The most original and useful contributions that I may have made to prehistory are certainly not novel data rescued by brilliant excavation from the soil or by patient research from dusty museum cases, nor yet well founded chronological schemes nor freshly defined cultures, but rather interpretative concepts and methods of explanation. So it is the genesis and development of these to which this autobiographical note is devoted.

Like Gustav Kossinna I came to prehistory from comparative philology; I began the study of European archaeology in the hope of finding the cradle of the Indo-Europeans and of identifying their primitive culture. Reading my Homer and my Veda with the guidance of Schrader and Jevons, Zimmer and Wilamowitz-Moellendorf I was thrilled by the discoveries of Evans in Prehellenic Crete and of Wace and Thompson in Prehistoric Thessaly. Indeed I hoped to find archaeological links between the latter area and some tract north of the Balkans whence similar links might lead also to Iran and India.

A YEAR before the first number of ANTIQUITY appeared, its founder reviewed a new publication for the Antiquaries Journal. ‘This book,’ he began, ‘is the most important of its kind that has hitherto been published…. Never before has the whole field of European origins been surveyed by a specialist who can also generalize, who writes clearly and intelligibly, and who is apparently familiar with all European languages. Its publication brings us appreciably nearer to the ultimate goal of our study.’

Crawford saw that Gordon Childe’s The Dawn of European Civilization, in its first edition of 1925, marked the beginning of a new era in archaeological studies in this country. I suspect that he was one of the very few British prehistorians at that time who realized the fact and appreciated the implications. More than thirty years later a revised sixth edition has been published, appearing almost simultaneously with the tragic news of the author’s death in his native Australia. For a full generation The Dawn, as we have all affectionately called it, has been with us, the indispensable reference-book for student, teacher and interested layman, our Ariadne-clue in the labyrinth of Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age Europe.

The peloponnesus came so near to being a true island (Island of Pelops) that the neck of land (FIG. I) which joins it to the northern half of the Greek peninsula is less than five miles wide. This became a natural crossroads of the Greek world. Several routes converging on this landbridge connected the Peloponnesus with the rest of Greece. Communications by sea between the east and the west, through the Saronic and the Corinthian Gulfs, were interrupted by the Isthmus, and attempts were made early to pierce or overleap the barrier. The southern sea-lane encircling the Peloponnesus was much longer, and weather conditions made the journey hazardous. For this reason cargoes were unloaded at the two harbours, Kenkreai on the Saronic and Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf, and carried by land across the Isthmus. Naval vessels, and perhaps the empty freight carriers, were transported over a paved roadway called Diolkos. The western end of this portage has long been recognized on the Peloponnesian side of the Corinth Canal, and recently longer stretches of pavement have been laid bare on both sides of the Canal. The Diolkos here did not run straight but ascended the steep slope in great sweeping curves (FIG. I and PLATE IX (c) ). The pavement has a width of 3-50-5 m. and is made with large poros blocks well fitted together. Two deep ruts, 1-50 m. apart, show that the ships were hauled on wheeled cradles, not on rollers, as was formerly assumed. The excavation, conducted by the Archaeological Service of the Greek Government, is still in progress, and the exact course across the Isthmus will not be known before this work is completed.

The middest of this shire [Wiltshire] which for the most part lieth plain and even, is divided athwart from East to West, with a dyke of wonderful1 work, cast up for many miles together in length: the people dwelling thereabout call it Wansdyke, which upon an error generally received, they talk and tell to have been made by the Divell upon a Wednesday.’ So wrote John Aubrey in 1663 in his Monumenta Britannica and, since his day, Wansdyke, one of the two mightiest linear earthworks of ancient Britain—the other is Offa’s Dyke—has rightly attracted the admiration and speculation of innumerable antiquaries (PLATE X (a) ).

Dr gordon has, in my opinion, not begun to prove his case and it is difficult to know where to begin its refutation. In at least one major respect the two articles he has written in ANTIQUITY disagree with each other. In the first article (ANTIQUITY XXXI, 124) the frequent sign L 98 was taken (on the basis of the similarity of the Linear B sign) to represent ku or gu. With the help of this value three words have been recognized as Semitic. But in the second article (ANTIQUITY XXXI, 237) the value of the sign is stated as an unknown ‘X’, and then, in order to make it possible to identify a word for ‘cumulative total’ as the Akkadian kitmuru, it is allotted the sound mu. We are not told what we must now think of two other words previously identified on the assumption that the sign stood for ku. Nor is it made clear on what grounds one may pick and choose among the phonetic values of the Linear B signs. L 98 is certainly the same sign as the Linear B 81 ku; L 22 is the same sign as the Linear B 2 ro. Why are we justified in assuming that the one phonetic value is transferable and not the other? This point is quite fundamental in any attempt to decipher Linear A by using the Linear B phonetic values, but Gordon ignores it completely. And not only here. By identifying the supposed word for ‘cumulative total℉ as kitmuru, he commits himself to the value ki for the first sign L 21. As this sign hardly, if ever, occurs elsewhere he cannot check his assumption, though it compels him to alter the value of L 103 (= Linear B 67 ki) to ku (para. 6, p. 239). Allotting the value tu to L 39 in the same word leads to a similar difficulty, since the value tu is already occupied by L 6 (accepted by Gordon in the first article, para. 10).

The significance of the find lies both in its size and in its spanning of the late 9th and early 10th centuries, a period earlier than that embraced by the very few other Late Saxon hoards from this area. Its importance is further enhanced by the fact that it is believed to have been recovered in its entirety, whereas a majority of hoards of this period are feared to have suffered some dispersal at least before they could be recorded and assessed by numismatists.

The new hoard has come to light in the grounds of Wymondham College in the parish of Morley St Peter some twelve miles south-west of Norwich (Nat. Grid. 62/076984). During January 1958 trenches were dug for new foundations, but heavy snow impeded progress, and its melting caused the side of one trench to collapse. When two bricklayers began to clean up the trench on the morning of 27 January, fragments of a broken pot and a shower of silver ‘discs’ fell into the trench between them at a depth of 2 ft. 3 in. To the finders the coins looked like ‘mineral-water bottle caps’, but the men noticed that some bore a portrait, and sought the help of one of the masters at the College. He at once appreciated their importance, and, suspecting that they were Saxon coins, conveyed 874 of them to the headmaster, Mr R. V. Metcalfe, who promptly telephoned news of the discovery to the Castle Museum, Norwich.

The long barrow at Nutbane, Penton Grafton, Andover, Hants, was excavated during the autumn of 1957 by the writer on behalf of the Andover History Group. The barrow (map reference SU 330495) was not included in the map of Neolithic Wessex and had only been discovered two or three years previously, when the attention of Ordnance Survey officers was drawn to its presence.

The barrow had been considerably denuded by ploughing over many years. It is built along the contour of a gentle slope, part of the gradual incline from the chalk ridge five miles to the north down to the valley of the Anton River two miles to the south. It is orientated East-West, with the higher and broader end to the east.

Ghirza is the site of a Roman frontier settlement in the pre-desert zone of Tripolitania in North Africa, 5 miles south-west of the confluence of the Wadi Ghirza and the Wadi Zemzem, 80 miles from the coast of the Gulf of Sidra and 150 miles (in a straight line) south-east of Tripoli. It is best known for its two groups of monumental tombs decorated with rough sculptured reliefs showing the life of the inhabitants; but it is also notable for other antiquities, and especially for its ‘town’ of fortified farmhouses, clustered together on the edge of the wadi.