Iona is a small island off the west coast of Scotland. It is famous throughout the world as the adopted home of Columba, the virtual founder of the Church of Scotland. It was in this island that he founded his monastery in 563 ; and it was from here that Aidan, the founder of Lindisfarne, came in 635 to christianize Northumbria. Thousands of tourists visit Iona every year, and are duly conducted round the ruins during the short hour or two allowed by the steamer’s call ; yet how many realize that, of the remains they see, not even the oldest came into existence until about 500 years after the death of Columba?

The editors of the Industrial Archaeology Review reply to Clark's remarks about their subject in the last number.

In Antiquity for 1942 (1) Iorwerth Peate made a stimulating contribution to our understanding of the iron fire-dogs which are such a striking feature of British Iron Age craftsmanship, and in these notes that follow I hope to show that Mr Peate’s thesis can be further substantiated by additional evidence from archaeology and modern folk-life. It is his central idea that I have followed: my paper is a postscript to his.

The authors have discovered small oval panels of parallel lines in the famous Ligurian cave of Arene Candide, and show that it must be art of the Epigravettian period, c. 11-10000bp (uncalibrated).

To the west of the village of Mikowice (which lies 40 krn southeast of Wrocław) inside a large wooded tract on an extensive kame plateau a dozen or so barrow fields were discovered (FIGURE 1) in the 1920s-30s. The two largest burial grounds (the ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ fields) comprise some 3 to 4 score tumuli (FIGURE 2) .

The ‘western’ burial ground has for many years attracted the attention of archaeologists. Following a meticulous recording and preparation of a contour plan of the site between 1926 and 1934 (Hellmich 1938: 226–28), 11 features were excavated under the supervision of L.F. Zotz, G. Raschke, K. Tackenberg and K. Petersen of Breslau (modern Wroclaw) (Zotz 1930: 81–4; 1934: 108–12). The excavations had a rescue character as intensive extraction in adjacent sand pits was seriously damaging the cemetery, having reduced the surviving number of barrows to 24.

For all an archaeologist's or anthropologist's professional training in how ancient societies organize themselves with ‘appropriate technologies’, it is not easy to grasp how very different those ancient civilizations were from any society we have experienced. Nowhere is this clearer than in Mesoamerica, where cities and empires had no need of the ‘basics’ of urban life as we know it. One of those ‘basics’ is wheels, discussed here in the sole, small context in which they are commonplace in pre-Columbian America.

Archaeology, consistently warned off religion by wise old heads, here rushes deeper into the thicket to tackle the thorny topic of ancient witchcraft. The occasion was a seminar at Harvard organised by Stephen Mitchell and Neil Price to mark the twentieth anniversary of Carlo Ginzburg's influential book on the connections between witches and shamanism – and by implication the possible connections with prehistoric ritual and belief. Archaeology was by no means the only voice at the meeting, which was attended by scholars active in history, literature, divinity and anthropology. The discussions revealed much that was entangled in the modern psyche: ‘don't let's tame strangeness’ was one leitmotiv of this stimulating colloquium. A romantic attachment to the irrational is a feature of our time, especially among academics. But maybe taming strangeness is an archaeologist's real job…

This is an account of the severed heads on the Auld Wives' Lifts, Craigmaddie Muir, Scotland, by the Professor of Archaeology, University of Glasgow. The Auld Wives' Lifts is an object of interest and debate for geology, antiquarianism, folklore, vernacular art and, perhaps, Celtic iconography, and we are glad to give it publicity.

It has been generally agreed that Devonshire lies outside the area formerly cultivated under the open-field system. The map which serves as frontispiece to Gray’s monograph on the subject shows the western boundary of the open-field area beginning in west Dorsetshire and passing up northward across Somerset so as to exclude Devon, Cornwall, and west Somerset. Dr and Mrs Orwin, while revising and correcting Gray’s data at several points, are emphatic where the south-western counties are concerned. ‘In Lancashire, Devon, and Cornwall, there is nothing to indicate that the system [of open fields] was ever followed’. Recent text-books naturally follow in the wake of these authorities. Professor Darby, for example, writes that in Cornwall, and by implication in Devon also, the prevailing type of rural economy ‘had no relation to the three-field system’ ; and he illustrates his remarks with a reproduction of Gray’s map.

