The second campaign of excavations in the Athenian Agora, which was begun in January 1932, has produced important results in many fields of art and archaeology. The work is conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and it enjoys the cooperation of the Greek Archaeological Society through the presence on the staff of Professor A. D. Keramopoullos of the University of Athens. During the present season an area of about one and one-half acres, which had been occupied by twenty modern houses, has been cleared by the removal of 10,000 tons of earth.

Archaeology, like anthropology, is a very young science, and like anthropology it has grown at a most astonishing rate. In the true sense it is scarcely a hundred years old, for its birth may be placed about the middle of the last century, unless we are willing to give a rather artificial value to that false dawn which came with the occupation of Egypt by Napoleon. I should rather prefer to say that it begins just about 1850. Layard was excavating at Nineveh in 1845. Boucher de Perthes published his first work on stone implements in 1841; and the entire theory was made known in England in 1858, in the same year that Darwin and Wallace read ‘On the Origin of Species’. Keller's work on lake-dwellings appeared in 1854. Lartet and Christy were doing their chief work in 1861,a nd Pigorini from 1862 onwards. Schliemann's excavations of Troy began in 1870.

Northern China forms an integral part of the north temperate zone of the Old World. It is, moreover, connected with western Asia and eastern Europe by a long but continuous belt of steppe presenting no transverse barriers to migration, whether faunal or human. It cannot, therefore, be treated as a region apart, save in a very limited and subordinate sense.

The surface consists in the main of mountains in the west and of plains in the east. Over much of it lie thick deposits of loess, extending from Chinese Turkistan right across eastern Asia, nearly to the Yellow Sea. These great accumulations of wind-borne soil were most probably formed during times roughly contemporary with the Riss-Wurm glaciation of Europe.

Until a decade or two ago, our knowledge of town-houses in ancient Italy had been obtained almost entirely by digging at Pompeii, and the dwellings uncovered in that town were regarded without question as typical of ancient Roman houses in general. The houses which thus came to be accepted as the pattern, and are still represented as such in English text-books, consisted down to the 2nd century B.C. of rooms arranged round a central atrium, and later, when Hellenistic influences had become paramount in Italy, of a combination of atrium and peristyle, the latter being added in imitation of the άυλή of a Greek house. Of late years, however, the view that these houses were typical of all Italian towns in antiquity has been challenged. The systematic excavation which is going on at Ostia, the ancient port of Rome, has revealed houses very different from those of Pompeii, comprising, not an atrium and peristyle, but many-storeyed blocks of flats, built around a central cortile, in the manner of the casamenti of modern Rome. As a result of these discoveries the pendulum tended to swing to the other extreme and the view gained ground that, if we wish to find a house representative of large cities in antiquity, it is to Ostia rather than to Pompeii that we must look. Confirmation of this view was seen in the discovery of a house of the Ostian type, dating from the 2nd century A.D., on the slope of the Capitol in Rome.

The origin of the British coinage has in recent years broken loose from the tradition of an early 2nd century date. Its date is necessarily dependent upon the dating of the Gaulish coinage from which it is derived ; the link with Gaul has militated against the simpler view of the British coinage which would result from bringing the earliest issues into closer relation with those that bear names of princes known to history. The coinage of Gaul has lost perspective by the attempt to make it span the wide gap between Philip 11 of Macedon and the Roman conquest ; a very slow development of type has been assumed, and devious trade routes have been created to bring the gold stater from Macedon into Gaul.

What particular gadfly drove the Belgae into Britain in the early years of the first century B.C. is hidden from us. The pestiferous Cimbri may have lent their sting; for although, alone of the Gauls, the Belgae had beaten them off along the Seine valley in 103 B.c., these vagabond Teutons and their friends cannot have added to the amenities of a continental existence. Thereafter, at any rate, Belgic ambition turned easily northwards to the familiar and relatively empty coasts of southeastern Britain. With a combined initiative and deliberation that may be imagined to have reflected their mixed Celtic and Teutonic origin, organized Belgic tribes or tribal contingents began to settle along our shores and to penetrate inland along our rivers. When Caesar arrived in 55 B.c., he found them, he tells us, in occupation of ‘the maritime districts’.

