WE are often far too ready to apply to Egyptian art the same standards which we use in dealing with Greek, Roman, medieval and modern works. Thus, for example, we are apt to speak of Egyptian ‘masters’ or ‘master-hands’, expressions which constantly occur in connexion with Greek sculpture or Renaissance painting; or we assume that the identity of an Egyptian portrait can be established just as if it were a question of a definite Renaissance personality. Now one of the chief characteristics of Egyptian art is its impersonality. The Egyptians had no conception of a work of art produced, so to speak, from pietas, to perpetuate the features of some dear departed, or such as it would be pleasant to possess from sheer delight in artistry; in particular, the artistic contemplation and enjoyment of a work of art as we understand it could scarcely have been understood by an Egyptian.

There has been for a good many years an uneasy sense that all was not well with the theory of the Italian terremare as propounded by the original explorers. Writers of general works have continued to accept and to pass it on, in perfectly good faith, as if it were a coin of full value, worth the same now that it was thirty years ago. But those who had the best opportunities of knowing were aware that there had been a very serious depreciation. It was strongly suspected that, like the dollar, it had sunk to at least 59 per cent of its nominal value; but there seemed to be no one who was at once willing and able to state the exact degree of devaluation. Pigorini’s staunchest followers, of whom the last survivor died a few years ago, began to admit that there was a considerable percentage of loss; while more impartial outsiders wondered whether the terremare coin had not become totally valueless.

In the district around the valley of the West Webburn stream which cuts north-south through eastern Dartmoor, Grimspound seems to attract most attention. I have found no reference to the old field boundaries and terraces which lie in this district, mostly within the western part of the parish of Manaton. This article deals with fields within, or adjacent to, the Manaton parish boundary, but there are also sets of terraces which I have observed, but not yet explored, mainly to the east of the Widecombe-Grimspound road, opposite Blackaton Manor. These terraces appear to be very similar to those described here, and as they are outside Manaton parish the connexion between the terminations of some sets of terraces and the parish boundary which, from the plan, appears to be significant, must not be emphasized.

The authors respond to the recent debate piece in Antiquity by González-Ruibal et al., which they claim misrepresents public archaeology by ignoring the dominant practice of cultural resource management (CRM).

Ghirza is the site of a Roman frontier settlement in the pre-desert zone of Tripolitania in North Africa, 5 miles south-west of the confluence of the Wadi Ghirza and the Wadi Zemzem, 80 miles from the coast of the Gulf of Sidra and 150 miles (in a straight line) south-east of Tripoli. It is best known for its two groups of monumental tombs decorated with rough sculptured reliefs showing the life of the inhabitants; but it is also notable for other antiquities, and especially for its ‘town’ of fortified farmhouses, clustered together on the edge of the wadi.

In an article in the Observer for 3 July, and again in the Listener for 27 October, 1960, Professor L. R. Palmer argues that the Linear B inscribed clay tablets found at Knossos date not from the end of the I 5th century B.C. but from a time some two hundred years or so later. These tablets according to the excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, belonged to the age of what he called the ‘Last Palace’, destroyed about 1400 B.C. But after the destruction of the ‘Last Palace’ the site was not abandoned ; it was reoccupied and inhabited for another hundred years or so. Evans thought that this re-occupation was due to ‘squatters’ who had made dwellings for themselves among the ruins of the old palace. But the character of what Evans found dating from this ‘Re-occupation period’ (as he called it) fits better in some ways with the idea of a restored palace than with that of an occupation by ‘squatters’. Evans himself was not unaware of this, and once at least hinted at the possibility of a palatial reoccupation, although he subsequently veered away from the idea. In the domestic quarter of the palace he noted ‘signs of attempts at restoration on a large scale (i.e. after the destruction of the “Last Palace”) which make it probable that dynasts of the old stock still maintained a diminished state on the palace site.’ It is therefore possible that Professor Palmer is right in believing that there was another palace on the site of the earlier Palaces at Knossos during the ‘Re-occupation period’ of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. But of this latest palace, if palace it was, owing to erosion and stone-plundering through the centuries, comparatively little had survived when Evans began to excavate. It was in any case almost certainly poor and mean compared with the other great palaces which had preceded it on the site. This was indeed a time, the 14th and 13th centuries B.C., of general impoverishment and decline throughout the civilized world including Egypt and the Near East.