The city of Taxila, more properly Takṣaśilā, was one of the most important in ancient India. It is frequently mentioned as one of the two great cities of Gandhara (approximately the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan), along with its neighbour Puṣkalāvatī (modem Charsada north of Peshawar) some 80 miles (130 km) to the west. It was first identified in modern times by Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1863, after he had visited the extensive series of mounds lying near the village of Shah Dheri, east of Hasan Abdul, in the Punjab province of Pakistan (Cunningham, 1871). His identification was soon confirmed by the discovery there of early inscriptions referring to Taxila by name.

The handaxe of Libyan Desert glass (PL. XIIIb & FIG. I) was found on 23 June 1979, in the Sand Sea of S.W. Egypt, at latitude 25°o8' N, longitude 25° 35·5' E, near the southern boundary of the known distribution area of the glass. Lying just north of the Gilf Kebir, this part of the Sand Sea is characterized by an extensive field of linear dunes, trending almost exactly N-S, which are up to Ioom high, tens of km long, and separated by interdune corridors or ‘streets’ 2–5 km wide.

The large island of Euboea, which lies along the north coast of Attica and Boeotia, was little known archaeologically until recent years (FIG. 1). Nor, apart from its involvement in the Persian Wars, then as a victim of Athenian imperialism and later as a step in the expansionism of Philip of Macedon, does it play any prominent role in the accounts of ancient historians. Yet, they have left hints of its former greatness in an early period of which little was remembered. The island was known to have sent out the first colonies to Italy and Sicily in the eighth century BC and to have settled the region of North Greece, still known as Chalcidice, after the name of one of Euboea's main cities, Chalcis. They remembered something, too, of a war between Chalcis and Eretria, the other major city of the island, in which their respective allies took part, and it is this conflict which seems to have exhausted both sides and led to the eclipse of the island's pre-eminence.

My father’s forebears were ironmasters in Birmingham. Yet neither he (born 1877) nor my uncle (born 1870), let alone five aunts, knew more than the name of their firm, The Eagle Iron Foundry. When their mother died and the family moved to Beckenham, all were children. A remote cousin Arthur, Borough Librarian of Wigan, genealogist, and thence FSA, wrote when I became that (1932) to tell me that Hawkeses were Warwickshire under Charles I1 already, when a branch went to Ireland. But he said nothing of William Hawkes, who in 1824 (June), with a young Mr M. H. Bloxam of Rugby, went to Oldbury, in the country near Atherstone, and opened a barrow. Bloxam stated, naming him and the firm, that he was leader of the dig, when publishing it in Charles Roach Smith’s Col1ectanea Antiqua, vol. I part 3 (issued 1843, then in whole vol. of 1848), 33, with Pl. xiv, engraving of the finds. (My knowing this is entirely due to Sonia Hawkes’s finding it, in her luckily-obtained Collectanea a few years ago.) His publication cited in VCH Warwickshire and in Gerloff, 1975 (172 and Pl. 27 no. 332) was thus his second, and the first needs adding to the barrow’s bibliography.

When I became interested in the history of sheep 25 years ago, the paper by Hilzheimer (1936) was my chief source of inspiration, and in fact there had been few advances on his conclusions. Since then, however, there have been major advances, and the present account attempts to assess the extent to which these have added to the knowledge so ably summarized by Hilzheimer.

His conclusions were based mainly on ancient representations (an approach which reached its peak with the work of Zeuner, 1963) and the comparison of bone remains with those of a few primitive breeds that happened to be within the experience of the investigator.

The civilizations of prehispanic America never advanced technologically beyond the early bronze age: although both the Inca and the Aztec had tools and some weapons of cast bronze, the warriors that fought Cortes used swords edged with obsidian blades. The Classic Maya, who flourished in the first millennium AD, had only a casual acquaintance with metal until the ninth century (Bray, 1977) and raised the great temples of Tikal with an engineering capability no greater than that of the builders of Stonehenge.

The island has a fine series of surviving megalithic monuments with passage graves such as La Varde and outstanding examples of ornate statue-menhirs as at Câtel (Kinnes, 1981). There are distinctive local variants, as in the cellular elaboration of the Déhus tomb and the regional style of cist-in-circle monument. In terms of islands as laboratories of prehistory it is instructive to note that these structures survive only where protected from the ravages of agriculture, here on the sterile sand-drift of the north and the rocky promontories of the west coast. Sporadic records and the place-name evidence studied in detail by de Guérin (1921) indicate the extent and unevenness of destruction. Of some 70 monuments thus recorded only 12 survive in any recognizable state, and earlier density at about 1 per sq. km is an important corrective to attempts at territorial analysis based on extant distribution.

Almost half-a-century ago, I was once referred to by Sidney Smith as someone who had entered archaeology 'by the back door'. In those days there was no well-defined 'front door', though Smith and others were doing their best to create one; and, since I was myself then already well established in a more conventional profession, the implied reproof was perhaps justifiable. In truth, the potential advantages of an architectural training to a field archaeologist were not at that time fully understood, and one purpose of the present writing is to make their significance more apparent.

