literature that prehistoric peoples were compelled to kill off an abnormally high proportion of their livestock in autumn because of a lack of winter fodder. There is literary evidence for autumn killing in several European localities (n. 1). It is therefore a plausible assumption that earlier cultures are hardly less likely to have been more successful in overcoming this difficulty. This article is concerned to examine whether this assumption is valid.

The inference generally made about autumn killing rests almost entirely on Watson’s report on the Skara Brae bones (n. 2). By the use of Watson’s method such a claim may also be made for the Old Sleaford sheep, and this is shown here. But there are grounds for supposing that such a claim is methodologically unjustified, and we have endeavoured to set out a method by which such claims may be tested.