The archaeology of Palestine, though far less spectacular than that of its neighbours, Egypt and Iraq, can always rely on a certain public outside the circle of specialists. Even the most uninspiring potsherds, if they are dug up in Jericho or Samaria, are invested with a certain glamour by their association with Joshua or Ahab, and the hope of unearthing the Ark of the Covenant or the tomb of David has inspired more than one forlorn venture. Until recent years, however, the Stone Age of Palestine, which receives no adventitious help from association with the Bible, has suffered from neglect. It is true that a considerable amount of surface material was collected, and the names of Pére Germer-Durand, Pére Vincent, Pére Mallon and Dr Paul Karge stand out as pioneers of prehistoric studies in this region, but until 1925 no systematic excavation had taken place. Ten years ago an article on the prehistory of Palestine would have been a very brief affair; today it is difficult to compress into a limited space all there is to say, so rich has this small country proved in the short time that excavation has been carried out.

‘That which hath wings shall tell the matter’, says the Preacher. Readers of Antiquity do not need to be reminded of the fresh connotation which aerial photography has given to the text, but never before has its truth been so convincingly driven home as it is by the latest achievement of archaeological aviation. It may be said at once that this account of the Eastern frontier is one of the most important and illuminating contributions ever made to the unwritten history of the Roman Empire. Incidentally, as M. Cumont points out in his lucid and appreciative introduction, its usefulness as a guide for future explorers can hardly be over-estimated. Hundreds of miles of a terra incognita have been thoroughly reconnoitred, so that exponents of the older and less spectacular methods now know exactly where it will profit them to ply the spade and pick. And it is certain that their reward will be rich. Though the sandstorms of the desert may bury, they are in other respects far less destructive than cultivation. In course of time the wonders of Dura-Europos will be repeated or, it may be, eclipsed at other sites. Scholars will then be able to reconstruct with confidence the whole organization of the army of the East, a subject that has hitherto been well-nigh hopelessly obscure. A flood of new light will be thrown on the relations of Rome, first to the Parthians, and then to the Sassanians. At long last we shall learn something of the losing battle which Roman civilization had to fight when it was transplanted to a Semitic countryside, studded here and there with Hellenic towns, —something, that is, of the gradual process by which the legions of the West were slowly but surely transformed into a host of Orientals.

The face of the country is the most important historical document that we possess. Upon the map of England-‘ that marvellous palimpsest ’—is written much of English history : written in letters of earth and stone, of bank and ditch, of foliage and crop. As is the case with every map, the writing is not such as he that runs may read. It needs patience to discover, knowledge to decipher, insight, sometimes amounting to genius, to interpret. But the writing is there, all else awaits the competence of the reader.

It is a matter for surprise that none but the vaguest idea can be gleaned from ancient writers of the appearance or plan of an ordinary farm-house in the ancient world. Cato, Varro, Columella, the Elder Pliny, and Palladius describe with varying degrees of detail the kind of site on which such a house might most suitably be built and the type of rooms required for those who inhabit it. They indicate the uses to which the various portions of the house were put (villa urbana, villa rustica, willa fructuaria) but none of them thought it necessary to describe methodically the lay-out of the house as a whole. Varro mentions incidentally a ‘cohors’ (cortile or farm-yard) and states that on a large farm it is more convenient to have two such areas, one for the kitchen and tool-sheds, the other for live-stock. Varro's remark is vague enough, but the notices of other writers are even vaguer. The younger Pliny sets out to give a detailed description of his Laurentine villa, but the attempts of modern scholars to reconstruct the plan of the villa from Pliny's description have produced the most varied results and shown the futility of the quest.

Of all the prehistoric periods yet distinguished in Western Europe the Neolithic has suffered the hardest fate. Having in the past enjoyed a seemingly secure and important position in the field of prehistory, with an estimated duration of several thousand years, this unfortunate period has of late been so assailed before and behind that its very existence has been called in question. In Britain, however, recent researches seem to have rescued our Neolithic from complete extinction by the encroaching Mesolithic and Bronze Ages, and given it an established position once more, albeit a more humble one than it occupied in its days of undue inflation. Because it has become better understood, an epoch to which formerly thousands of yearswere allocated is now limited to hundreds.

Praxiteles worked from perhaps about 370 B.C. to about 330 B.C. : he was a prolific sculptor, both in bronze and marble. To him was ascribed the chief part in the introduction of a psychological interest into Greek statues, whereby they became individual rather than typical : he exaggerated the slimness and the curvature of the human body, and employed in a certain measure the technique of impressionism. These general characteristics were long recognized in a number of copies of his works, which were much appreciated by the Romans.

About A.D. 174 Pausanias, compiling his guide-book to Greece, visited Olympia and saw there in the Heraeum a marble group which he described as a ‘Hermes carrying the infant Dionysos : the work of Praxiteles’. This is the only reference in ancient literature to such a work by that sculptor.

The storied name which stands at the head of this paper has an immense range of association and interest. Lest the gentle reader be frightened at the outset by too extensive a prospect let us define at once the limits we have set to our present inquiry.

There is a knowledge of Britain that is characteristic of this and the last century. It is a knowledge founded on the results of numberless excavations on surveys of roads, forts and cities, on intensive study of stratification and of the evidence hidden in broken pots and half obliterated coins. It is a knowledge that must have made up a remarkable whole in the mind of a scholar like the late Professor Haverfield; that still makes up such a whole in the minds of a handful of scholars still living today. For most of us this knowledge is only to be gained at second-hand from the summarized reports of the experts; at best we may be able to add a personal acquaintance with some small part of the subject. It is a knowledge that advances progressively and comprises most of the hope for the future.

