One of the most interesting problems of antiquity is the origin of metallurgy. The metals first used seem to have been gold and copper, and it has been felt that if we could ascertain where the earliest civilized people obtained their ores we should be on the way to finding out which group first made the momentous discovery that copper could be melted and cast in a mould.

With a view to solving some part of this problem, the Anthropological Section of the British Association, at the Toronto meeting in 1924, appointed a Research Committee to report on the probable sources of the supply of copper used by the Sumerians. The present writer was appointed chairman of this committee, and this is his only excuse for making public the results of the labours of others, and the secretary from the beginning has been Mr G. A. Garfitt, to whose untiring energy is due the work that has been accomplished. Several leading archaeologists, with experience in excavations in the Near East, were added to the committee, as well as Dr Cecil Desch, F.R.S., Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Sheffield, and, at a later date, Professor C. O. Bannister of the University of Liverpool. The examination and analysis of the specimens have been carried out by these professors and their assistants.

The Scandinavian peoples emerge into the light of history much later than their neighbours in the South and the West, the Teutons on the Continent and in England. It was only through the Viking raids that the Nordic peoples came into touch with the rest of Europe, and were gradually converted to Christianity. Long after the introduction of the Christian faith they preserved many peculiar and archaic traits. Thus the Nordic peoples retained, with great tenacity and conservatism, their ancient judicial system. This system has therefore been the object of considerable interest even outside Scandinavia, although the manuscripts through which it has become known are much later than the corresponding documents of other Teutonic nations.

An investigation of the localities where justice was dispensed in former ages is of importance not only for the history of civilization, but also as a complement to the study of oral and written tradition, and thus to the history of law itself. In view of the many points of similarity between the judicial systems of the various Teutonic nations, some notes on the Thing-steads, or places of assembly, in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, may perhaps be of interest to English-speaking readers.

Bavaria is a country that is very rich in prehistoric fortifications. In our early histories the construction of these is attributed almost without exception to the Romans; it is only the more intensive study of genuine Roman work that has enabled us to distinguish between pre-Roman, Roman and post-Roman remains. Moreover other fortifications, which are today invisible, have been re-discovered by a systematic investigation of the ground. These fortifications were evidently not constructed regularly throughout the prehistoric era but appear at intervals in large numbers, from which we can readily trace their erection to political causes. Two main types can be distinguished at once: circular camps that are built on a hilltop or plateau, and promontory camps, built to protect the landward approaches of a mountain spur or of a spit of land bounded on its other sides by valleys or river-beds. We also find one other type, the rectangular, which was unknown until the late La Tène period and survived for only a short time.

That do we inherit from our Roman conquerors ? To this question some reply, ‘Little or nothing’, and some, ‘The seeds of culture and religion’. The point has been debated endlessly, because it is an important one, with Apractical bearings. It is difficult to reach a decision because the decisive period, between 400 and 600 A.D., is one of the darkest in our history. Was there a ‘break with Rome’ more or less abrupt and complete, or did the traditions of Roman culture survive? By a strange irony, the protagonist of the complete hiatus was the late Professor Haverfield, whose life's work—Roman Britain—still lives in our midst; whereas the writer of today who is most vociferous in support of continuity is Mr Hilaire Belloc; and Mr Belloc is associated in the minds of us a11 rather with the Dark Ages and their tumultuous wars than with the Pax Romana.

The British Museum, jointly with the University Museum of Philadelphia, is carrying out at Ur ‘of the Chaldees’ what is now, since a slower pace has set in with the work of Evans at Knossos, the most important British archaeological excavation. Nothing like the recent discoveries at Ur has indeed been seen in a European museum since the appearance of Schliemann's finds at Mycenae, and no such rich find of gold objects has been made since the discovery of the wealth of Tutankhamon. Like Mycenae and Knossos, Mr Woolley's discoveries tell the archaeologist a very great deal that he did not know before. They may justly be claimed as the most important work of the kind now being carried on by any British or American museum or society, whether singly or jointly. The personnel is now wholly British, but Philadelphia pays half the piper and calls half the tune. This ‘ fifty-fifty ’ relation of absolute parity between the two museums is as it should be, and the two nations are to be congratulated on their harmonious partnership in the most important archaeological excavation in the world. I stress this for I do not think that the great importance of Mr Woolley’s finds is sufficiently realized. Not merely because they contain a lot of gold, as they do (and since gold of itself doth attract a journalist, this fact has received some public attention), but because they tell us so much that is new, which Tutankhamon, for all his splendour, did not. We may find this fact appreciated now that Mr Woolley’s first provisional publication of this year’s (1927) finds has appeared in the January (1928) number of the Antiquaries’ Journal, to which I must refer my readers for detail.

The Swedish archaeological expedition in Cyprus worked last year at Lapithos on the north and at Karavostassi, the ancient Soli, on the north-west.

At Lapithos 23 tombs from the early and middle Copper Age and zo tombs from the early Iron Age were opened and examined. The former cover a period from the end of early Cypriote I to the beginning of middle Cypriote 11. The main part of the finds consists of a very representative series of pottery : red polished I-IV ware, black polished ware, black slip 1-11 ware, white painted I-IV ware. The later tombs have yielded a rich collection of tools and weapons, bracelets and rings of copper, finger-rings of silver and gold, 8 necklaces of paste beads, idols of terra cotta and one marble idol, etc. The gold rings (early Cypriote III) represent the first gold found in Cvprus of the early Copper Age. One necklace (early Cypriote III), coniists of 156 globular beads of various sizes arranged in 8 rhythmic series, with one large bead in the middle of each series. Another necklace (middle Cypriote I) consists of 64 large globular beads and more than 500 small cylindrical beads inserted between the large ones. A third is of round, fluted and double-conical beads in symmetrical arrangement. The idols are of the plank-shaped type. One represents a mother holding a baby in her arms, another a mother and a baby in a bed, and a third a man and a woman in a bed.