One well-known fact, which at first sight appears irreconcilable with these pronouncements, was not overlooked by the authors. I refer to the existence at Braunton, in northwest Devon, of an open field of some 350 acres, divided into nearly five hundred arable strips of intermixed ownership. ‘Some persons own very many of the strips scattered all over the field ; that is to say, several strips in almost every division of it. Others have a few only, one here and there. But in all cases the strips of one owner are everywhere separated from each other by interposed strips of other owners . . . The line of demarcation between any two strips is commonly indicated by a narrow unploughed balk . . . The lesser plots appear as a rule to approximate in area to half an acre, more or less, and the others to multiples of this quantity . . . Very few exceed the limit of two acres’.

‘No attempt worthy of the name has yet been made to explore an ancient wreck. Marine Archaeology will only become a science by practice, patience and experience. But at any rate we know enough to say that any excavation likely to fulfill its purpose will be heart-breakingly slow and will only be achieved underwater’.

Philippe Diolé, L’Aventure Sous-Marine, 1951.

Rapid strides in the development of underwater excavation have been made during the past two decades. New techniques of diving, raising objects, and removing sand and mud make practical the excavation of sites lying at depths up to 150 ft. The problems encountered in making accurate three-dimensional plans, however, are only slowly being solved. The methods used by the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, in excavating two ancient wrecks off the southern coast of Turkey, present partial solutions to these problems.

The excavation of a late Bronze Age shipwreck, reported lying near Cape Gelidonya by Peter Throckmorton, has been discussed more fully elsewhere. This wreck rested upon bedrock, which was unfortunate from an archaeological point of view as there was no protective covering of sand to preserve the wooden hull. The survey of the site and its remains, however, was relatively simple. Scattered heaps of metal cargo were photographed, plotted and then, not without considerable difficulty, removed to the surface in lumps held together by 32 centuries of deep sea concretion.

It has been apparent for some time that the overbearingly rich ethnographic record from the west coast has had an almost numbing effect on thinking about later prehistory from Alaska to the Mexican border. ‘The tyranny of the ethnographic record’ has been a war-cry in archaeology for some time, so there is nothing new in this observation. ‘I hear very little about olden times’, said Franz Boas of the Kwakiutl as long ago as the 1880s, but the archaeologists that followed in his footsteps seem to have forgotten his remark. There has been a tendency to think of the ethnographic record of the 17th-19th centuries AD as a true record of the state of native American society along the west coast before European contact. As Maschner and Ames point out in their papers, nothing could be further from the truth. Ann Ramenovsky (1984), among others, has pointed out that indigenous populations were decimated by smallpox and other infectious diseases very soon after contact, and sometimes even before actual physical meetings with the newcomers. Some of the elaborate cultures observed by Boas and others were, in themselves, responses to changing conditions. The elaboration of the Northwest potlatch is, of course, a well known example of this phenomenon. Here, Ames and Maschner point out that populations may already have been in decline prior to Columbus.

In 1903 and 1904 Giacomo Boni undertook a stratigraphic excavation to the N.W. of the fountation of Equua Domitiani in the Forum Romanum. The finds, unfortunately never published, are preserved in perfect order in the storeroom of the Forum Museum; and thanks to the generosity of Italian colleagues of whom I wish to mention in particular Professors P. Romanelli and S. Puglisi, this material was placed at my disposal for study and publication. When it turned out to be necessary to carry out a supplementary excavation, permission was readily granted me by the Italian authorities.

Professor John Mulvaney, pioneer and champion of Australian archaeology, offers us some reflections from the vantage point of his eightieth year. On his retirement 20 years ago Antiquity was glad to publish his Retrospect (Mulvaney 1986), in which he described his awakening interest in history at Melbourne, his first visit to the Rollright Stones and his fruitful encounters with Gordon Childe, Graham Clark, Glyn Daniel, Mortimer Wheeler and many other great figures of the 50s, 60s and 70s in classrooms at Cambridge and in the field in England and Australia. This paper remains a classic of archaeological history which readers will find in our electronic archive (at http://www.antiquity.ac.uk). It ended with his (victorious) battle for the archaeological heritage of the Franklin River heritage of Tasmania in the early 1980s.

Now he reflects on the subsequent decades in which much has changed. Of especial interest to our readers will be Professor Mulvaney's current assessment of the Aboriginal-European discourse and the management of the Australian heritage.