Until a few years ago it was customary amongst many historians to suppose that the towns of Roman Britain ceased to exist in or very soon after A.D. 410. Records such as that of Pevensey, admittedly a fort rather than a town, which was not taken until A.D. 491, had always suggested a modification of that View, and more recently efforts have been made to demonstrate that life of some sort continued unbroken in certain of the towns throughout the Dark Ages. Dr R. E. M. Wheeler has argued thus particularly in the case of London.

The story of the ferry is, at the outset, the story of the boat. It begins with prehistoric man noticing that wood will float and possibly, from the riding of birds and small animals, that it will carry a burden according to its size and character. Observant and imitative, the human animal, in the childhood of the world, proceeds to experiment gingerly and doubtfully at first, boldly and confidently—perhaps in some cases too boldly and confidently, later. He mounts himself astride a log and propels it, probably at first with his legs, towards the opposite bank of the river near which he lives. On the other side lies a new world, with resources untapped, especially in the matter of food, which he is anxious to reach. Even in the middle of the 19th century Pickering (Races of Man) speaks of men in the tide waters of the Sacramento river crossing, standing on split logs.

In previous papers the writer has suggested that, according to such evidence as is available, the rotary quern must have been derived from the large and heavy donkey-mill of Greece and Rome (1), and Childe has further suggested that this development may have been brought about through the adaptation of the rotary principle to small portable mills suitable for the use of armies in the field (2). Thus legionaries, upon demobilization, would carry the idea, if not the articles themselves, back to their peasant homes.

The pilgrimage to Mecca made on foot across Africa from west to east between the desert and the tropical forest keeps many West Africans in close touch with the valley of the Nile. The pilgrims follow a route along which culture must from the earliest times have been spread by refugees, traders, military expeditions and the like. (In these latter days motorized convoys of West African troops and aerial reinforcements for the Middle East have followed the same route).

Over twenty years’ service in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (of which twelve years were spent in Darfur, where the cultural and political influence of West Africa was strong in medieval times, and is still felt today), has left me much interested in West Africa, although I have never been there.

Those who witnessed the fires of London in 1940 were occupied with other thoughts and acts than the contemplation of the past. Today remoter skies are aglow, and the quiet and cavernous places of London where busy offices once stood are already planned and regimented for reconstruction. No doubt, as often enough in the past, London will gain functionally if not artistically in the process; the new buildings will be higher and deeper than their predecessors, with air-conditioned basements carried far down into the native clay.

In ANTIQUITY, September 1943, Grahame Clark put forward an eloquent plea for the study of man as a basic feature of education throughout the world—to create an overriding sense of human solidarity such as can come only from consciousness of common origins ; this alone, in his opinion, can ensure the Survival of civilization. He deliberately deferred consideration of practical details and concentrated on setting out ˋthe vast design ˊ covering education, like the Beveridge social insurance scheme, from the cradle to the grave. It is my purpose in this article to consider more closely what part British archaeology is fitted and ready to play in education in this country in the future. For if archaeology is to take its rightful place in school curricula, if it is to be in demand in Universities (where archaeologists mainly must be trained) and in centres of adult education, its role must be clearly defined and understood by archaeologists and educationists alike. Certain misconceptions must be cleared away-for example that archaeology is synonymous with prehistory, or the study of flints or potsherds-that it is a special subject, something ˋ extra ˊ like music or drawing in the old fashioned academy. Let it once be realized that it is essentially a method of recovering, studying and re-creating the past, a method that is open to all to use, and it will fall into place within the framework of our educational system. It will naturally be a method that is most used by other branches of knowledge concerned with the past, Classical studies, English Literature (1), and above all History.