The progress of archaeology in Britain, as elsewhere, depends on excavation. This is a commonplace; but a more leisurely approach to that final arbitrament than is usually adopted would, we think, be advantageous. Until an area is studied, its visible antiquities planned, the evidence afforded by their geographical and topographical relationships weighed, the natural environmental conditions—forest and open country—assessed, and resultant possibilities discussed, the selection of particular sites for excavation in that area is premature. The following account of a field survey of a limited area in Glamorgan is a practical expression of this point of view.

One of the outstanding problems of British archaeology and perhaps the most important of those which still await solution, is that involved in the revival of Celtic and La T h e motives in 7th century art. This question has been discussed in various recent publications by Dr Mahr, Mr Kendrick and Dr Wheeler. So far however there is no sign of ultimate agreement. With this question is bound up the origins of that Irish Christian art which had so spectacular a blooming in such objects as the Books of Durrow and Kells, the high crosses of Monasterbois and Clonmacnoise and the Tara brooch.

Columba was the virtual founder of the Church of Scotland, and the life by his successor Adamnan has almost the authority of a contemporary document. The author naturally extols the prowess of his hero ; and it is by no means easy to discern the real man through the hagiographical haze that now surrounds him. Opinions have differed widely, but all are agreed that he was quick-tempered. ‘Primitive Irish ecclesiastics, and especially the superior class, commonly known as Saints, were very impatient of contradiction, and very resentful of injury. Excommunication, fasting against, and cursing, were in frequent employment, and inanimate as well as animate objects are represented as the subject of their maledictions. St. Columba, who seems to have inherited the high bearing of his race, was not disposed to receive injuries, or even afionts, in silence. Adamnan relates (Lib. 11, cap. 22) how he pursued a plunderer with curses, following the retiring boat into the sea until the water reached to his knees. We have an account (Lib. 11, cap. 20) also of his cursing a miser who neglected to extend hospitality to him.

Many years ago, when searching for accounts of cremations which might illustrate those described by Homer, I came across a paper by the late Dr Joseph Anderson, entitled ‘ Ceremonies at the Incremation of a Norse Chief ’, read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1872. A large part of it consists of a translation, apparently the only one in English, of the narrative of an Arab, Ahmad bin Fudhlan, who early in the 10th century visited a Scandinavian settlement on the Volga and there witnessed the cremation of the body of a chief. Though it attracted much attention at the time and is of great intrinsic interest, Anderson’s paper is now virtually unknown, and except for Orientalists the important Arab document is available only in Holmboe’s Danish version, from which Anderson made his translation, and in Fraehn’s German translation of 1823, As Anderson’s translation was not made from the Arabic, was slightly expurgated, and is not very accessible, it seems worth while to publish a new translation made from the original text by Miss Charis Waddy. This was originally intended to form an appendix to an article on cremation in the Aegaean area and in Homer which had appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, but proved to be too long. I am grateful for the opportunity of publishing it, almost simultaneously, in Antiquity, for it supports the point which I sought to establish, viz. : that for all the glamour thrown over it by Homer, cremation of the dead is naturally associated with a somewhat barbaric culture, and in the case of the Greeks was mainly practised at an early date and by the more backward members of the race.

It is not often that lost works of two famous writers can be recovered simultaneously, and recognized without mention of the name of either on the monument they adorned. But in Hesperia, the Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (II.4, 1933, p. 480 ff.), Dr James H. Oliver has made out a good case for the identification of epigrams composed by Simonides and by Aeschylus to commemorate those Athenians who fell at Marathon.

As long ago as 1855 the Greek scholar A. R. Rhangabé published a fragmentary inscription found in a courtyard off Hadrian Street. There were four lines of verse, two at the top of the dressed front of the block, two engraved subsequently across the panel of pecked dressing, which had been smoothed away to receive them : the letters were however in the same style, though rather rougher, so the additional lines must have been cut very soon after the stone was erected. As the word ‘Persians’ occurred in the later inscription (and, as now seems possible, also in the earlier) the monument must have belonged to the period of the Persian Wars, and with this date the style of the letters agrees.

Windy Jaca, up on its terrace, its back to the snowy Colorado, is especially connected with that disastrous forerunner of the Spanish revolution, which coming to premature birth ended in premature death. We may see there the Street of the Martyrs, renamed by a Republic, born after all without bloodshed, in memory of its first blood sacrifice. Yet in spite of its rather red modernity, little Jaca still cherishes rags and tatters of tradition, and up there on its chilly height a local thaumaturgical goddess holds as much sway as she would in Andalusia. On the 25th of June the town celebrates its feast in honour of Santa Orosia. That is the moment to see the old Jaca behaving as it did before its seventeen towers came down, and its encircling walls were laid flat.

The interest of the State in the ancient monuments and civilizations of Britain is recent in origin and limited in extent. It is the purpose of this paper to trace in outline the growth of State interest, the limits of State control at the present time, and the main lacunae which appear to exist in the mechanism for the preservation of our national antiquities. Before embarking on this topic it might be well to point out the two chief reasons why, before 1882, the State undertook little or no responsibility within a sphere now generally recognized as the proper concern of any civilized state. In the first place the study of British Archaeology has only within the last fifty years reached a degree of accuracy and discipline worthy of the expenditure of public funds; it is of the utmost significance in this connexion that the first scientific British archaeologist, General Pitt-Rivers, was appointed as first Inspector of Ancient Monuments under the Act of 1882.