No book quite like this has ever been written. That is partly because the scientific discoveries upon which it is based are themselves so new that some of them are still unpublished (the earliest pictograms, for instance). But even when the knowledge is less new it is, for the most part, the special preserve of a few students, of great powers but limited range and outlook. Professor Childe can meet them on their own ground, for he has studied the archaeology of the Near East and India (as well as of Europe) at first hand. Four of the nine chapters in this book ‘are based on first-hand study of the original objects, and reports’ (p. vii); and, indeed, so are the relevant parts of the first three—the last two being of a general nature. There is probably no man living with better qualifications for such a theme as the Making of Man; and that holds true, whether one agrees (as the reviewer does) with Professor Childe's thesis, or not. Most of it, of course, is not opinion but fact.

When Mr P. P. Griffiths of Pen-y-wyrlod Farm, Talgarth, Breconshire rang the National Museum of Wales in June 1972 to announce the discovery of human remains in a stony mound on his farm, not previously recorded as an antiquity, I assumed that this must be one of the not uncommon new discoveries of Early Bronze Age round cairns. To my consternation, the following day, I was shown, in a field close to Pen-y-wyrlod (SO 151316) a long cairn far more substantial then any other previously recorded member of the Cotswold-Severn group in the Black Mountains area: it was fully 60 m. long, 25 m. wide at the widest part, and about 3 m. high—but, alas, already severely damaged by the growth of a small quarry which the farmer had been developing, in all innocence, for several years past, as a source of rubble for his yards and gateways. After all, as the farmer pointed out, the site is not recorded as an ancient monument on any map and he had concluded, as the Ordnance Survey must also have done, that it was a natural feature.

Looking back over a concern with archaeology which has lasted for half a century I am grateful to have been present through a crucial period in its development.

There were few advantages in my earliest days. On my father’s side I come from a line of farmers, land appraisers, bailiffs and the like which I can trace back in some detail for nearly three hundred years, living for the most part in Northwest Essex; on my mother’s side my ancestors were North Wessex peasants and inn-keepers, with a probable admixture of Welsh cattle-drover blood at the end of the eighteenth century. Wantage and Abingdon were their local centres. All with the exception of one or two backsliders were strict Evangelicals, often wavering on the verge of Dissent, and none ever aspired to any higher standard of education than one who entered the Congregational ministry in 1827. Any known interest in learning or antiquity showed itself more among the Wessex peasants than the clod-hoppers of Essex. My maternal grandfather, who was a native of the Vale of White Horse, was personally known to me and was interested in the many relics of the past observable about him, an intelligent man but with little formal instruction.

The excavation of the Clickhimin site in the Shetland Islands by the Ministry of Public Building and Works revealed the arrangement of living quarters inside a small stonebuilt fort occupied between the 4th and 1st centuries BC [I]. With the exception of a large communal stonebuilt hut in the centre of the enclosure, the inhabitants dwelt in a series of half-timbered storeyed ranges attached to the inner face of the fort wall (FIG. I). The pent-roofs of these ranges were supported by a dwarf, or casement, wall built on the wall walk, and access between the rooms at first-floor level and the walk was obtained through a series of doorways. Two stonebuilt duns in the Western Isles, Dun Ringill and Dun Grugaig, still retain the jambs of such doorways and at Clickhimin a similar door was preserved in the blockhouse guarding the fort entrance though here it led to a passage which gave access to a stair to the parapet walk at second-floor level [2].

Hetty Pegler's Tump or the Uley Barrow in Gloucestershire, some five miles south-west of Stroud, has been well known since it was first dug by Dr Fry in 1821 and then, in 1854, by Dr Thurnam and Professor Freeman [I]. The plan published by Thurnam has often been reproduced, and is shown here again for ease of reference (FIG. I). It is on such a small scale that the details of the monument are obscured, but until now it was the only plan available. Now, due to the courteous co-operation of Miss Olive Lloyd-Baker of Hardwick Court, Gloucester, it is possible to publish a plan (FIG. 2) and a view (FIG. 3) of the monument made in 1821 by J. T. Lloyd-Baker and his account of what went on at the time.

The Horn of Ulph is one of the principal treasures of York Minster. It is exhibited in the Chapter House, and is well-known to visitors; but in spite of its fame this celebrated antiquity cannot be studied quickly and conveniently away from the Minster,l and the Dean of York has therefore rendered an important service to scholars by allowing Mr C. J. P. Cave to take the fine photographs reproduced here (PLATES I-V).

