‘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.

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 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.

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

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 racial prehistory of Great Britain, while incomplete, has been brought to a provocative stage in its reconstruction. What follows is an attempt to set forth the framework of present knowledge, with its major lacunae, for the particular scrutiny of the archaeologists, on whom the anthropologists must largely rely for the testing of its stresses and strains.

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.

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.

We try (most of us) to be logical in our work. We listen to arguments (most of us) and try to be persuaded by that argument which is better – because it is more logical, because it is more reasonable, because it fits the facts better. But how reliably does one tell which is better – except by illogical intuition? Computer-aided study of the structure of arguments may help