In the spring of 1935 I was sent by the Trustees of the British Museum to North Syria to look for a site for excavation. The object which I had in view was to trace the connexions, if such existed, between the civilization of Minoan Crete and that of the Asiatic mainland, and the conditions required by such theoretical intercourse limited my investigations to a relatively small area. Mycenaean and sub-Mycenaean remains are, of course, not uncommon in South Syria and Palestine, but no excavations there have produced anything of Minoan date. If commerce brought the Cretans to this coast, the influence resulting from it must have been largely one-sided, for Palestine was always a poor country culturally speaking, and South Syria offered no more than a local market; its civilization was confined to the coastal belt, and the hinterland of the Syrian desert cut off all direct intercourse with the great centres of the East. North Syria was clearly indicated: it was the part of the coast most easily reached by coasting-vessels (Mount Casius is visible from Cyprus), and it was the meeting-place of the Hittite and Mesopotamian civilizations, either or both of which might have had Aegean contacts. Here again the choice was limited. Commerce demands a sheltered anchorage for shipping and good trade-routes to the inland markets. In North Syria the coast is formed by a range of mountains whose flanks drop for the most part precipitously to the sea; harbours are small and few, and passes across the mountain ranges are extraordinarily difficult; in fact, only two are at all practicable. In the extreme north the Gulf of Alexandretta affords good shelter in most weathers, as an open roadstead, and at its southern end at Arsus there is a little rocky harbour which has been artificially enlarged and improved. Arsus is certainly an ancient site, though so deeply overlaid by Roman remains as to give little encouragement to the excavator; but from it the only road inland was by the steep and none too easy pass of Beilan, and to reach that one had to skirt the foothills for a distance of some twenty-five miles, for the flat land bordering the gulf is of recent formation and contains no remains earlier than the Roman. South of the gulf is the forbidding headland of Ras al Khanzir and the cliffs of Gebel Musa, and then comes the shallow arc of the gulf of Sueidia, with the ruins of Seleucia at its northern end, the Orontes mouth towards its southern end, and beyond that the rock-bound coast at the foot of Mount Casius. The only other harbour between this and Latakia, or rather between this and Mina-t-al-Beda, the Leukos Hormos of the Greeks, is Basit, and from Basit, whose remains seem to be exclusively Roman, a break-neck track alone leads up into the wild fastnesses of the hills.

The ermita of Santa Maria de Quintanilla de las Viñas, although one of the most important examples of pre-Romanesque architecture and sculpture in Spain, was unknown to archaeologists until 1927.

Padre Enrique Flórez, writing in 1772, mentioned the building in connexion with the reported existence of Roman inscriptions in its vicinity, but, as he had not seen it, gave no description. J. A. Cean Bermudez, who likewise had not been on the spot, published a somewhat confused account of certain inscriptions. From Cean Bermudez, Hübner copied three enigmatic monograms said to be ‘in aedicula S. Mariae de las Viñas prope Quintanilla, non longe a Lara oppido’, and published them both in his Inscriptiones Hispaniae Latinae and Inscriptionum Hispaniae Christianarum Supplementum.

During the time that the excavation of the theatre was being carried out, the investigation of insula XVI, immediately west of it, was begun, and was completed after some three months' work.

The insula, a rectangle measuring 300 ft. by 160 ft. (with its greater length stretching from east to west) is bounded by roads on three sides, and by the metalled space surrounding the theatre on its fourth, or eastern, side. Cross-trenches showed the south road to be 29 ft., and the north road 18 ft., in width; the west road had been at least 29 ft. wide, but, owing to soil having been denuded from this higher part of the site, the exact width of this road was not determined by either of the two trenches dug across it (plan, pl. xxv).

This survey of Lochaneilean Castle was conducted in April 1935 on behalf of the Inverness Field Club, by which the expenses were defrayed. I gratefully acknowledge the warm interest shown in the undertaking by the Council of the Club, and the assistance which I received, in making the survey, from Dr. John Craig, F.S.A.Scot., and Mrs. Craig. The laird of Rothiemurchus, Lieut.-Col. John P. Grant, M.C., T.D., D.L., M.A., LL.B., Sheriff-substitute of Inverness, Elgin, and Nairn, kindly placed a boat and boatman and ladders at our disposal, and had the overgrowth removed from the ruins before our visit.

The bronze palstave here figured was found, in 1934, in digging a hole for a wooden post in the yard of a small holding known as ‘Mount Pleasant’ in the parish of Curland, 6 miles SSE. of Taunton and about 600 ft. above sea-level. ‘Mount Pleasant’ is not named on the 6-in. Ordnance Sheet (LXXX, S.W.), but it is the building 530 yards SSE. of Curland Church, and, as the crow flies, it is only 680 yards NNE. of the ‘Beacon’ of Castle Neroche. The implement was found about 3 ft. deep by the owner of the holding, Mr. D. G. Dicks, who gave it to Dr. Richard A. Fawcus of Chard. Through the instrumentality of Capt. W. S. L. Henderson, Dr. Fawcus presented it to the Somerset County Museum in April 1935, in which collection a similar implement, having two loops (from South Petherton), had been exhibited for many years.