Three decades have elapsed since Williams-Hunt (1950) described the results of an aerial survey of archaeological sites in N.E. Thailand. He observed four site-types. The most abundant was a disposition of practically circular earthworks which looked like moats and ramparts. Williams-Hunt described them as small defended towns. There are also four ‘metropolis’ sites with a large gap between inner and outer ramparts, several sites located on rock outcrops, and a number of sites with an irregular layout and possible periods of enlargement. The sites concentrate in the valleys of the Mun and Chi rivers (FIG. I). Williams-Hunt had no clear information on the dates of the sites, although pioneer work by Prince Damrong in I904 and Quaritch-Wales (1936) just before the second war suggested occupation before the Khmer occupation of the Khorat Plateau in the eleventh century AD. ‘Further comment’, he concluded, ‘would be futile. The excavator’s spade alone will provide the final answer.’

The East Anglian Fenland comprises some 1,300 sq. miles (205 ha) of flat and monotonous terrain which is today cultivated on an intensive scale. Beneath this rich farmland lies a complex sequence of post-glacial deposits, reflecting periods of marine and fresh-water flooding, interspersed with phases of relative dryness (Godwin, 1978). During the Iron Age, the sea covered the northern Fenland with a thick blanket of silt, accounting for the dearth of finds of this time; but by c. AD 50 the sea was receding and the land had begun to dry out. Settlement soon followed. It is likely that a fort of the post-Boudiccan period was briefly in garrison at Grandford, north-west of March, but the principal remains are those of salt-making sites and of small farms. During the reign of Hadrian, however, both the scale and the nature of settlement changed dramatically. AS the authoritative survey of the region makes clear (Phillips, 1970), the 120s and 130s witnessed a sharp increase in the number of sites, including the foundation of many villages. At the same time a network of canals, designed to disperse water at times of flood, was constructed (Simmons, 1979), as well as a series of straight-line roads and drove-ways. Although there was no formal division of the land by centuriation, as had been customary in areas reclaimed earlier for the settlement of veteran—the Po Valley and Lake Velinus near Rieti provide obvious Italian examples—the hand of government is nevertheless explicit in the size of the undertaking. While we lack direct evidence, there can be little real doubt that the Fenland was taken over as Imperial land and placed in the charge of a procurator (Salway, 1970).

It is a truism to state that human evolution is a frighteningly complex subject. It is all too easy to yield to the temptation to construct ever more elaborate 'family trees' even though the fossil record is fragmentary and chronologically inexact. The supposed fate of Neanderthal man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and the origin of modern man (Homo sapim sapim) have recently received a good deal of attention—most of which serves to emphasize the gaps in our knowledge without coming much nearer to a solution. This review presents some of the conflicting arguments which have been put forward, stressing a need to keep an open mind about the possibility of Neanderthal survival.

Coppergate, one of the many York streets with a name of Scandinavian derivation, runs through the heart of modern York, though it lies some way outside the Roman legionary fortress. Evidently the Roman Ouse Bridge had, by the Viking Age, been replaced by another, further downstream, and this had caused the city centre to shift. In the mid-1970s York City Council decided to clear and develop five of the long narrow properties which run back from Coppergate towards the nearby River Foss. York Archaeological Trust carried out preliminary investigations which showed that well-preserved Anglo-Scandinavian buildings were to be found on the site, with organic remains excellently preserved in the waterlogged deposits. The Trust therefore chose to excavate four of the tenements before development began. Five years of continuous work on the site produced an occupation sequence which began with timber buildings of the first century AD, canabae outside the Roman fortress.

In 1957 John Mulvaney remarked that Childe was probably the most prolific and the most translated Australian author. Now, post mortem, he must be the one currently attracting the most intense discussion. These three books, taken together, enable us to see Childe rather more completely, both as an individual scholar and as an academic in the general context of his time. To some extent it is possible to 'round him off', and to answer certain questions about him and his work. But this process opens up other more profound questions, mostly concerning his philosophy, which bear on the history of British archaeology, and are not really answered from the large amount of information, interpretation and comment now available on one of the greatest prehistorians of the first half of this century.

Like so many other great things, the Ancient Peoples and Places Series started as a result of a casual conversation between an author and a publisher, this one about a massive tome on the archaeology of Sardinia. Thames & Hudson decided not to translate the Sardinian book, but launched an entire series of archaeological books instead. The first, Geoffrey Bushnell's Peru, appeared in 1956 to enthusiastic reviews. Everyone admired the striking design and magnificent photographs, the clear exposition of an archaeological topic little known outside the narrow confines of Americanists. But few people realized they were witnessing a revolution in archaeological publishing. Now, 5,000,000 words and 15,000 illustrations later, we celebrate the hundredth 'A. P. & P,' appropriately A Short History of Archaeology by the General Editor himself.