Twenty years have gone by since I was first appointed Director of Excavations at Ostia, and I feel that I have devoted the better part of my activity as an archaeologist to the great task of bringing the dead city back to life.

All that was known about Ostia when scientific investigation was first started there was the legendary tale of its foundation at the mouth of the Tiber by Ancus Marcius, fourth King of Rome ; its probable expansion under the republic, although the growth of Pozzuoli and the clogging up of the river’s bed would support the theory of a period of decline for Ostia at that time ; and its tremendous development under the Empire, especially in the second century. Of this there was proof in the vestiges of imperial constructions rising above ground and in the historically ascertained fact that Ostia was Rome’s trading centre and outlet on the sea. Little or nothing was known of the later period of the city, nor of its decline and final disappearance.

During the last few years archaeological research has revealed a remarkable, though not altogether unexpected, view of Stone Age man in Kenya; and at the same time it has been realized that there existed at some period between the Stone Age and medieval times a civilization which has left traces over a large part of East Africa. This civilization appears to be quite distinct from the Stone Age cultures, and there is so far no evidence to connect the two, nor is there any similarity between them. For the Stone Age men lived in caves and unbuilt habitations: while the men whose civilization I shall try to describe built substantial enclosures of stone, dug hut-circles and revetted the walls, made properly engineered roads, and possessed the art of irrigation. This civilization I propose to call ‘Azanian’ in order to distinguish it from the Stone Age cultures and from the Islamic ruins found in certain parts of East Africa. It has been claimed that traces of this civilization, in the shape of roads and irrigation works, occur in Abyssinia, Uganda, Tanganyika and North Rhodesia as well as in Kenya. But the stone enclosure and hut-circle, which to my mind are the distinctive features, have so far been reported only from Kenya and Gala-land (South Abyssinia); though for the present we may assume that the Tanganyika remains also belong to it.

Two hundred and ten years ago ‘ old Stukeley ’, the Archdruid, (then 36 years of age) made a famous discovery on a heath near London—nothing less than one of Julius Caesar’s camps. At least Stukeley liked to think it such, and to embroider his treasure with many fanciful imaginings. ‘Here he received the ambassadors of the Trinobantes, desiring their prince Mandubrace to be restored. . . . Another day came in ambassadors from the Cenimani, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and Cassi’. True to his laudable custom, he made a rough plan of the ’camp‘, which shows that it was, according to his own measurements, 100 by 80 paces, and contained within it another similar enclosure. There was also an irregular eastern annex, 100 paces by 130, designed for the accommodation of the second lot of ambassadors !

During the improvement of the climate of Europe which followed the retreat of the ice at the close of the last glacial period the continent suffered re-invasion by successive waves of immigrating plants at rates determined partly by their natural climatic range and partly by their relative capacity to spread by seeds or by vegetative means. Of this migratory flora the trees are conspicuously important, firstly in that they dominated by their life-form the other components of the vegetation, and secondly in that, being wind-pollinated, they produced vast quantities of pollen which were carried by the wind over wide distances and incorporated in any deposits then forming. In peat and in estuarine and coastal silts particularly, conditions largely inhibited bacterial decay of the spores, the outer membranes of which remain recognizable in microscopic examination. Systematic analysis by the methods introduced by Von Post has now been applied over a large part of Europe and very considerable resemblance is evident in the migratory sequence of forest-types over the whole continent. Since the post-glacial climatic optimum, the climate of the continent has suffered further fluctuations and these are also characterized by regular and well marked changes in the forest-cover of the land as indicated by the fossil pollen-content.

There were two main sources of supply of flint available to early man,–superficial deposits whether in the form of river gravels, sea or lake beaches, or nodules incorporated in surface soils, and deposits beneath the surface of the ground for which it was necessary to mine or quarry. While it is generally true to say that mined flint was of superior quality and more easily worked than the superficial variety it must not be forgotten that the magnificent honey-coloured flint of Grand Pressigny, which in the dawn of the first age of metal was traded to Switzerland, North France, Brittany, Belgium and even Wessex, occurs naturally in the form of surface nodules. In passing it may be observed that the so-called livres de beurre, the most typical product of these Chalcolithic workshops, are technically no more nor less than elongated tortoise-cores from which were struck long flakes with faceted butts. In view of the play that has been made with the presence of ‘Mousterian’ technique in our British mines this is not without its significance.

