The Centopietre at Patù, 60 km. south of Leece (FIG. I ) is one of the most extraordinary ancient monuments in south-east Italy. It is asmall rectangular structurewith ashlarwalls and a pitched roof, built entirely ofstone. Several accounts of the Centopietre are available in Italian, notably those of Pasquale Maggiulli, who produced the first rational discussion of the building in 1912 [I], and Professor Adriano Prandi, who published the results of a detailed investigation in 1961 [2]. However, as far as we know, no account has ever appeared in English. Discussion of the Centopietre has produced two distinct hypotheses. The first, advanced by Maggiulli, holds that it is protohistoric and was built in a style derived from the Greeks; the second, argued at length by Professor Prandi, contends that it is medieval. This article describes the Centopietre and suggests that the earlier date is more likely to be correct. We reach this conclusion by relating the structure to three other monuments in the Terra d'otranto, the Cisternale at Vitigliano and the 'megalithic' tombs which formerly existed at Uggiano la Chiesa and Muro Leccese. None of these monuments has ever been regarded as medieval and we suggest that the group as a whole belongs to the Messapian Iron Age.

The first year's work was to be primarily field survey to locate and test sites. Any sites found in construction areas of the dams were to be excavated at once. Plans for the second year would see two parties in the field for a part of the season, one continuing with detailed survey and the second with excavation of sites. The third year would operate with one field party.

Headquarters, laboratory, and storage facilities are located at Pimai (see Map, FIG. I), the site of an extensive Khmer site, the central ruins of which are in the process of reconstruction by the Fine Arts Department. The field season, determined by the end and the beginning of the rainy season, runs from about the middle of October to the middle of May. It is hoped that during the rainy season all laboratory work and research will be completed on the materials collected during the field season and the final report for that season in the press before starting the next season in the field.

Corsica is now, without any doubt, regarded in the Mediterranean as 'the island of statue-menhirs'. These Corsican monumental statues are 2 to 3 m. in heightwell above the size of a normal human beingand are the work of artists belonging to the last phase of the island's megalithic culture which we would date from the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. [I]: These statue-menhirs of which at least 60 are now known from all over the island, are almost all of a very hard granite: all were worked without the use of metal tools. Since the first publication of the important site of Filitosa [2] there have been many excavations, and we can now see clearly the succession of cultures in prehistoric Corsica, and particularly the succession and interrelation of the two important cultures which interest all prehistorians so much, namely the Megalithic Culture, that is to say the culture of the builders of the megaliths, and the Torrean Culture, that is to say the builders of the torre or stone towers. This latter, the civilisation torrknne as it is described in French, was entirely unknown in Corsica before 1954. The author has now excavated and studied ten sites of the Torrean cultures-cult-sites, fortified towers, and living sites-of which at least a hundred are known south of a line from Ajaccio to Solenzara [3].

Mr. A. H. S. Megaw, Director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, reports: Excavation was resumed in the summer of 1965 on all three sites currently assigned to the School for investigation: a Neolithic settlement in the Cyclades (the first such to be systematically excavated), a Minoan settlement in Kythera, and an important Bronze Age site in Euboea which continued in occupation until the Geometric period. At the first two the planned excavations have been completed. At Saliagos, an islet near Antiparos, Professor J. D. Evans (London) and Dr A. C. Renfrew (Cambridge) in their final campaign identified three phases of Neolithic occupation, homogeneous in culture, and, pending confirmation by the C14 method, at present assigned to the early 4th millennium B.C. (PL. XVII~T).h e central building complex of the last phase was found to be enclosed by a perimeter wall, over I m. thick at one corner, to which a semicircular bastion-like structure gave the impression of defensive purpose. Wellstratified deposits exceeding 2 m. in depth yielded more of the characteristic pottery (with usually rectilinear decoration in white paint on a dark burnished surface) and more evidence of a rich chipped stone industry, chiefly of Melian obsidian, Two fragments of marble vessels and a schematic 'violin-idol' are noteworthy local antecedents for the Early Cycladic marble industry. An incomplete marble figurine of a fat seated woman was also found, of the type familiar from finds in Naxos and in mainland Greece. The principal domesticated animal attested was the sheep and there is little evidence of wild species. The preserved grain included emmer, einkorn and two-row barley, while over 40 species of marine molluscs were recorded.

