The lofty expanse of heather, bog and bare granite which forms the region under discussion in this paper, contains a numerous and in many ways unique group of prehistoric antiquities. Although Devonshire archaeologists have for many years been doing good work in this district, it has never, to the best of my knowledge, been comprehensively dealt with in the light of modern methods and experience. Consequently, the prehistory of Dartmoor still presents something of a mystery. After describing the material at our disposal, I shall here make a few tentative suggestions which seem to resolve some of the difficulties encountered in the interpretation of the archaeological evidence, and which may throw some light on the prehistory of the rest of southwest England.

We appreciate the emerging discussion on the identification of the recently discovered Chalcolithic artefacts from the Judean Desert, and the careful attention to detail by Langgut et al. (above) that helps to further clarify our current understanding of spinning and metallurgical technologies in this period. Yet while we agree that by its nature archaeology is full of surprises and exceptional discoveries, we argue, however, that especially in such cases as this, the supporting evidence should be robust. This is clearly not the situation here; regardless of Langgut et al.’s nuanced argumentation (above) on specific contextual observations, our interpretation of the lead artefact as a metallic macehead that happened to be found with its wooden shaft still attached (a rare find but paralleled in the hoard from the Cave of the Treasure) remains much simpler and more straightforward than the interpretation that this extremely rare metal was used as part of a mundane spinning implement (which has no parallels anywhere). As the limitation on space does not allow us to address each of the points raised by Langgut et al., we leave it to the reader to assess the accuracy and relevance of their claims. In any case, their detailed response is only tangential to the essential line of our argument, which is related to weighing the available data and contextual information properly. The conclusion remains that while the observations that ostensibly connect the newly discovered artefacts to textile production are feeble and can be simply related to Ghassulian prestige metal objects (e.g. the use of wooden shafts and textiles in their carrying and maintenance), other observations make this connection difficult (as admitted also by Langgut et al. regarding the weight of the lead ‘whorl’), if not impossible.

Italy has been and still is the scene of unprecedented archaeological activity ; and it was not unnatural that this fact should lead to the holding of a succession of congresses during the Spring. Rome, as was only fitting, opened the ball on the 2628th anniversary of her birthday, the 21st of April, with the first national congress of Roman Studies.

Very wisely the organizing committee decided, as also did the Etruscan committee two years before, to regard this as a sort of preliminary canter to an international congress to be held, I believe, in 1930, the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Vergil ; and therefore to confine it in the main to Italians—though various foreign scholars resident in Rome were invited to take part, and several of them read papers.

It was a quarter of a century ago that ANTIQUITY first announced the ‘Pleistocene colonization of Australia’, when Mulvaney (1964) reported secure dates before 12,000 b.p. from Kenniff Cave, Queensland. The last three years alone have seen dates from New Guinea of around 40,000 b.p., early dates from the offshore islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, and dates from Australia itself that show a rapid colonization of both the arid central desert and cold, wet Tasmania – environments very different from the tropical islands of Southeast Asia, whence the first Australasian populations must surely have come. It is a record with great implications for early settlement elsewhere, most plainly of the American continents.