This splendid volume contains the definitive record of the excavations carried out by Dr and Mrs Wheeler at Verulamium between 1930 and 1934, and it was complete in every essential save publication at the time of Mrs Wheeler's death in April 1936. It forms the final monument of an archaeological partnership which had astonishingly developed the technique of large-scale excavation on Roman sites in this country in a series of operations whose major landmarks were at Carnarvon, Brecon, Caerleon, and Lydney ; excavations distinguished from others of their kind not so much perhaps by the technical skill of their direction, though in this matter too they have been second to none, as by their pre-eminent excellence as training schools of archaeological method to the students who flocked to them, and as aids to right thinking by the ever-widening archaeological public which they did so much to create. Mrs Wheeler has her memorial in many places : publicly in the London Institute of Archaeology and privately in the hearts of all who knew her ; but many will think of this volume as peculiarly instinct with her genius, for every page of it bears witness to the comprehensiveness of her organization, the discipline of her energy, the patience of her leadership, and the vital sureness of her touch. Non extinguetur in nocte lucema eius.

In the fertile region between the Danube and the Balkans occur numerous Byzantine fortified posts, which are shown by occasional finds of coins to date mostly from the sixth century. All have a common form in that skilful use has been made of natural features of terrain, such as isolated mountain-tops or practically isolated spurs, so that with a minimum cf artificial strengthening they have considerable defensive power. A favourite situation for them is at points where narrow canyon-like valleys of the streams that flow into the Danube have afforded good natural advantages.

From the military standpoint these sites can easily be divided into two groups, A and B, according to their topographical situation. To the first belong those which occur on the great natural trade-routes, and, like a modern Sperrfort, rake the roads with a commanding view over the surrounding district. The second and much more numerous group consists of posts situated off the trade-routes, often so much concealed by the lie of the land as to be invisible from the great roads.

T was Boucher de Perthes and some of his precursors who originated the idea of an age of worked stone : previously the only stone implements recognized as such were polished axes, arrowheads and a few particularly well-made flint knives. On the other hand it is generally agreed that, besides worked stone, which as a rule is all that has survived, fossil man must have used wood for many of his weapons and implements ; though with the exception of a pointed stake from Clacton (preserved in peat with remains of Elephas antiquus) nothing made of this material is known until we come to the neolithic piledwellings. Mainly as the result of the excavations of Lartet and Christy in the Dordogne (1863) it was learnt that hard animal substances such as bone, ivory and deer's horn, which were preserved by the limestone matrix of caves and rock-shelters had also played a large part in the industrial activities of man. This already advanced industry must have been far removed in time from the first utilization of bone, for it shows a technique that is highly developed—a technique in which the splitting of bone is first associated with and then superseded by sawing with gravers and smoothing with scrapers. There can be no doubt therefore that the stilettos, spear-heads, etc., of the Later Palaeolithic period must have had more ancient prototypes of worked bone. In fact the only Middle Palaeolithic examples known today of bone-working by means of attrition and scraping are few in number—rib-bones sharpened by rubbing, occasional awls similarly sharpened—and the two large spear-points from the Upper Mousterian of Castillo (Spain) and La Quina (Charente, France).

N a recent article in the English Historical Review (vol. LII, pp. 193 ff.) Mr C. E. Stevens has examined the question of the ‘Twenty-Eight Cities of Britain’ which are spoken of by Gildas (‘De Excidio’, chap. III) ; and, on the basis that Gildas knew of some Romano-British Notitia Britanniarum, has attempted with considerable success to discover what cities these must have been. Bede (Hist. Eccl. I, I) and Nennius (Hist. Britt., ed. Mommsen, pp. 147 ff.) both repeat Gildas' remark in much the same words ; and in Section VI of the Historia Brittonum their names are given, with the heading Haec sunt nomina omniurn civitatum quae sunt in tota Brittania, quarurn numerus est xxviii. They are in Old Welsh of about the eighth or ninth centuries, and can therefore be contemporary with the compilation of the Historia Brittonum. Each is described as Cair, the Welsh equivalent of civitas in the late Latin sense. Another version of the Historia Brittonum has made the number into thirty-three, no doubt by misreading XXVIII as XXXIII ; the deficiency is filled up with five extra names also in Old Welsh. Some of the forms are however rather younger than in the first version (e.g. Cair Lion for Cair Legion), and the Expanded List may be a century or so later than the original.

The English long barrows have for long been a fertile source of discussion, and since Thurnam’s paper of 1868~th ere has been much speculation as to the precise Continental affinities of these tombs. It seemed clear from the outset that they were members of the complex family of megalithic tombs distributed from Iberia to Orkney, while Thurnam himself compared more detailed features such as the chamber at West Kennet with such Breton examples as Mané Lud. Subsequent writers, notably Forde have seen in the Breton many-chambered passage-graves of the type of Keriaval the probable source of such long barrow chambers as Stoney Littleton, Parc Cwm or Wayland’s Smithy; but it was difficult to provide convincing Continental parallels for the whole specialized English long barrow type. While certain elements (notably details of passage, antechamber and chamber) could be paralleled again and again in the megalithic series, the persistent and carefully constructed trapezoidal mound eluded search outside Britain. Furthermore, a study of the grave-goods, particularly in the light of a number of recent excavations of barrows in southern England, showed that the long barrows of Wessex, mainly non-megalithic and supposedly derived from the megalithic barrows in the Cotswolds or further west, wele apparently contemporary with and an integral part of the earliest Neolithic culture of Britain (Neolithic A) and a similar cultural identity seemed probable in Sussex.

During the first years of this century an astronomer, Dr A. E. Douglass, started a series of examinations of the annual increment in trees just south of Flagstaff, Arizona, to see if the cyclical nature of sun-spot appearances was reflected in tree growth, through their influence on climate. He found that there was a rather high correlation between tree growth and sun-spots in the living trees he examined. In order to extend his studies into the past—beyond the 500 years recorded by living trees—he collected material taken from beams in the old Spanish Missions that dot the southwestern United States. He had found that it was possible to identify certain characteristic sequences of tree-ring widths with certain years, and thus project into the past his chart of tree growth from timbers cut at an unknown past date. In doing so he discovered a technique that has founded a new branch of science—dendrochronology.

Four kilometres within the boundary dividing the British Mandated Territory of Transjordan from Syria, 1000 metres above sea level, and on the northern limit of the plain south of the Jabal Druze (Hauran), lie the ruins of Umm el-Jamal. The city is twenty kilometres from Mafrak, where the pipe-line and road from Iraq cut the Hijaz railway on their way to Haifa on the Mediterranean. The Druze Mountain dominates the plain from the north and this monument lies at the foot, the most westerly of a series of ruined basalt-built towns and the most interesting.

The surrounding plain is not a desert of sand. Its ancient fertility is shown by the old field boundary stones, now wasted by wind-erosion and neglect, leaving a dry exhausted soil thinly sprinkled with desert plants and strewn in parts with basalt boulders grey with lichen. Nowadays the rainfall in these parts is negligible and an attempt some years ago to restart cultivation around Mafrak failed; for the soil was just dust, carried off by the wind in great clouds when ploughing was attempted. Mafrak is now inhabited, water having been found some hundreds of metres down by boring; and it was the outpost from which men and materials went forward to build the road and pipe-line now stretching down the corridor between Syria and Saudi Arabia to Iraq. Ancient trade routes converged in this neighbourhood and the name ‘Mafrak ’ signifies the ‘Junction’. It was in antiquity a strongly fortified site and later a station on the Haj route.