Of all the early prehistoric monuments of Britain the Dorset Cursus is both the largest and at the same time one of the least known. Its claim to pre-eminence in terms of mere size is sufficiently established by the facts that it is six miles in length, contains an area of two hundred and twenty acres, and in its original state comprised a volume of earthwork amounting to some six-and-a-half million cubic feet. The significance of these figures may better be appreciated by a comparison with Avebury, which had originally an earthwork volume of about three-and-a-half million cubic feet, or with the Stonehenge Cursus, which is a little less than one-and-three-quarter miles in length, and encloses only seventy acres.

It has long been recognized that during the latter part of the 1st millennium B.C., as in other periods, there was contact between Spain and western Britain, and it has been claimed that there are structural resemblances between hill-forts in those areas. But although an excellent account of the Iron Age in northern Spain has been available for some time to English readers, it deals almost exclusively with the portable relics, and gives very little information about the forts themselves. Moreover, the original publications which deal with these remains are very scarce in Britain. It therefore seems worth while to give some account of four which the writer was able to visit during 1954. They were selected primarily because their defences incorporated chevaux-de-frise, which seem generally to be rare outside Spain, but which occur on two sites in Wales, and elsewhere in Britain.

The craft of bird-watching lies in the distinctive look any bird has, so it may be recognized even from a passing glimpse. That may help with identifying the prehistoric birds captured as passing glimpses for us in Palaeolithic pictures.

When 0. G. S. Crawford investigated a length of bank and ditch in Kincladie Wood near Dunning, in Perthshire, he observed that ‘the possibility that it might be a fragment of a Roman camp cannot be excluded’ (1948, 59). Kincladie Wood is 2 km. from the hill at Duncrub, a locality that has been equated philologically with the early historical Dorsum Crup (Watson, 1926, 56). We are assured by philologists that Mons Craupius, too, can be added to the equation.* The case which follows for identifying the hill at Duncrub with Mons Craupius, in which the philological proposition is supported by archaeological evidence, is offered to mark the 50th anniversary of Crawford’s appointment as first Archaeology Officer in the Ordnance Survey.

The burial of animals is attested in Egypt from the pre-Dynastic period through to Roman times. This phenomenon is observed across different animal species and involves varied funerary practices, although mummification is the most significant. Against this background, a series of burials of small animals, under excavation since 2011 at Berenike, suggests a unique example of pet-keeping rather than the religious or magical deposits found in the Nile Valley.

The Gallo-Roman sanctuary of Sequana is situated in the little wooded valley where the Seine rises, some 35 km. north-west of Dijon. It has been excavated at regular intervals from the middle of the 19th century onwards, and for over a century attention has been drawn to the many and varied finds made there [I]. After the excavations of 1953 it was decided, in conjunction with the Service des Monuments historiques, to undertake a complete and systematic study of the whole site with a view to its restoration. We planned to engage workmen to clear and restore the foundations of the two temples already known, to re-establish the line of the old terraces around the sanctuary, and to organize the river Seine itself, which, in the first few hundred yards of its existence, had become wayward in the extreme.