In 1933 it can hardly be alleged that Prehistory is a useless study, wholely remote from and irrelevant to practical life. In one great country at least, interpretations of supposed facts of Prehistory, imperfectly apprehended by an untrained mind of undoubted genius, have revolutionized the whole structure of society. No one who has read Mein Kampf, or even the extracts therefrom in The Times, can fail to appreciate the profound effect which theories of the racial superiority of ‘Aryans’ have exercised on contemporary Germany. In the name of these theories men are being exiled from public life and shut up in concentration camps, books are being burned and expression of opinions stifled just as, in the name of religious ideas, they were during fifteen long centuries of darkness.

Any child provided with his first pair of compasses essays a row of tangential circles: if he adds a second row touching the first and maybe a third row, he has constructed the geometric basis of the classical Guilloche. The term is sometimes used to cover not only circular bands but crossing ones as well, and interlaced ornament generally.

While the engravers of La Madeleine were working on their bones, and the women sewing skins together with their bone needles, in Egypt and Western Asia the decorative arts were being perfected. Fig. I is a sketch of a motive on the gold-foil covering of a flint knife from a grave of the predynastic period. In Elam this can be matched on a seal with a pair of lions, ‘sejant rampant regardant’, their tails intertwined (fig. 2). A non-representational treatment is seen on an early Sumerian votive plaque (fig. 3). Disregarding its symbolic content, the strictly geometric construction may be noted. This ‘twist’, as a single row of circular bands is termed here, occurs in Cretan art of the 16th century B.C., and later, in Assyrian art. It may be surmised that, with other motives, as the rosette, lotus and palmette (but not the fret), the twist was handed on to the Greeks from the East. It reached Scandinavia, where it is found on hanging bowls, and is seen inlaid in coral at the base of the Gaulish flagon in the British Museum. The lip of that vessel bears a very rare variety of the twist, an angular one.

In his most valuable and stimulating work on The Personality of Britain, Dr Cyril Fox has assembled a large body of archaeological data and has presented an interpretation of the several successive distributions based upon essentially geographical considerations. This theme covers a wide range of topics which interest workers in other fields, none more than geographers. One of the geographer’s main interests lies in the study of Regions, and he may well claim to have been afforded by Dr Fox a most valuable addition to his data, which enables him to push back his study of regional distinctness into earlier periods than those with which history deals. In return, he may hope to contribute something to the interpretation from his own field which embraces analysis of regional physique in all its aspects.

This is not the occasion to discourse of the Art of Lying in general. The subject is too wide for any essay, and the present writer can claim no special competence. Yet, contrary to much generally received opinion, mankind for the most part are extremely bad liars,—not for want of practice, but because of inherent deficiency. This proposition is accepted as axiomatic in the practice of law and in the science of history. Few witnesses can survive a really skilled crossexamination unless they are speaking the truth or a fairly close approximation to it, and the historical witness is in little better case. The difficulties inherent in testimony are immense, but deliberate untruthfulness seldom prevails.

The circumstances of the first production of glass are shrouded in mystery. The ancient authors give us little or no trustworthy information on the subject. Pliny the Elder, our chief authority, tells us a strange tale which is credible neither from the archaeological nor from the technical standpoint. He says that a party of Phoenician saltpetre-merchants landed by the mouth of the river Belus in Phoenicia. They set about lighting a fire to cook a meal, and for want of stones on the beach they took some blocks of saltpetre from their cargo to rest their kettle on. The heat of the fire fused the sand and the saltpetre into a vitreous mass. The story is probably a pure myth. From a technical point of view it is extremely doubtful if an open wood fire on a beach would be sufficient to fuse the sand and the saltpetre ; while from the archaeological standpoint it is certain that glass was known long before the Phoenicians were trading in the Mediterranean. The whole myth is based on the fact that in Pliny's own time—the 1st century A.D.—and for many centuries before, the sands of the Belus were widely used for glass-production. No author anterior in date to Pliny tells us anything at all about the origin of glass ; later authors, even as recently as the middle of the 19th century, for the most part repeat blindly Pliny’s story.