The excavation here briefly described was carried out at the end of the summer of 1945 and though not yet completed, the results already are of such interest as to make publication of this short report desirable. The work is being conducted by Michael J. O'Kelly, M.A., Curator of the Cork Public Museum, and is being financed by means of a special grant made by the Governing Body of University College, Cork.

The fort lies on the shoulder of a prominent knoll in the range of hills which divides the eastern part of Cork Harbour from a rich agricultural hinterland extending northward to include the valleys of the rivers Bride and Blackwater. Nearby modern towns of importance are Fermoy, 12 miles to the northwest, and Midleton, 9 miles to the south. The latter stands at the head of a narrow estuary which runs northward out of the eastern bight of Cork Harbour and probably marks the point at which seafarers-possibly arriving direct from the continent-disembarked to trade with the established settlers of the district, or to found bridge-heads for subsequent marauding incursions into the rich terrain of the interior. That the latter was a possibility forseen by the early agriculturalists of east Cork is shown by their careful selection of a strategic site. The builders, who were members of a peaceful farming community (as is shown by the presence of agricultural implements on the site), placed their outpost so that it dominated the main pass which gave access to their territory from the south and the sea-the direction from which they believed their enemies were most likely to come.

When Christopher Columbus arrived at La Espanola (the large island called in English Hispaniola, now divided between the modern states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in early December 1492, he encountered a society entirely different from the ones described by Marco Polo for Asia and India. Columbus, sailing through the Bahamas and Cuba, had already discovered indios who went about naked, did not know the wheel nor used any metal tools, practised agriculture and fishing, and had a complex social structure and an elaborated system of religious beliefs. These ‘Indians’ called themselves Tainos, to signify that they were peaceful, although they defended themselves well from their neighbouring enemies, the Caribes of the Lesser Antilles islands (Colon 1961; Las Casas 1967)

The Carpathian Basin and its chronology

The Carpathian Basin (FIGURE 1), irrespective of its peripheral parts, was divided in the Hallstatt period into two major cultural–geographical units, with the river Danube forming the border line. Significant changes occurred in the whole region at the beginning of the 6th century BC. The development of local groups, reaching a climax about the turn of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, was interrupted. In the broader East Alpine region this break is documented by the desertion of the majority of fortified and open settlements, and is marked by the end of burials under barrows and in flat cemeteries (Romsauer in press; Teržan 1990: 120–21). Approximately in the same period objects of Scythian origin come into use in the Great Hungarian Plain, and the Vekerzug group formed with its specific manifestations in material culture, settlement pattern and burial rite. Its traces are distributed practically all over the Plain and reach southwestern Slovakia. The earliest finds are dated to the mid 6th century BC – about 560 BC (Párducz 1974: 330; Dusek 1974: 405). The independent development of the Vekerzug group was terminated by historical Celtic expansion at the beginning of the La Tène B2 phase, dated, in general, to the mid 4th century BC (Bujna 1982: 377f., 397f.). During its 200 years of existence, the Vekerzug group acted as an important cultural link between the regions within the reach of the expanding Classical world.

The two photographs (PL. XXXVIIw) hich are the subject of this note were obtained during reconnaissance sponsored by the Committee for Aerial Photography of the University of Cambridge. Both photographs record monuments apparently unnoted before. The first lies on the chalk of the Yorkshire wolds, in Burton Fleming parish (TA 097707), 2 miles north of Rudston (PL. XXXVII (a)). An oval enclosure defined by a broad ditch (dark) and bank (light coloured) is seen by differential growth of barley. A visit to the site after the field had been reaped established that the enclosure is plainly visible on the surface. The bank is much spread by ploughing: but still rises to a height of nearly 4 ft. above the level platform that it encloses.

The decipherment in 1952 by Michael Ventris of the prehistoric script known as Minoan Linear B at once suggested that here lay the key to the earlier Cretan script called Linear A. Linear B was proved to be a syllabic script which represented, imperfectly but just adequately, the Greek language in a form more archaic than any other surviving records. At an early stage in our short-lived partnership I discussed with Ventris the possibility of applying the results to the older script, and we both made certain experiments; but we concluded that the situation did not allow any easy progress, and being deeply committed to the development of his Linear B theory, we decided to leave this field to others, at any rate for the time being. Since then a great deal of work on Linear A has been published by other scholars, almost all of it based upon the decipherment of Linear B, and equally inspired by the success which attended the solution of the major problem. It is not, perhaps, too soon to review some of these attempts and appraise the progress made so far. We are clearly far from an agreed solution; but there are encouraging signs that the true solution is not too far beyond our grasp, though I for one doubt whether it can be achieved by mere ingenuity. I should like to emphasize at the outset that I am completely neutral in the controversies which are raging, and this account is intended to be quite impartial.

