The Scottish area is particularly rich in prehistoric remains, in some measure due to the fact that being a hilly and mountainous country large tracts of the surface have never been torn by the plough, nor suffered from the iconoclastic hand of the improver. Save for the effects of drainage, and some change in the character of vegetation arising from alteration of climate, much of the moorland country must have changed little in aspect since a remote past.

Among the various prehistoric structures in Scotland none is more remarkable than the broch. It does not occur out of Scotland, and neither its development nor period of occupation are generally understood.

The publication of Dr Daniel's last essay on the typology of British chamber tombs seems to make it desirable to offer such a note as present circumstances allow on the writer's excavations in the Hebrides, subsequent to the publication of his papers on the Rudh' an Dunain tomb in Skye and the Clettraval tomb in North Uist. For to Dr Daniel the Hebrides are something of a mystery, and a good deal of an embarrassment, lying as they do between the Clyde group of tombs and the groups of Caithness and the Orkneys, and yet not playing the part that could be desired in any line of typo-logical development. To Dr Daniel the area is one of mixed culture but the explanation, though it may be true, is a little like a confession of uncertainty—a little like the late M. Reinach's ultimate explanation of Glozel. Fresh facts would, it is felt, be welcome.

What links the action of making a pot, an action in the world as live human beings experience it, to the pot, as the archaeologist observes it in a mass of old, static fragments? And what links the classifications by which the archaeologist arranges those fragments to the pot's ordered place in the world of its maker?

The twin towers of Reculver, a far-seen monument on the northeast coast of Kent 3½ miles east of Herne Bay (PLATE I), have long been recognized as a sea-mark of great antiquity. They were for many years maintained solely for the benefit of mariners using the shoal-beset inshore channels on the southern side of the Thames Estuary, but with the general disuse of these channels during the last decade such a guide-mark is no longer required.

Prehistorians and early historic archaeologists often puzzle over seemingly random distributions of artefacts remote from settlements. Here is at least one possible explanation. Using ethnographic and archaeological evidence the author reveals how an early historic people of central Russia used trees in their religion, and describes some of the meanings that lay behind their rituals.

In the Geographical journal for August 1940 I published a brief summary of the ‘Evidence for Ancient Mining’, one illustration for which was taken from a Japanese colour-print by Hiroshigi of the interior of a gold mine. As a result of reading this article, Dr H. J. Osborne White, a well-known geologist, sent me the scroll which forms the subject of the present paper. It is about 22 feet long and I foot broad and illustrates, in a series of attractively coloured drawings, every process from the extraction of gold-ore in the mine on Sado Island to the minting of refined gold. Mr Matsumoto of the Japanese Embassy kindly examined the scroll and was able to translate most of the captions to the pictures and other writings. Though the archaic script sometimes puzzled him, the fact that his family had been connected with mining for several generations was a compensating advantage.

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the Haram al-Sharif, is one of the most iconic archaeological sites in the world. The author relates its functions to that of other local prehistoric high places, and in tracing its history up to the present day draws a distinction between state-sponsored and popular shrines.

On the continent as in Britain the later phases of the Bronze Age are marked by the spread of large cremation cemeteries generally termed urnfields. One of the several groups of urnfield cultures in Central Europe occupies such a pre-eminent position that it may even claim to be the parent of all the rest. It is known as the Lausitz or Lusatian culture after the area where it is most richly and typically represented—a strip in eastern Saxony and western Silesia.

Here the bodies were cremated in ustrina close to the cemetery, and the ashes, carefully purified from cinders, were enclosed in clay ossuaries or cinerary urns. The ossuary was closed with an inverted dish, but in all early burials a hole was carefully bored in its walls. It is supposed that this aperture was intended to allow the ghost to escape, and hence it has been called a ghost-hole (Seelenloch). The urn, with its cover, was buried in the ground with many accessory vases, presumably containing provisions for the journey into the next world. A barrow might be raised over the tomb, but in all cases the graves form regular cemeteries.