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.

When the Editor of ANTIQUITY approached the authors and suggested that some of his readers would welcome a visual table showing the occurrence and sequence of the different prehistoric cultures, the matter did not seem to be one of outstanding difficulty. When the time came, however, to produce the work, it was found to be quite otherwise. Perhaps the ideal method would have been to prepare a series of gigantic distribution maps of the area to be covered (Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and adjacent regions) during the different prehistoric periods. But the preparation and publication of such maps on a scale large enough to be at all helpful would have presented insuperable difficulties. The more diagrammatic method which has been adopted divides up the map into several geographical areas which will be found heading the various columns of the table. These areas have been chosen and arranged as conveniently as possible in the light of the general distribution of the early and later prehistoric cultures.

It must always be remembered, however, that the spread of a culture from its area of origin corresponds to the ever-widening rings formed by a stone which is cast into a pond—its influence lessens as we get farther from the centre of diffusion. It is not easy to represent this lessening influence diagrammatically. Of course when the industries of a culture have spread widely over a neighbouring area, its name appears in the appropriate column of the table. Where, however, they are only very rarely found, perhaps as the last, faintest ripple of the circles, or where, as with the Solutrean culture in Spain south of the Pyrenees, they are only present in a small corner of the area adjacent to another thickly sprinkled area (France) whence they have clearly percolated, it would have presented an erroneous picture to have cited the culture-name.

In my recently published book I have advanced a theory as to the Wanderings of the Israelites and the loss of the Egyptian Host, which if not entirely original contains a considerable amount of fresh evidence based on ten years’ experience of the Peninsula. Like all theories that tend to upset old beliefs this has resulted in a considerable amount of criticism and comment. The assumption briefly is that the Israelites never went to southern Sinai as has been firmly believed for the last 1900 years, but remained for the whole of the period of the Wanderings in the comparatively small cultivable area in the northeast corner of Sinai where they could grow corn for making bread and find grazing for their flocks. This part of my theory is by no means new as the same views have been expounded already by several students of the Wanderings, and I have merely corroborated their opinion and brought forward new evidence and arguments to prove the theory by virtue of my long residence in the Peninsula and knowledge of the country and climate. The explanation I have given of the loss of the Egyptian Host, however, is a novel one, and so far as I know has never been published previously though Sir William Willcocks assumes that the disaster occurred in a lake in northern Sinai and not in the Red Sea; but the lake he selects is not the Bardawil as I maintain, and the incidents that caused the flooding were totally different from those I have suggested.

Most readers of ANTIQUITYw ill have heard of the Pergamon Museum at Berlin; its opening was the chief event of the centenary celebrations of the German Archaeological Institute (see Mr R. G. Collingwood's note in ANTIQUITY, 1929, III, 339). Those, however, who have not actually seen it can hardly realize what an outstanding achievement that museum already is, even in its present unfinished state; nor perhaps do they know that the Pergamon reconstitutions do not stand alone. There are similar reconstitutions of other classical buildings and also of Middle Eastern remains. About five large rooms are at present opened, and their contents represent the high-water-mark of museum-craft in Europe, and are an objectlesson to the world ; but to me their significance seemed even deeper, marking the triumphal emergence of a new craft. I have seen many museums, but here for the first time in my life I felt completely satisfied. The ideal aimed at seemed to have been achieved; there was nothing to find fault with. Here at last was a thoroughly honest attempt to reconstruct ancient masterpieces of architecture, and to exhibit them without irrelevant distractions. The technique of exhibition achieves its end through simplicity and common sense. The lighting is admirable ; the floors of marble slabs (pink in the Altar-room and white or grey elsewhere) are thoroughly pleasing ; the walls are delightfully bare, with nothing but the briefest of labels carved in admirable lettering. The effect of the whole is over-whelming .

In his detailed account of the chambered cairn of Bryn Celli Ddu, Mr W. J. Hemp describes a remarkable pattern stone, found on the site lying flat in a floor of purple clay, as it had been deliberately placed by the builders of the monument. Mr Hemp says that ‘The recumbent position of the stone… and the disposition of the pattern inevitably suggest that it was intended to be set upright in the ground at some stage in the funeral rites in such a way as to display the pattern’. He adds that the meaning of the pattern is unknown but that some form of magic is perhaps the most obvious explanation, and cites references for the occurrence of the style in megalithic monuments of Brittany and Ireland. The pattern is incided on the stone with a leaf-shaped outline. The lines are zigzag, and the design at once suggests an inaccurately rendered maze formation.

The name of Troy, more touched with glamour than any other name in history, brings to the archaeologist, the literary critic and the ordinary man, associations so widely different that they are in danger of becoming altogether divorced. In the mind of the archaeologist, it calls up a series of unsolved problems that produce a faint sensation of irritation and anxiety. Can that tantalizing group of objects from Schliemann’s excavations, most of which have been arranged more according to style than to stratigraphy, be regarded as a safe guide to the development of prehistoric Asia Minor ? Which of the stone battle axes come from Town I and which from Town II ? What really happened between the second and the sixth settlement ? How does the material fit in with that from other early settlements in Asia Minor and adjacent lands ?