Among the more obscure aspects of polar research the problem of the appearance off Scotland of kayaks of Eskimo type is one of the most formidable. A These craft, one of which has certainly survived, normally become waterlogged after about forty-eight hours in the water. How then were they brought to the British Isles, and by whom?

Apparently the earliest reference to their appearance off the Scottish coast is that of the Rev. James Wallace, Minister of Kirkwall, Orkney, who wrote about 1688 in his Description of the Isles of Orkney:

‘Sometime about this Country are seen these Men which are called Finnmen; In the year 1682 one was seen sometime sailing, sometime Rowing up and down in his little Boat at the south end of the Isle of Eda, most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they adventured to put out a Boat with men to see if they could apprehend him, he presently fled away most swiftly: And in the year 1684, another was seen from Westra, and for a while after they got few or no Fishes; for they have this Remark here, that these Finnmen drive away the fishes from the place to which they come.

‘These Finnmen seem to be some of these people that dwell about the Fretum Davis [Davis Straits].… One of their Boats sent from Orkney to Edinburgh is to be seen in the Physitians hall, with the Oar and the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish’.

In the autumn of 1953, with the support of the Archaeological Society of Athens, work I was continued in the LM II cemetery at Katsaba east of Heracleion. Test-trenches led to the finding of four tombs (T, ∆, E, Z) cut in the rock close to the other two (A, B), which in 1951 produced the alabaster amphora of Thutmose III. One of the new tombs had been robbed, but the other three yielded many finds. Of outstanding significance was Tomb Z ; it contained three bodies in wooden coffins, and a group of vases (PLATE VII), of which the most important were a bridge-spouted jug with patterns of birds and fish, a beaked jug with papyrus-flowers, and a three-handled amphora of the Palace Style with representations of the boars’-tusk helmet (PLATE VIII). A preliminary report of the excavation is given in the ‘’ 1953. The representations of the helmet are important enough to become the subject of a separate article in ANTIQUITY.

During recent years, writers in this Journal and elsewhere have been much concerned with forms of archaeological field-research which do not in themselves involve actual excavation. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to one in particular of these : namely the regional surveys of mounds which, in the Middle East, have gained so much usefulness and significance during the past two decades. Reference will be made to the complementary relationship between surface-explorer and excavator, especially insofar as it would appear to have been emphasised by a recent instance of their collaboration. This was in the case of a mound-survey in southern Anatolia, undertaken by Mr J. Mellaart, sometime Scholar of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, which led to the discovery of the site called Beycesultan and its excavation by the same Institute in the spring of 1954.

We receive a constant stream of publications of archaeological societies, issued by national and provincial bodies in various countries, with requests to notice them in ANTIQUITY. Much as we should like to do so, it is not possible as a regular practice for all sorts of reasons, chiefly lack of space. Itre also receive many requests to exchange them for ANTIQUITY, and these too we are obliged to refuse; this is an obvious mutual convenience for societies which have libraries, but ANTIQUITY is not a society and we cannot pay the printer’s bill with anything but money. Nevertheless we try occasionally to make up by an omnibus notice, and this is one them. We can only hope that in this way some small assistance may be given to those whose ultimate objectives are, like ours, the advancement and diffusion of knowledge.

IRAQ, Vol. XV, part I, Spring 1953, is the organ of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (founded in memory of Gertrude Bell) and issued from 20 Wilton St., London. The first work is devoted to Professor Mallowan’s usual prompt and workmanlike account of his excavations, this time at Nimrud (Kalhou) in 1952. One of the ivories had a cruciform symbol which looks remarkably like a late survival of the (Cretan) ‘horns of consecration’ and double-axe. R. W. Hamilton publishes some fine Umayyad carved plaster of the 8th century from Khirbat a1 Mafjar in the Jordan valley, and deals generally with the origins, history and extent of this art, in which several different traditions converged to create a new and easily recognizable style. M. V. Seton Williams describes painted pottery made in parts of Turkey and North Syria between c. 1900 and c. 1550 B.C., some of which has Persian cognates. R. Maxwell-Hyslop writes about bronze lugged axe- or adze-blades, also called Trunnion Celts, for which an Anatolian origin early in the 2nd millennium is suggested. Later the type may have spread westwards and northwestwards through Mycenaean trade.