Earlier fieldwork by the University of Manchester (see ANTIQUITY 64:51–8) identified the important early medieval port of Quentovic. This note reports on the final two seasons of work, which clarified the phasing and extent of this major wic settlement, and on the radiocarbon dates from key features.

The demise of the Iceman is archaeology's current long-running detective story, in which the time and mode of death have yet to be agreed. Recent discussion in these pages favoured a ceremonial burial on the mountain, following his death and the conservation of the corpse in the home village. In a new forensic contribution, the author shows that, in addition to his other woes, the Iceman might have been taking medicine in the form of bark. This in turn implies that his final adventure might have taken place at anytime between spring and autumn, leaving the burial hypothesis without constraint.

As a part of the multidisciplinary project entitled ‘Archaeological Investigations into the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene of the Lim Channel, Istria’, archaeological research has been conducted at four sites: Romuald's Cave, Abri Kontija 002, Pećina at Rovinjsko Selo and Lim 001 (Figure 1). There is much debate on issues related to biological and behavioural continuity, to patterns of changes and adaptations during this crucial period, and to external factors (e.g. changes in ecology and climate). For example, a clearer insight is needed into how climatic change affects the ecology of specific regions, including changing sea levels. Additionally, there continues to be debate centring on who produced the earliest (Initial) Upper Palaeolithic industries in Europe. To achieve a more precise insight into long-term diachronic changes and cultural relations around the Adriatic, and to document the presence of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic humans in Istria, we concentrated on a single microregion (the Lim Channel in Istria, Croatia). Here we report work on the two sites that to date have yielded Pleistocene material: Romuald's Cave and Abri Kontija 002.

In these islands we have been tardy in recognizing Folk Culture as an independent science. As the editor of Folkliv, Professor Sigurd Erixon, states in his Foreword: ‘It has long been leading a more or less dependent existence as an ambulating guest of certain related branches of science, which, thanks to the force of circumstances, were consolidated earlier. Generally it has been awarded a certain amount of space in archaeological, historical, artistic, geographical or philological publications. … The ethnologists of present times certainly recall that sponsorship and hospitableness with great gratitude. It is to be regretted however that there are far too many instances of ethnology not having attained such a development nor having become such a factor of education as it would appear entitled to’. This is regrettably true of the British Isles. As far as I am aware, there is no learned journal published here dealing exclusively with the problems of Folk Culture: with one exception, there is no department of Folk Culturein any of our national museums, nor is there a Chair of Folk Culture in any British university.

‘This map’, the Director General informs us in his Foreword, ‘forms the northern portion of the Map of Britain in the Dark Ages, of which the southern portion was published in 1935’. It represents therefore the completion of a task which must have taken nearly a decade to carry out, from its first inception down to publication. This northern sheet is in fact a map of Early Scotland, showing it as it was roughly between the years A.D. 450 and 850; but in this dim historical dawn exact dates cannot as a rule be discerned. A long historical introduction of 26 pages, and 5 diagrams, serve to amplify and elucidate the map itself; and there is of course the usual index of place-names.

The teaching of archaeology in higher education in Greece cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader realms of antiquity, archaeology and the past in modern Greek society and the context of Greek higher education. A growing body of literature has shown that archaeological antiquities have contributed substantially to the generation and perpetuation of a genealogical national myth upon which the modern nation- state of Greece was founded (e.g. Gourgouris 1996; Herzfeld 1982, 1987; Kitromilides 1989; Morris 1994; Skopetea 1988). This ideology of nationalism not only presented the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization for 19th-century Greece, but also presented the inhabitants of Greece as direct descendants of Socrates and Plato. Intellectuals and the emerging middle class merchants imported this western romantic ideology (so popular amongst the European middle-class of the time) into Greece.

The innovative and gregarious Viking scholar and former director of the British Museum contemplates his travels in the changing landscape of early medieval Europe.