In December 1993 Brazilian, European and American researchers joined forces in São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí, Brazil, to analyse the state of research on the peopling of the Americas (conference proceedings in press).

The views of Jacquetta Hawkes give vent to the uncomfortable feelings that many older archaeologists have been harbouring against the ‘intrusion’ of science into their exclusive domain of ‘humanistic’ archaeology. I am not so bothered here about the protests of the ‘passing generation’ which is ‘suffering from universal decay’ (using her own words) as with the problems of the two cultures, the methods and meaning of archaeology, its relation with other sciences and the direction towards which it is heading.

The system of Minoan chronology proposed by the late Sir Arthur Evans remained almost unchallenged for many years. The first hint that it might not be equally valid for all sites in Crete was given by the excavations of Dr Joseph Hazzidakis at Tylisos where he found three archaeological strata, the first corresponding to Evans’ Early Minoan I, II and III and Middle Minoan Ia, the second to M.M. Ib, M.M. II, M.M. III and L.M. I and the third to Late Minoan III. On the basis of this M. L. Franchet proposed a new classification consisting of Early Neolithic (representing a site examined by Franchet himself), Late Neolithic, Bronze I, II, III and IV and Iron Age. This was tacitly ignored by most scholars, partly because the author was an authority on ceramics rather than on Aegean prehistory, partly because of the cavalier fashion in which this theory had been expressed. That Franchet’s opinions were not entirely without substance, however, was demonstrated later by L. Åberg in the far more serious and detailed criticism of Evans’ chronology expounded in his Bronze-zeitliche und Fruheisenzeitliche Chronologie, where he divided Evans’ Minoan periods into Pre-Palatial (E.M. I to M.M. Ia), Early Palatial (M.M. Ib to pre-earthquake M.M. IIIb) and Late Minoan or Late Palatial (including Evans’ post-earthquake M.M. IIIb). Within these three periods Åberg considered the various stylistic subdivisions to be contemporary. Åberg’s complaint that the earlier periods were not well stratified at Knosos was replied to by Pendlebury who in his Archaeology of Crete, published in 1939, tabulated significant and unmixed deposits at Knosos of E.M. I, II and III, M.M. ra, M.M. Ib, M.M. IIa, M.M. IIb, M.M. ma and M.M. IIIb pottery. So far Evans’ chronology had been shrewdly attacked but adequately defended so far as Knosos was concerned, though Pendlebury had admitted that certain categories were luxury wares and might be absent from other parts of the island.

A recent assessment of the evidence, old and new, for the nature and dates of the main sites within the Tintagel complex appeared first in Antiquity (Thomas 1988a). The paper ended by stating that ‘properly planned and rigidly controlled excavation … is not just desirable, but overdue’, and a second article (Thomas 1990) demonstrated that the large quantity of finds from the post-Roman occupation on Tintagel Island can now be related to structured commerce, linking Ireland and Atlantic Britain to several regions in the Mediterranean during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. During 1988/9 Tintagel Castle (that is, the Island and the mainland wards) as a Property in Care administered by English Heritage moved up to 7th place in the table of visitor-numbers, with a total of 140,000 and a combined admissionsplus-retail income of £162,000 (source: E.H. Marketing 1989). However, since it is abundantly clear that the archaeological importance of the whole site-complex must outrank the commercial status of the Castle as a PIC, an independent Tintagel Research Committee has been formed. It held a first one-day meeting at Tintagel and Truro in April 1990, under the chairmanship of Professor Malcolm Todd (University of Exeter). The Committee operates under a combined aegis of the Duchy of Cornwall (the owner, since 1337, of the Castle), Royal Institution of Cornwall, Cornwall County Council and the University of Exeter, and its membership is principally academic.

The photographs here reproduced, were taken from the air on 30 June 1926, by Squadron-Leader Insall, V.C., M.C., who was then stationed at Netheravon. The large circular earthwork which appears with a series of concentric dots within its area had always been regarded as a “ring” or “disc” barrow much wasted and defaced as a result of many years cultivation. The ring barrow is a type of pre-historic burial place which occurs comparatively frequently on the Downs of Wiltshire and adjacent counties but is rare elsewhere. It consists of a circular earthen bank with a corresponding ditch, usually on the inner side. The actual burials, apparently invariably after cremation, are usually found in one or more mounds near the centre of the circular area thus enclosed. The banks and ditches are continuous and form unbroken rings; they vary in size from a few yards in diameter up to nearly 200 ft. The smaller dark rings shown on the lower part of the photographs near the Amesbury road probably represent the filled-in ditches of barrows that have been destroyed by cultivation.

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.