On 27 September 1926 the learned world was startled by a letter from Monsieur Salomon Reinach, published in The Times. The writer expressed the opinion that the Palaeolithic period (the last phase of which is represented in France by La Madelaine) might have lasted up to 5000 B.C. M. Reinach is Director of the National Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris; his reputation as a savant stands very high, and he is listened to with respect. The discoveries which prompted him to express this unorthodox opinion were, he says “ascertained last summer at Glozel near Vichy. In the same stratum, no doubt a deposit of a religious character, have been found—(1) objects akin to the Neolithic culture of the Aegean, one of them being an idol in the shape of a violin; (2) inscriptions closely related to those found in 1894 in an early Portuguese dolmen; (3) numerous engravings of animals on pebbles, the style of which is degenerate Magdalenian. As the objects classified under (1) and (2) date from about 4000–3500, degenerate Magdalenian outlines (3) cannot possibly be earlier, and we thus have a proof, which I think is conclusive, that the Magdalenian should be dated about 5000 B.C.” Thus from the outset the discussion of the issues has been confused by questionable fact and faulty inference.

When Huckleberry Finn's religious education was taken in hand by the Widow and Miss Watson, his impressionable mind was at first strongly affected—in his own words, he was all in a sweat—on hearing the story of Moses. Later, his interest in Moses cooled off, because Miss Watson let out that Moses had been dead a considerable time, and Huckleberry Finn, as he explains, took no stock in dead men.

It was a very naïve reaction to history; but naïve reactions often reveal truths which are blurred by a more sophisticated attitude, and must somehow be recaptured before we can see things as they are. Huckleberry Finn may here stand as the babe or suckling out of whose mouth the historian is to learn wisdom.

In Palæolithic times when each family was self-contained, before social laws and customs had bound such units together to form tribes and clans, the hunters, for such they all were, followed their quarry through the forests and along the valleys, keeping to no set trackways. They needed none, for trackways imply thoroughfares to and from fixed sites or habitations—and the Palaeolithic hunter was a nomad.

When the amalgamation of families took place in early Neolithic or Epipalaeolithic times, no doubt the marsh-dwellers had recognized paths across the swamps to the mainland, and those who formed the shell-mounds of Ertebolle may have used beaten paths along the shore from estuary to estuary.

In the winter seasons of 1924-5, and 1925-6 the British School of Archaeology in Egypt granted me generous facilities to go to the Fayum and conduct, on its behalf, a preliminary inquiry into the question of the significance of the obscure prehistoric period known there since many years by the quantities of fine and varied flint implements reported, and picked up, on the desert surface of the northern area, by explorers and dealers.

There is a tendency, in these days of steadily increasing enthusiasm for excavation, to overlook the very considerable body of Greek and Roman literature extant which deals with the geography and history of the British Isles during the Roman occupation (43–410 A.D.) Few people have studied all the evidence; few history books pause to discuss the authorities for such familiar stories as those of Caratacus and Boudicca, or even to spell their names correctly. The reason is that many of these documents have never been edited in England, and no attempt has been made to collect them in handy form, and discuss the date, purpose, and value of each. The purpose of this article is to review the most important authors and estimate briefly the value of the contribution of each. There are no fewer than 49 writers in Greek and 79 in Latin who make direct mention of the British Isles; and though it is true that many of these do little more than mention them, or repeat the statements of previous authorities, we are still left with a number of independent sources of information.

Many a wanderer through the country districts of New Zealand has found interest in the sight of the monumental earthworks which crown so many of our hills. There is something grand and yet pathetic about these old fortresses. Once the scene of turmoil and activity, they now lie neglected and still beneath the sky, clothed in bush, or scrub, or fern, or grass-grown and dotted with sheep. Their day is over, the Maori long since has ceased to swarm on their slopes and man their palisades; they are but a memory of the warring and the peacemaking, the fighting and the feasting of the eventful past.

In this paper it is my object to give a brief account of the general features of their construction and of their importance in Maori life.

Little has been done towards solving the problem of the Saxon settlement of England by studying the types of villages and their distribution. Professor Maitland saw the importance of the subject and pointed out how valuable in this respect was the ordnance map ‘that marvellous palimpsest which under Dr Meitzen's guidance we are beginning to decipher’. Helpful, however, as the ordnance maps are, they cannot be read alone, a knowledge of the archaeology, history and topography of the district under review is a necessary equipment for such an investigation. The remarks here made are tentative and are offered in the hope they may be an incentive to others with local knowledge to examine the evidence of their districts.