Proposals that Stonehenge was con- structed as an astronomical observatory [1, 2, 3] with the purpose of predicting eclipses [4, 5] imply that the builders of Stonehenge, even Stonehenge I, were possessed of a degree of intellectual sophistication that seems inconsistent with the usual picture of the population of S. England in the and millennium B.C. Either the people were not just primitive farmers or these proposals must be substantially in error. It is not the purpose of this paper to attempt a decision between these alternatives but to explain the nature of the astronomical arguments in more detail than has been done heretofore. My hope is that with a moderate effort it will be possible for the reader to rework the calculations on which the astronomical suggestions have been based; for only when archaeologists and astronomers have understood each other's arguments can we expect to resolve this intriguing dilemma. At several places in the discussion I shall quote the solution of mathematical problems, thereby permitting the whole discussion to be confined to simple trigonometry. These few places will be marked by an asterisk. The reader wishing to cover these gaps will need to consult a text on spherical astronomy, e.g. [6].

The study of strip lynchets is one which has been sporadically carried out by many people for the last 70 to 80 years. Recently there has been an increase of interest in this field with the result that much more is now known about their purpose and construction. However all this work has not produced any general agreement on their date. There is no dispute that they were cultivated in the medieval period, but while some workers have seen them as medieval, others have suggested their origins lie in the Roman or Iron Age period.

On the periphery of the cuneiform using area there was in use in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. a number of non-cuneiform scripts of apparently independent character and purely regional use (see map, FIG. I). My purpose in this article is to speculate on the possibility of their common origin. I shall not apologize for this as I believe hypothesis-making to be a useful occupation, but I must in fairness warn the reader that not only am I myself an outsider since my special interest concerns only one of the writing systems I shall be discussing (the Aegean), but so is the horse I am going to back. Diffusionism is out of favour, and despite a recent series of articles by Brice [I] pointing out the similarities between the Cretan and proto-Elamite accounting tablets, the odds currently offered are decidedly against my choice.* But I think the bookmakers are wrong, and my purpose in this article is to say why.

First I must explain that my fancy has not been taken by external markings. These are unreliable. The number of simple linear designs is limited, and it is nowadays generally agreed that a small proportion of apparent identities between the signs of different scripts can tell us nothing. The descent of our alphabet from Phoenician is not proved by the close resemblance of our capital i to their zed, nor is the common form of the Russian cursive d to our cursive g any argument for the common ancestry of our two scripts. Conversely the different appearances of, say Armenian printing, Pompeian graffiti, and Gothic handwriting are no disproof of cousinhood. The only observations from the outward look of scripts that can usefully be made are those that have reference to the structure of the writing system as a whole.

The first indication of the 3rd temple's existence appears in the work of the 3rdcentury author Solinus. Writing of Britain he describes the hot springs, evidently at Bath, which he says are presided over by Minerva, in whose temple burns a perpetual fire. The work of Solinus was known to Geoffrey of Monmouth, from whom the idea of the existence of the temple passed into the minds of medieval historians. By the time of the later topographers, Camden, Guidott and Stukeley, the tradition was firmly established and it was further believed that the Temple lay beneath the Abbey church.

The first major archaeological discoveries were made in the autumn of 1790, when the western part of the Pump Room, fronting on to Stall Street, was rebuilt [I]. The new foundations, dug to a depth of 12 ft., were laid upon a Roman pavement and during the work a large quantity of sculptured stonework was recovered, including parts of two major monuments, the Pediment and the Faqade of the Four Seasons. In addition a flight of steps was noted, but no precise details or locations were recorded. Englefield, who visited the works at the time, informs us that on the Roman structures 'the foundation of the present new buildings is laid; and it will of course be for a long time covered from future excavations' [2]. In December 1964. during the recent series of research excavations,. the steps and part of the paving were again uncovered.

