Accounts of the early barrow-diggers are chilling, both in their tales of prehistoric wood and textiles that blew away to dust at the touch of the spade, and in their vigour, a barrow quarried out in an afternoon, a barrow cemetery in a fortnight. Salvage imperatives, in advance of destruction by drainage in the Lincolnshire Fens, now make necessary the rare excavation of a whole barrow cemetery, with a happier organic outcome.

In the first of these papersX dealing with certain problems in the history and archaeology of Ancient America an account was given of the Maya Old Empire and the possible causes which lead to its collapse in the fourth or sixth centuries A.D. The whole tract of Xibalba was probably deserted, its inhabitants scattered, and the alien theocracy which had inspired a great semi-civilization destroyed.

The first settlement of Australia over 40 000 years ago provides evidence of the maritime capabilities of early modern humans. Did they also take to the sea to fish? Recent analysis of fish remains from sites in Timor-Leste and on islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea have been held to include deep sea species that must have been obtained through pelagic fishing. Here Atholl Anderson takes issue with the evidence, arguing that inshore fishing is a more likely scenario, and that deep sea fishing was beyond the scope of Pleistocene communities. Despite the early settlement of Australia, advanced boat technology was developed only during the Holocene. His reassessment is followed by responses from Sue O'Connor and Rintaro Ono, Geoff Bailey and Jon Erlandson, and finally by Atholl Anderson's reply to those comments.

Old Burrow and Martinhoe are situated on the rocky North Devon coast, 1100 and 800 ft. high respectively above the seas of the Bristol Channel (PL. LIIa) , on either side of the small seaside town of Lynmouth. Both sites command an extensive view of the South Wales coast, 17 to 20 miles away (FIG. 4), but owing to an intervening hill, the Foreland, they are not intervisible. Inland the outlook is limited to the northern slopes of Exmoor, which rises to 1600 ft. some 6 to 7 miles away. The coastal tract in which they are situated was sparsely inhabited by friendly Iron Age peoples, the Dumnonii, living in small hillforts and isolated from the main body of the tribe in South Devon and Cornwall.

The Roman earthworks are practically identical (FIGS. I and 3); they consist of an inner rectilinear enclosure, 90 ft. square defended by a rampart and two ditches, set within a rounded outer enclosure, some 300 ft. in diameter and with a single rampart and ditch. At Martinhoe the outer enclosure ends on the cliffs, which form its northern side.

The entrance to the inner fartlet in both cases is on the seaward side; to the outer on the opposite landward side, so that all comers would be obliged to make a half-circuit between the two lines of defences under fire. In effect the device resembles that at the Claudian fort at Hod Hill in Dorset, where the defences were also designed to trap attackers within the range of missiles—spears or ballista bolts.

Professor Hoyle's use of my Stonehenge findings is as intriguing as it is ingenious. As I said on the BBC-TV programme Chronicle last August, his support of my theory is most welcome, and his speculations deserve and will receive the most careful consideration.

Deraheib is the name of an ancient site in the Wadi Allagi in lat. 21°57’, long 35°81′, i.e. just within the Sudan political frontier. The name is undoubtedly Beja in form but may be derived from the Beidawi ‘d‧ir’ ‘to build’ or the Arabi ‘Deir’ which is used in Egypt for monasteries or other ancient buildings. Possibly, these two words are connected with each other. It should be noted that there is a place called ‘Dereheib Baanet’, 40 miles north of Deraheib, with ruins of a tomb, and the famous Assarema Deraheib ‘The Seven Buildings’, in Khor Gamarota 20 miles inland from Akik.

For its Exhibition of Forgeries and Deceptive Copies, on view in the Department of Prints and Drawings since February, the British Museum has produced many fascinating objects which normally it keeps hidden away: with the passage of time, it can afford to indulge its sense of humour. As Sir Thomas Kendrick is reputed to have said when viewing the exhibits: ‘What fun it is when someone takes an immense amount of trouble to be really naughty.’

Contributions from the various Departments and from borrowed sources include Antiquities of all kinds, Ethnographical material, drawings and other examples of the Graphic Arts, Manuscripts and Printed Books, Music, Coins and Medals, and Postage Stamps. The Natural History Museum has also contributed a very popular section.

The only criticism of this entertaining and enlightening venture is that it would have been improved by concentrating on Forgeries and leaving out the Deceptive Copies. Few of us, except the specialist, can avoid boredom when confronted with rows of water-colours after Turner, or drawings after Canaletto. Works of the innocent copyist, or the conscientious restorer, even though exploited later by unscrupulous dealers, are in quite a different category to the productions of any forger worthy of the name. We may marvel at the technical skill of copyists, but it is the original and imaginative fakes that are interesting.

Professor Stuart Piggott published his British prehistory in the Home University Library in 1949, and his Neolithic cultures of the British Isles five years later. Now a third of a century later he reviews five new books dealing with pre-Roman Britain, with special reference to early Celtic art (listed below). His comments on the 1921 and 1939 finds from Grimes Graves are intriguing.