The horn is one of the so-called ‘oliphants’, i.e. horns made from tusks of elephant-ivory, and it is a particularly noble example, being both large and handsome, with a maximum length of 2 feet 4 inches and a mouth 5 inches in diameter. The ivory has coloured to a warm orange brown with rich cloudings and gradations in tone, the sunken fields in the carved zones having darkened almost to black; but though it is thus venerable in appearance, the horn is excellently preserved, and the unimpaired lustrous gIeam of the figures in relief and of the unornamented surface does much to enhance the mellow beauty of this magnificent piece. The shaft is faceted on the top and bottom with a gentle ribbing, as soft as the ‘bone’ of a good Malacca cane; but the flanks are rounded, and the section near the mouth is a natural oval. The metal fittings are silver-work of the 17th century, and consist of a plain rim and two inscribed bands to which are fastened the ends of the chain. The Latin inscription on the mounts states that the horn, having been given [to the Minster] by Ulph, a chieftain of western Deira, with all his lands, was subsequently lost or stolen, and afterwards restored and re-mounted by Henry Lord Fairfax in 1675.

The management of earthwork sites and their protection from erosion is a constant problem. Here Kevin Jones assesses methods and materials used on archaeological sites in Britain. It is essential to find compatible, economic land uses for most earthworks but this use should not lead to diminished expectations of good protection and historic interpretation.

'The Greatest Museum of Prehistoric Art in the whole World'. Such was the description Henri Lhote gave to the rock paintings of the Tassili-n- Ajjer , the massif (a designated World Heritage Site) that lies to the northeast of Ahaggar in the Algerian Central Sahara. His expedition spent 16 months in the Tassili in 1956-7 making 'discovery after discovery' and copying 'hundreds upon hundreds of painted walls'. Lhote's work is now recognized for its denigration of almost all and sundry. He likened the local people, the Tuareg, who made many of his 'discoveries', to wolves and living by the laws of the jungle. Significantly, he made no reference in his 'discovery claims' to Yolande Tschudi, the Swiss ethnologist, whose work preceded his own. Worse still, he undertook what might be regarded today as the systematic vandalism of the sites, not only by liberally washing the paintings to restore their colour, but by collecting and removing copious quantities of material artefacts from the area.

The Sangro Valley Project was established in 1994 by John Lloyd, Neil Christie and Amalia Faustoferri. Its aim was to study anthropogenic change in society, economy and settlement between the Bronze Age and the Middle Ages, within the context of a Mediterranean river valley system (see Lloyd et al. 1997; Lloyd & Faustoferri 1998). Part of this research has integrated field survey between the Sangro river and Monte Pallano with excavations conducted by the Soprintendenza on the mountain itself. Monte Pallano is best known for its fine megalithic walls (Oakely 1995: 84-7), marking a putative oppidum site. Recent Italian excavations [with Anglo-American support] have aimed at clarifying the situation at a substantial public buildinghilla complex on the mountain. This work has been fruitful in its initial phases; much, however, remains to be done.

Between 1989 and 1994, north coast fishermen Nelson Torna and Pedro Guerra salvaged approximately 195 well-preserved wooden artefacts, mostly of lignum vitcre, from recently disturbed marine sediments near their village of Punta Alegre, in Ciego de Avila, Cuba. They had collected the artefacts from a shallow lagoon, and from the shoreline near their village at a place known as Los Buchillones. The wooden artefacts include pins, eyed needles, hooks, fragments of dishes, handles for axes (including two that retained the stone tools), duhos or stools that served as badges of rank in Taino society, and zemis or male deity figures. In 1994, on an official Royal Ontario Museum visit to Cuba, then curator David Pendergast was shown these artefacts, and discussions began between Pendergast and Cuban archaeologists Dr Jorge Calvera and Lic. Juan Jardines concerning the possibility of launching an investigation of the contexts from which the artifacts had come. The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) thereby established a jointly directed and jointly funded project with the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia, y Medio Ambiente (CITMA) of the government of Cuba, and investigations began in 1997

Two hundred and ten years ago ‘ old Stukeley ’, the Archdruid, (then 36 years of age) made a famous discovery on a heath near London—nothing less than one of Julius Caesar’s camps. At least Stukeley liked to think it such, and to embroider his treasure with many fanciful imaginings. ‘Here he received the ambassadors of the Trinobantes, desiring their prince Mandubrace to be restored. . . . Another day came in ambassadors from the Cenimani, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and Cassi’. True to his laudable custom, he made a rough plan of the ’camp‘, which shows that it was, according to his own measurements, 100 by 80 paces, and contained within it another similar enclosure. There was also an irregular eastern annex, 100 paces by 130, designed for the accommodation of the second lot of ambassadors !

Few monuments are more interesting to the general observer than the hill-figures carved on the chalk downs of Southern England. The publication of Sir Flinders Petrie's monograph has led us to revisit one of those he describes; and the resulting observations are here set down for what they are worth.