The neolithic pottery of peninsular Italy is known in England chiefly through Stevenson's classic paper of 1947 which established the sequence of styles in Apulia, and the Sicilian material through the work of Bernabò Brea [I]. Neither of these studies paid much attention to the Abruzzo-Molise region where Rellini had published material from Ripoli as long ago as 1934 [2] and where more recent work by Radmilli and his associates has provided new information about the local neolithic cultures. Excavations along the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia have led to the definition of the new cultures of Hvar and Danilo, and three painted ware provinces can now be recognized: ApuIia-Sicily, the Abruzzo, and Dalmatia. All three regions border the Adriatic and each was at some time in contact with the others (FIG. I).

The best starting-point is still south Italy where the sequence from impressed ware, through red-painted fasce larghe plus scratched, to black-bordered red bands (Capri) and finally Serra d'Alto remains valid, except in the region of Foggia where Trump has established a rather different local sequence [3].

First I have a think, and then I draw a line around my think.' Those words, which were said by a child, offer the key to draughtsmanship. That key is usually lost during the business of growing up, and has to be rediscovered. To regain the clear uninhibited vision of what drawing is really about, the adult as often as not has to rid himself of various irrelevant and confused notions. That done, he can once more draw as naturally as he speaks. Mental attitude is immeasurably more important a matter than the relative merits of this and that method of delivering ink to paper, and must be considered at the outset. The cases of Rapidograph versus Graphos and Hand- Drawn versus Letraset, with all their delicious technicalities, will be heard later.

The present dispute over the date of the of the Linear B tablets found at Knossos has been, for the most part, concerned with the question whether they belong to an LM II/IIIA I destruction of the Palace, which Evans dated about 1400 B.c., or to the end of the LM IIIB period, some 150 or more years later, when Evans believed that the Palace ruins were only partly reoccupied [I]. To many archaeologists, however, the problem is a different one. For them the evidence of the pottery and of the sealings associated with the burning of the Palace and with the baking of its clay archives makes the later dating of the tablets impossible. Their concern is rather to determine more exactly when in the 14th century the destruction took place.

The greatest help towards answering this question will come from a closer definition of the style of pottery in use at the time of the catastrophe. The author has been working on this problem over the last three years by studying the considerable amount of unpublished sherd material in the Stratigraphical Museum established by Evans at Knossos. A comprehensive publication of this material will of necessity take some time to complete. Meanwhile it is hoped that it would be generally helpful to illustrate some eight of the pots which the author has been able to have reconstructed from these sherds; at the same time it is proposed briefly to outline the circumstances in which they were originally found according to the excavation reports.

In recent years there have appeared a number of books about the Etruscans. These have for the most part been devoted to Etruscan art and culture of the historical period, and touch only lightly on the so-called mystery of Etruscan origins. This mystery is a peculiar thing, for no one regards the origin of other ancient peoples such as the Greeks or the Romans as mysterious. It is simply assumed that they developed where they are found at the beginning of history out of various prehistoric elements that had already arrived.

The Etruscan mystery arises in part from the remarkable differences both in language and in civilization between the Etruscans and the other peoples of pre-Roman Italy. The ancients also speculated about it, and the puzzle is in part due to contradictory statements made by them. Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. said that the Etruscans came from Lydia, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 1st century B.C. said that they did not come from anywhere but originated in Italy. The aim of much discussion in recent times has been to determine which was right. I should say at once that it seems to me that there is something in both views. But the statement of Herodotus can hardly be taken literally, since there is insufficient specific connexion between the ancient language and culture of Lydia and anything in Etruria. I shall return to that part of the story later.