The Central Belize Archaeological Survey (CBAS) was initiated in 2005 as a sub-project of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance project (BVAR; directed by Jaime Awe) to investigate the prehistoric Maya cemetery site of Caves Branch Rockshelter. Subsequently, we began to survey other nearby cave and rockshelter sites (Hardy 2009) and to excavate the monumental civic-ceremonial centre of Deep Valley (Jordan 2008). CBAS became an independent project in 2009, with an increasing focus on sites in the neighbouring Roaring Creek Valley (Figure 1). This slight geographic shift was in part intended to expand bioarchaeological investigations to include dark zone cave contexts identified during the late 1990s by BVAR's Western Belize Regional Cave Project. In the area around these caves, we identified two large, previously unreported civic-ceremonial centres and a network of raised roads (sacbeob) connecting them and other sites. Our survey and excavations at Tipan Chen Uitz (Figure 2) have yielded evidence that it was a regional capital with ties to powerful foreign polities, as attested by the discovery of multiple carved stone monuments (Figure 3; see Andres et al. 2014; Helmke & Andres 2015; Andres et al. in press in Antiquity). We have also continued our investigations of mortuary rockshelters, including Sapodilla Rockshelter in the Caves Branch Valley.

Recent archaeological reports from excavations carried out round the Royal castles and palaces suggest that a completely new chronology of roof covering for high-status buildings in Scotland should now be formulated.

The main purpose of this article is to put on record material from two collections of photographs, made by Mr O.G.S. Crawford and by the writer. As the ‘ exhibits ’ were varied and numerous, it seemed desirable to make a selection that would link up with what has already been published on the subject in ANTIQUITYpr, oducing in the process some shadow of an evolution. For any opinions that are advanced, however, the writer, and not Mr Crawford, must be held entirely responsible.

The astronomical controversy about Stonehenge may perhaps be approached from an impartial view of one who is neither an archaeologist nor an astronomer, who offers no new or original observations, and proposes to examine facts rather than to discuss theories.

Sir Norman Lockyer was one of those who held that many Egyptian and Greek buildings were set so that they faced certain points on the horizon at which the sun or some bright star arose. But the buildings do not face these directions exactly, and the suggestion is that the discrepancies are due to a well recognized astronomical principle—that the points of rising and setting gradually move on the horizon; and the rate of motion being known, the date of the building may be ascertained.

I have done some varied seafaring in different kinds of odd craft and so have some idea of the difficulties involved in earlier days. In the summer of 1925 I was at sea in a Fleetwood trawler, which was fishing the Ioo-fathom line from St Kilda to the Blaskets. On I July, we were off Galway Bay; it was a fairly calm day with a big Atlantic swell running. A three-man curragh from Inishmore (one of the Aran Islands) came alongside and the crew begged for fish.