The two fortifications, which I propose to describe are together unique in the history of military architecture. They are very like each other, but nothing else like them exists. The first of them, Euryalus at Syracuse, has been carefully planned and published by a professional engineer, Signore Luigi Mauceri, in an excellent monograph (Il Castello Eurialo, Roma, 1928) ; but this is difficult to procure-I only know of it, and have seen it, thanks to the kindness of Sig. Dott. Giacomo Caputo, of the Syracuse museum-and there is no other adequate description of the place, though no doubt Pauly-Wissowa's article on Syracuse will contain one when it appears. Moreover, in examining the remains I seemed to see evidences of afterthoughts and changes of plan which Sig. Mauceri has missed or interpreted in ways that I find hard to accept; and therefore, though my hasty inspection and rough plans are far inferior to his careful and skilful work, it ma be worth while to place my surmises on record.

The present age, as far as archaeology is concerned, may well be termed that of excavations, and Mesopotamia is more than any other country the centre of such activity. It is work on the most ancient sites that has come most before the public eye ; but later ruins too have received some attention, both before and since the war. Samarra stands and must long stand as the classical example of an excavation of the later eriod, but the recent work at Ctesiphon is no going investigation by the Baghdad school and the Michigan University expedition and the ancient city of Kish has produced a Sasanian palace. Our work at Hira, some 50 miles to the south of ancient Babylon, now adds another name to this list, and though we made but preliminary soundings they served to show that the town of Hira was definitely an important and interesting place, the further examination of which will be without doubt well repaid. The work which we did was undertaken on behalf of Oxford University and was carried out under the joint direction of Mr Gerald Reitlinger and of the author of this paper. Most sincere thanks are due to Mr Reitlinger, who bore the entire cost of the expedition, and to Professor Langdon of Oxford, who greatly simplified our work by allowing us to become a branch of the Oxford-Field Museum expedition to Kish.

In the June number of ANTIQUITY, Mr T. D. Kendrick sketched what in another sphere of art might be called a Conversation Piece. His subject was the family of hanging-bowls, and he assembled it with skill and daring in a new setting. His method was frankly impressionistic, and was proportionately stimulating. With the aid of a partly theoretical chronology, he inferred ‘that in origin these bowls are really Romano-British; that many of them had been made and were in use before the Romans left this country; that others were made after the Romans had gone, and belong to the almost unknown archaeology of the Arthurian period’. To these conclusions it might at once be objected that, amongst the bowls, no dated example is of Romano-British period, and that they hardly occur in Arthurian Britain. But rather than press these objections, let us explore an alternative interpretation. Let us first state the problems and the relevant facts; then attempt to reconcile the latter with the former.

Rom very ancient times the church and the churchyard have afforde'd refuge to villagers in time of war. For this reason, wherever practicable, churches have been built on heights, to be the more easily defended. The church served not only as a house of prayer but also as a protecting citadel, defending the lives and property of its children. Already in the 4th century the Armenians had made strong citadels of their churches. The Franks in Merovingian times (481-751) built fortified churches of which that of St. Jean at Poitiers still stands, as well as the church at Remainmontier. After the Saracen invasion most of the churches in the south of France were surrounded with defence works, whereas in northern France they were not defended before the English wars in the fourteenth century. In the Middle Ages most of the churches in the strip of land between the Rhine and the Nahe, called the Gau, were fortified. Osthofen had defence works as early as 1241. In the Middle Ages, too, fortified churches were built in Alsace and Lorraine, or else the existing ones were greatly strengthened. An especially characteristic example is Chazelles in Lorraine, built in the 12th century, in which we are first struck by the placing of the church-tower between the choir and the nave and then by the loop-holes and machicolations.

In the first volume of ANTIQUITaYp pear two papers, one by Dr R. C. C. Clay, dealing with the formation of lynchetsl ; the other, by Dr E. Cecil Curwen, containing a survey of prehistoric agriculture in Britain.2 These papers, which are of considerable interest to the farmer as well as to the archaeologist, have suggested the following remarks, which I was unable to put on paper before as some of my books were in England.