Among the more obscure aspects of polar research the problem of the appearance off Scotland of kayaks of Eskimo type is one of the most formidable. A These craft, one of which has certainly survived, normally become waterlogged after about forty-eight hours in the water. How then were they brought to the British Isles, and by whom?

Apparently the earliest reference to their appearance off the Scottish coast is that of the Rev. James Wallace, Minister of Kirkwall, Orkney, who wrote about 1688 in his Description of the Isles of Orkney:

‘Sometime about this Country are seen these Men which are called Finnmen; In the year 1682 one was seen sometime sailing, sometime Rowing up and down in his little Boat at the south end of the Isle of Eda, most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they adventured to put out a Boat with men to see if they could apprehend him, he presently fled away most swiftly: And in the year 1684, another was seen from Westra, and for a while after they got few or no Fishes; for they have this Remark here, that these Finnmen drive away the fishes from the place to which they come.

‘These Finnmen seem to be some of these people that dwell about the Fretum Davis [Davis Straits].… One of their Boats sent from Orkney to Edinburgh is to be seen in the Physitians hall, with the Oar and the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish’.

Introduction

Brian Fagan’s declaration about the ‘clash of cultures’ applies to contemporary Mesoamericans and South Americans as it does to North Americans. We have passed beyond the age of the ‘Black Legend’, perhaps not entirely, but enough to regard the ‘Columbian exchange’ (Crosby 1973) as a massive confrontation of peoples, the emotional reverberations of which have not entirely disappeared, but whose effects a few of us can measure with scientific objectivity.

The valley7 of the Anchlome, a few miles east of Scunthorpe, in notthwest Lincholnshire, consists of a great stretch of flat, low-lying ‘Carrs’ between the Oolites of the Lincolnshire Cliff on the west and the Chalk Wolds on the east. The geological evidence suggests that in early times the river Ancholme was a tidal arm of the estuary of the Humber, being much wider than at present. Until the seventeenth century the area was flooded for several months in the year, for it was not until the sixteen-thirties that the first really serious draining operations were commenced, the main feature of this work being the construction of a ‘New Cut’, or New River Ancholme, which (together with the old river, now little more than a large drain) joins the Humber at Ferriby Sluice.

It is by now an open secret that the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments (IAM) of the Department of the Environment (DoE) is proposing dramatic changes in the organization of rescue excavations. A corner of the veil was lifted on 22 February 1973; at the time of writing, at the end of May, the shape of the structure is tolerably clear; and sometime in June we may expect a grand unveiling ceremony. Meanwhile steps are already being taken to implement the proposals, although no paper on the new scheme has been seen by any archaeologist outside DoE. Despite the uncertainties which arise from this secrecy, it seems reasonable that readers of ANTIQUITY should receive a critical account of the scheme as it appears at the end of May. Doubtless the official announcement will appear elsewhere in these pages at the earliest possible date, and statements of fact in that must be taken as superseding similar statements here.

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.

The British Museum, jointly with the University Museum of Philadelphia, is carrying out at Ur ‘of the Chaldees’ what is now, since a slower pace has set in with the work of Evans at Knossos, the most important British archaeological excavation. Nothing like the recent discoveries at Ur has indeed been seen in a European museum since the appearance of Schliemann's finds at Mycenae, and no such rich find of gold objects has been made since the discovery of the wealth of Tutankhamon. Like Mycenae and Knossos, Mr Woolley's discoveries tell the archaeologist a very great deal that he did not know before. They may justly be claimed as the most important work of the kind now being carried on by any British or American museum or society, whether singly or jointly. The personnel is now wholly British, but Philadelphia pays half the piper and calls half the tune. This ‘ fifty-fifty ’ relation of absolute parity between the two museums is as it should be, and the two nations are to be congratulated on their harmonious partnership in the most important archaeological excavation in the world. I stress this for I do not think that the great importance of Mr Woolley’s finds is sufficiently realized. Not merely because they contain a lot of gold, as they do (and since gold of itself doth attract a journalist, this fact has received some public attention), but because they tell us so much that is new, which Tutankhamon, for all his splendour, did not. We may find this fact appreciated now that Mr Woolley’s first provisional publication of this year’s (1927) finds has appeared in the January (1928) number of the Antiquaries’ Journal, to which I must refer my readers for detail.

Carvings made of elephant ivory are a characteristic, though uncommon, artefact of the later Bronze Age in Greece and the islands. Where did the raw material for them come from — Syria to the east, or Africa to the south and southwest?

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.

Of their kind there are few things more beautiful than the field-walls in a stony country. They are constructed, as a rule, without mortar, and for that reason are called ‘dry stone walls’; the term is useful, as a distinction, and will serve, but many of them are reinforced by an admixture of earth, or of a kind of daub that sets fairly hard. The walls of the moister West Country are the most beautiful of all, for innumerable plants take root in the earthy crevices and enrich the lovely grey stonework with a natural ornament that is entirely pleasing. Vivid green splashes of pennywort, yellow stars of celandine, clusters of violet, and the twisted white cords of ivy are Nature's version of carved vine-scrolls and interlaced designs, with the added beauty of colour. Far be it from me to institute odious comparisons between the works of Man and of Nature; both are good to look upon, and I yield to none in admiration of the masterpieces of Anglian sculpture. But these, alas, are few and far between; they are not always accessible or easily seen; whereas there are, by way of compensation, hundreds of miles of most enchanting field-walls in Cornwall alone. I began my study of them without fully realizing their aesthetic qualities; when my eyes were opened I found it difficult to look at anything else.

Swedish archaeology enters the new decade reeling, not so much from seasonal feasting as from lay-offs and excavation unit close-downs caused by the 2008-09 recession. Where to now? Where should we go? And, wishful thinking aside, where are we likely to end up?

It has been seen how tin evidently came to be known at Byblos (Gebeil) through the occurrence of its ore in the two rivers near that city. It has also been seen that its presence there mixed with copper ore led on naturally to the manufacture of bronze, which became known to the Egyptians as ‘Asiatic copper’. Now we may turn to the state of affairs far away to the north and west where conditions prove to have been totally different from those obtaining on the coast of central Syria.