Professor Maitland, following Dr. Meitzen and others, has adopted two main types of settlements, namely, the scattered or dispersed, and the nucleated or clustered. These two types probably comprehend all forms of settlements, but certainly the nucleated type and possibly the scattered type, show many variants which it may be well to indicate before a methodical study of the subject can be made. I have elsewhere suggested the following classification of English towns and villages which will no doubt require modification and amplification but may meet a want for a preliminary inquiry; (I) scattered or dispersed settlements, (2) nucleated or clustered settlements off lines of communication, (3) nucleated settlements on lines of communication, (4) ring-fence settlements, (5) towns with bridge heads and double towns, (6) towns of gridiron plan, (7) towns of spider's web plan, (8) Bastide towns. Except for the first of these classes all of them are nucleated or clustered, and to this wider division I propose to devote my attention. It may perhaps be pointed out, however, that the scattered or dispersed settlements occur chiefly in Wales and in the west and north of England. They are found throughout Cornwall, in Devon, Somerset and the open parts of the Welsh border counties, in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and probably they are the origin of the great parishes with their numerous townships of the other northern counties. They were adapted for a pastoral people and are generally to be found in moorland or mountainous country which has become divided into large parishes. They consist of hamlets and single houses or small groups of houses scattered somewhat promiscuously throughout a district. The principal hamlet from which the settlement or parish takes its name-which was probably the meeting place of the district and where the church was eventually placed-was generally on high land or a main road and frequently at cross roads, bridges, or such like places of nodality.

While high civilizations were growing up in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Aegean, continental Europe was still recovering from an ice age. Though the glaciers had retreated, the high passes that led across the Alps from the favoured Mediterranean to the interior were still virtually closed by snow. The tundras and steppes where the men of the Old Stone Age had hunted the reindeer were now for the most part covered with a dense forest fostered by the damp climate then ruling. Through the belt of forest and mountain that fenced off northern and western Europe early man could not easily penetrate. To reach Britain or Denmark he must take ship and face the perils of the Atlantic in a dug-out canoe or some only slightly superior craft. But one moving road leads right into the heart of the continent. From the Black Sea to Bavaria the Danube opens out a passage way far safer than the stormy Atlantic. Moreover it leads into territories where the uncongenial primeval forest did not grow so densely nor so inhospitably as on the coasts or highlands.

Large tracts in Central Europe are covered with a deep deposit of fine wind-born dust that had formed during the dry ice ages. This aeolian soil termed “löss” is unfavourable to the growth of heavy timber, incidentally it provides ideal agricultural land.

The walls and hut circles which are known to the Bedouins as “the works of the old men” lie about 120 miles to the east of the Dead Sea, in a southern extension of the Jebel Druze range through which the Cairo-Baghdad air mail passes, in the neighbourhood of landing grounds F, G, and H.

The Jebel Druze is a desolate range of mountains rising to from 2000 to 3000 feet above sea level. It consists of steep-sided flat-topped mountains of black basalt, the wadis and flat country between being covered with sand thickly besprinkled with huge black basalt boulders. Here and there the winter rains have formed lakes of sand which during the winter are morasses and during the summer hard flat glaring expanses of white sand, many as much as three miles long.

The photographs here reproduced, were taken from the air on 30 June 1926, by Squadron-Leader Insall, V.C., M.C., who was then stationed at Netheravon. The large circular earthwork which appears with a series of concentric dots within its area had always been regarded as a “ring” or “disc” barrow much wasted and defaced as a result of many years cultivation. The ring barrow is a type of pre-historic burial place which occurs comparatively frequently on the Downs of Wiltshire and adjacent counties but is rare elsewhere. It consists of a circular earthen bank with a corresponding ditch, usually on the inner side. The actual burials, apparently invariably after cremation, are usually found in one or more mounds near the centre of the circular area thus enclosed. The banks and ditches are continuous and form unbroken rings; they vary in size from a few yards in diameter up to nearly 200 ft. The smaller dark rings shown on the lower part of the photographs near the Amesbury road probably represent the filled-in ditches of barrows that have been destroyed by cultivation.

In archaeology as in other branches of science we are only at the beginning of discoveries. New vistas are opening up to us and we are beginning to realize how little we know about the origin and early history of civilized man. Theories and presumptions, chronologies and criticisms, all are being revolutionized. In Egypt, in Babylonia, in India and in Asia Minor discoveries are being made which teach us that we are still only upon the threshold of knowledge about what is called “the remote past” and how insecure are the foundations upon which most of our assumptions in regard to the earlier history of culture really rest. Many of our assumptions, in fact, have nothing behind them except want of evidence, and excavation in Egypt alone has proved, time after time, how archaeologically valueless negative evidence must be. All that it shows is that scientifically conducted excavation and archaeological exploration are still in their infancy. Negative evidence has been a favourite weapon of argument, especially among German scholars, and we need not be surprised that theory after theory based or partially based upon it has broken down. It is merely a survival of the early Victorian belief that science had mastered all the secrets of the material universe.