In volume III of ‘The Cambridge Journal’ (1949, 131–47) the present Editor of ‘Antiquity’ wrote an article entitled ‘A defence of prehistory’ in which he referred to ‘the environmentalist school of Fleure and Fox, the hyperdiffusionist school of Elliot Smith, Parry, and Raglan, or the Marxist school of Childe’. Professor Childe wrote a rejoinder which Michael Oakshott, the Editor of ‘The Cambridge Journal’, could not find room to publish. Childe did not publish it elsewhere; there is now a great and continuing interest in his method and theory, and it seemed worth while publishing it at last, 30 years after it was written. Childe died in 1957; ‘The Cambridge Journal’ was short-lived: begun in 1947, it died in 1953.

The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago some 27 miles (43 km) WSW of Land’s End, Cornwall, and lie within an oval area about 12 miles (19km) SW-NE and 5 miles (8km) NW-SE. Five islands (St Mary’s, Tresco, St Martin’s, Bryher and Agnes; Fig. I) are inhabited, most of the permanent population of 2,000-plus being on St Mary’s. Some 40 further smaller isles bear vegetation, several with signs of former occupation, and there are several hundred more descending to mere rocks and reefs. The total exposed land surface at HWNT is c. 3,900 acres (1,600 ha). Scilly is almost entirely granite, the lowlying area between the isles being mainly a fine, white, granite-derived sand. Scilly is also the most southerly detached landmass of Britain and is botanically just within the extreme northern range of various species (Lousley, 1971). The islands are constitutionally quite separate from Cornwall, with a divergent recent social history (best accounts: Matthews, 1960; Gill, 1975). and a separate, only partly Celtic, linguistic one (cf. Thomas, 1979b), relevant here where place-names can reflect physical development. The archaeology of Scilly, first brought to wider notice by Borlase (1756), has long centred around the inordinate number of post-neolithic entrance-grave cairns (Hencken, 1932; Daniel, 1950), and has only recently been accorded a full length study (Ashbee, 1974).

One question fundamental to the interpretation of the elaborate sceptre found at Sutton Hoo is why whetstone should have been chosen as its material. Too heavy for convenience, yet neither rare nor intrinsically beautiful, why was this substance thought appropriate for such an important item of regalia? The interpretation so far has been that it symbolized the king as war-leader, ‘the forger, giver and master of the swords of his followers’. While this is undoubtedly an attractive and appropriate interpretation, it lacks literary confinnation; I would therefore like to put forward an alternative (or supplementary) hypothesis based on the evidence of certain passages in Old Icelandic writings where whetstones are mentioned in a mythical context, or are described as being used in non-realistic circumstances suggestive of ritual. Despite their late date, Icelandic sources have often cast valuable light on Germanic religion.

The principal fact to emerge in recent years is the antiquity of the first neolithic cultures in the western Mediterranean. Listed below (Table I) are radiocarbon dates from sites with impressed ware (occasionally, in southern Italy, associated with painted pottery).

There are thus quite a number of dates available. The three seventh-millennium dates are questionable: the Coppa Nevigata date (6200 bc) has often been criticized; the Cap Ragnon date (6020 bc) is certainly too early; and the Velderpino date (6000 bc) remains to be confirmed. The same is true of the Camprafaud date (5950 bc). The sixth-millennium dates are more numerous and come from southern Italy, Corsica, Provence, Languedoc and even Spain (Los Grajos). But without doubt the main bulk is provided by the fifth-millennium dates which convince by their sheer numbers (more than 50). The fifth millennium was the Golden Age of the impressed ware groups of the West Mediterranean.

Mr Garfitt is a Consultant Forester. He has been forestry adviser to large landed estates all over England and Wales from 1946 when he left the Royal Indian Navy. Before that he followed a degree in Forestry at Oxford by six years in the Colonial Forest Service (Malaya). Mr Garfitt says that his work involves intensive inspection of woodland and provides opportunities for the discovery of earthworks and artifacts. He is interested primarily in the prehistoric periods because of the opportunities they provide for imaginative reconstruction, as those who read on will discover. Mr Garfitt lives at The Swedish House, Spring Hill, Nailsworth, Stroud, Glos. GL6 0LX.

Keith Branigan, Professor of Prehistory and Archaeology in the University of Sheffield, has written for us a review article on Doro Levi's massive excavation report on his excavations at the palace of Phaistos in Crete: Festos e la Civilta Minoica I, i and II, ii (Incunabula Graeca LX. Institute for Mycenean and Aegeo-Anatolian Studies: Rome, 1976. 864 pp., 86 col. pls., 248 black-and-white pls., 1,214 figs., 39 plans. Lire 250,000; £162). Professor Branigan was one of only two Britons who had the opportunity to supervise excavations at Phaistos under Professor Levi's direction. In his review here, he concentrates his discussion on the problems of the first Minoan palaces, in the light of the Phaistos excavations.

Dr Jan Albert Bakker, of the Albert Egges van Giffen Instituut voor Prae-en Protohistorie, University of Amsterdam, presents us with what he has called, in a letter to the Editor, ‘an article on sixteenth-century Stonehenge drawings, partly well-known, partly not’. His main concern is with the Flemish painter Lucas de Heere's drawing and description of Stonehenge. Published in 1937 by two Dutchmen, it is perhaps fitting that it has taken a third, in Dr Bakker, to draw the attention of British archaeologists to what they have overlooked for more than 40 years. Dr Bakker, who has excavated and studied hunebeds and their contents in Drenthe, was stimulated by Professor Piggott's ‘Ruins in a landscape: essays on antiquarianism’ to study the authorship and the nature of the L.D.H. drawing of Stonehenge. Dr Bakker would like to express his gratitude to Miss Linda Therkorn, Amsterdam, for assistance in preparing this article in English.

The subject of this article, ‘Rattus rattus’ (Linnaeus, 1758), or the black rat, has, in Mr Rackham's estimation, considerable archaeological importance, especially in view of recent discussions on plague and the end of Roman Britain, and subsequent plagues of the Anglo-Saxon period. We learn that some recent finds suggest a Roman date for the introduction of the black rat into Britain. Mr Rackham is a Senior Research Assistant in the Biological Laboratory, Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, with a research interest in late Pleistocene vertebrate fauna. Current work in the Department involves the environmental analysis, particularly zoological, of archaeological sites of all periods in the northern five counties of England.