Italy has been and still is the scene of unprecedented archaeological activity ; and it was not unnatural that this fact should lead to the holding of a succession of congresses during the Spring. Rome, as was only fitting, opened the ball on the 2628th anniversary of her birthday, the 21st of April, with the first national congress of Roman Studies.

Very wisely the organizing committee decided, as also did the Etruscan committee two years before, to regard this as a sort of preliminary canter to an international congress to be held, I believe, in 1930, the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Vergil ; and therefore to confine it in the main to Italians—though various foreign scholars resident in Rome were invited to take part, and several of them read papers.

It has often been discussed where the ford was which gave its name to Oxford. As far as is known, it is mentioned in two documents only which are of the Middle Ages, and the second of them is so obscure that it would not be intelligible by itself. The first is a charter, which will soon be printed in the Oseney cartulary, dated 27 June 1352, by which Roger Brekebeke grants to John de Sancta Frideswida a messuage in St. Aldate’s, a plot of land in St. Michael’s parish, an acre of meadow and a ham : the two last are described in these words ‘ acra vero prati iacet retro pandoxinam abbathie de Oseney inter pratum domini Ricardi Dammory quod tenet de domino rege ad feodifirmam ex parte australi et pratum quod quondam fuit Ricardi le Spicer ex parte boriali ; dicta vero hamma iacet in eodem suburbio inter pratum priorisse et conventus de Stodleghe ex parte boriali et vadum vocatum Oxenforde iuxta pontem ducentem versus Northhengseye ex parte australi ’.

Except for some trenches dug in 1865-6, when the Thirsk and Malton railway was constructed, no systematic excavation of the Roman station at Malton has ever been made until 1927. Although casual Roman finds have been plentiful, few of them have been published and little is definitely known about the site and its history, the current Ordnance Survey map merely marking the Fortress as ‘Supposed Roman Camp’. Many of the statements made about it in the past have been purely conjectural. As a result of recent investigations, the writers believe that the time has come when some general statement can profitably be made as to the extent of the site, its importance in Roman times, and the nature of the occupation of the neighbourhood.

Amongst those who have written of the antiquities of Malton in the past, one writer, Rev Dr Young (History of Whitby, 1817) shows unusual judgment and penetration in an age when antiquaries were only too ready to repeat the guesses of their predecessors. The exact position and extent of the Malton fort were unknown before 1927, and few finds are recorded before the 19th century, yet Dr Young recognized it as a place of importance and guessed its position correctly.

Ever since the year 1921 the Palestine Expedition of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania has been engaged in the excavation of the ancient city of Beth-Shan, at present called Beisan, which lies in North Palestine at the eastern end of the Valley of Jezreel. The site consists of an enonnous mound, named Tell el-Hosn, or ‘Mound of the Fortress’, and an extensive cemetery—one of the largest in Palestine, which has been proved to contain burials of all periods, from the early Bronze Age to the Byzantine era. In the tell itself have so far been found the remains of nine superimposed citadels or city-levels :—I, Arabic (mosque), Crusader, etc., 636 A.D.-19th century A.D.; II, Byzantine (circular church), 330 A.D.-636 A.D. ; III, Hellenistic (temple), Jewish and Roman, 301 B.C.-329 A.D.; IV, Late Ramesside, Philistine, Israelite, Assyrian, Scythian, New Babylonian, Old Persian, etc., 1224 B.C.-302 B.C.; V, Rameses 11 (two Canaanite temples,-northern one, ' House of Ashtaroth ' of I Samuel, xxxi, 10, and southern one ‘Temple of Dagon’ of I Chronicles, x, 10), 1292 B.c.-1225 B.C.; VI, Seti I,—two levels, late Seti, early Seti (Canaanite temple), 1313 B.C.-1292 B.C. ; VII, Amenophis III, etc. (Canaanite Temple), 141 I B.c.-13 14 B.C. ; VIII, pre-Amenophis III, 1446 B.c.-1412 B.C.; and IX, Thothmes III (two Canaanite temples,-southern one for ‘Mekal, the god of Beth-Shan’, and northern one for his female counterpart), 1501 B.C.-1447 B.C. It will thus be seen that there have been discovered altogether nine sacred buildings on the tell, that is to say, an Arabic mosque, a Byzantine circular church, a Hellenistic temple, and six Canaanite temples. All the Canaanite temples have been unearthed since the year 1925, the two temples of Thothmes III being excavated in the 1927 season.

The main centre of literary activity was transferred from Athens to Alexandria about 250 B.c., and this city, which had been founded by Alexander in 332 B.C., under Ptolemy Philadelphus became a great book mart.

As far as the history of libraries is concerned, the Alexandrian library was comparatively late. The East had known libraries thousands of years earlier. The Greeks themselves had founded their first state library about one hundred years earlier ; this was established by the Greek government at Heracleia, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, some time before 350 B.C., in the days when the great Alexander was a little boy.