With the help of a modern mason, the authors have discovered a series of scarcely visible markings on well-known limestone statues from southern Spain dating back to the fifth century BC. Unrelated to letters or religious symbols, their best point of comparison seems to lie with the kind of signature used by masons to denote a craftsman or workshop. One can certainly forgive any sculptor an expression of pride in the elegant and complex carvings of the Iberian culture.

The image on a Greek coin of the second-first century BC is identified as an ammonite fossil and linked to the eponymous Ammon, the Egyptian ram-headed god.

The Jatvings, closely related to the Old Prussian, Lithuanian and Latvian tribes, belonged to the Baltic branch of the Indo-Europeans who, in the 5th century BC, migrated north up the Driieper river to settle the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. (Die Balten 1987: 18, 20). On the evidence available, Jatvingia as a complex of tribal communities emerged in the second half of the 1st millennium AD. The historical home of the Jatvings was in the northeastern corner of modern Poland and in the adjacent parts of modern Lithuania. It stretched eastwards across the Masurian Lakeland to the river Neman, touching on the Biebrza river valley in the south and the upper Sheshupa valley in the north (FIGURE 1). Information on Jatvingians survives in early mediaeval written sources: Polish documents, the chronicles of the Ruthenian Dukes and the Teutonic Order, Papal Bulls, etc. Interestingly enough, one of the oldest mentions in western European sources comes from an English source – the Otia imperialia written by Gervase of Tilbury.

The Aeolian Islands are situated off the north coast of Sicily, not far from the entrance to the Straits of Messina. They can be reached by a daily service of steamboats from the port of Milazzo, 20 miles west of Messina. There is a daily train, called Freccia di Sul, that goes direct from Milan to Palermo, stopping at Milazzo; The northernmost of the islands is Stromboli with its famous active volcano. The chief town is Lipari on the island of that name; here on its acropolis excavations directed by Professor Bernabo Brea on behalf of the Soprintendenza alle Antichita della Sicilia Orientale have revealed a stratified succession of huts, ranging from the neolithic period down to Hellenistic, Roman and modern times. These excavations and others on other islands have shown that, small though they be, the islands once played an important part in the culture of the western Mediterranean.

Antiquity has recently received some information* of great value in connexion with radiocarbon dating from the advisory committee on the subject set up by the American Anthropological Association and the Geological Society of America. It consists of an historical foreword, a corrected list of dates, a number of reports on specific problems, a summary and a bibliography, partly in typescript and partly on microfilm. The list differs little from the printed one which was distributed to a number of interested people in September 1950, though it contains a few additions and corrections, and the real importance of the material now received lies in the reports and the summary.

The unique interest of Sidonius lies in the fact that he ‘ stands between the old world and the new, and is a witness for both of them ’ (p. 166). His letters are almost the only non-theological documents of the fifteen centuries which have survived; and this fact alone gives them a historical value that cannot be exaggerated. A critical and well-documented biography by one who has made the subject his own is therefore most welcome. In the following pages I do not propose to say more by way of commendation of the admirable biography by Mr C. E. Stevens, but rather to consider certain special points in it which are of current interest, Needless to say, the interpretation of the history of the period is my own, and the author would very probably dissent strongly from it,

‘Gently undulating gravel plain ’, ‘ limitless expanse of rolling sand ’, ‘ succession of low sandstone ridges ’—such phrases are common in any book of desert travel, for most of the desert is featureless almost to monotony were it not that its very monotony has a charm which, for those who have felt it, no other landscape can rival. In the desert anything unusual attracts, a patch of rare shade, a hollow with a few dried bushes, a conspicuous hill,—one is drawn to each, sometimes to find the remains of some earlier and less fortunate visitor. So a 6000-foot mountain set down in the heart of one of the worst, one of the most ‘ howling ’, deserts in the world merits and receives its share of attention.

The storied name which stands at the head of this paper has an immense range of association and interest. Lest the gentle reader be frightened at the outset by too extensive a prospect let us define at once the limits we have set to our present inquiry.

There is a knowledge of Britain that is characteristic of this and the last century. It is a knowledge founded on the results of numberless excavations on surveys of roads, forts and cities, on intensive study of stratification and of the evidence hidden in broken pots and half obliterated coins. It is a knowledge that must have made up a remarkable whole in the mind of a scholar like the late Professor Haverfield; that still makes up such a whole in the minds of a handful of scholars still living today. For most of us this knowledge is only to be gained at second-hand from the summarized reports of the experts; at best we may be able to add a personal acquaintance with some small part of the subject. It is a knowledge that advances progressively and comprises most of the hope for the future.

There are many Grim’s ditches in the South of England; and there are other ditches of similar appearance and dimensions which, though not called by this name, may have had the same origin. Amongst them probably is Wansdyke, more correctly called Wansditch, and originally Woden’s ditch. Locally these earthworks are now generally known as the Devil’s ditch. I shall describe here the course of one such Grim’s ditch, based upon field-work carried out during the spring and summer of this year, in the course of which I both walked and flew along the whole course of the various ditches mentioned and was able to add many miles to the portions previously known.

There is perhaps no branch of archaeology of more fundamentalimportance than the study of the rise and development of agricul ture, seeing that it has been the governing factor in the Natural History of Man from the time of its introduction down to the Industrial Era. But the study of the evidence from Britain is not enough; hence Professor Hatt’s full and clear exposition of the Danish evidence is of special importance to British archaeologists, seeing that the rich discoveries preserved in the peat-bogs of Denmark can supply details that are missing in the British picture, or at least suggest to us directions in which future research may profitably be pursued. Professor Hatt’s wide knowledge and balanced judgment-not to mention his delightful personality-have won the confidence and respect of those British archaeologists who have had the privilege of knowing him, and his recent book on Danish agriculture is far too important to be left in the relative obscurity of the Danish language. Hence a brief summary of its principal contents is attempted here.

ANTIQUITY asked Andrew Sherratt, who had been a student of David Clarke at peterhouse, Cambridge in the late 1960s and early '70s, to give his reaction to the foregoing papers, in the light of his recollections of the time.