Showing papers in "Antiquity in 1979"

Egyptian and Near Eastern chronology: a dilemma?

Abstract: There exists a widespread belief among historians that radiocarbon dating is incompatible with the historical chronologies of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In this article the author, lecturer in Anatolian archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, attempts to show that a high historical chronology is required by re-interpretation of the Uruk andyemdet Nasr sequences and their links with Egypt. A comparison with dendrochronology-cocted radiocarbon dating suggests that it is compatible with a high historical chronology. By combining these two independent forms of dating it becomes possible to reconstruct a uni$orm time scale. The Editor of ‘Antiquity’ is grateful to the British Academy for a generous donation towards the production of this article.

Rattus rattus: the introduction of the black rat into Britain.

Abstract: The subject of this article, ‘Rattus rattus’ (Linnaeus, 1758), or the black rat, has, in Mr Rackham's estimation, considerable archaeological importance, especially in view of recent discussions on plague and the end of Roman Britain, and subsequent plagues of the Anglo-Saxon period. We learn that some recent finds suggest a Roman date for the introduction of the black rat into Britain. Mr Rackham is a Senior Research Assistant in the Biological Laboratory, Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, with a research interest in late Pleistocene vertebrate fauna. Current work in the Department involves the environmental analysis, particularly zoological, of archaeological sites of all periods in the northern five counties of England.

Transhumance and megalithic tombs in Iberia

Abstract: are represented by the 54 human prints. There are at least three immature individuals and two adults, all barefooted. Animal tracks are also present and include raccoon, a large ungulate, and coyote. Porcupine and bird tracks may also be present. The exposed prints have been measured, mapped, and photographed. Latex moulds were made of 28 of the best prints. Charcoal from vegetation which burned in place on the silty clay surface has been dated by C14 at the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of California, Riverside. This yielded a minimum age for the footprints of approximately 5,000 years before the present. Artifacts including a drill, mano (quern), and core have been found eight metres E of the trackway at approximately the same depth. The footprints and artifacts constitute the only buried component of this age thus far found in the Mojave Desert, and the prints are believed to be the oldest in North America. It is hoped that the state and federal governments will implement a programme to complete the study of the footprints, which will include the needed archaeology, geology, and palaeoenvironmental analysis.

The Hoplite as Citizen : Athenian military Institutions in their social Context

Abstract: L'examen des rapports existant, a Athenes, entre le corps des hoplites et celui des citoyens permet de montrer que ce contingent ne merite pas le jugement severe de trop d'erudits modernes. Les faits militaires du Ve siecle mettent en evidence l'habilete tactique et l'efficacite de l'hoplite athenien, dont la formation commencait des la jeunesse, par un systeme d'instruction analogue a celui qu'imposera l'ephebie. Les exercices physiques pratiques a titre personnel contribuaient a maintenir la bonne condition physique du citoyen adulte, lequel devait aussi participer a des entrainements, probablement organises par tribus.

Australia's oldest known ornaments

Abstract: s, 1978. 328 pp. , 85 figs. E8.50 hardback, 46.50 paperback. cuntinued on p . 61 E5.95.

Archaeological discontinuity and ethnic duality in Elam

Abstract: Pierre Amiet’s$rst introduction to the Near East included taking part in Pire de Vaux’s excavations at Tell el Far’ah in 1950-I. Later he worked with Louis le Breton at Elam. He entered the Museum service at Chambiry in 1958 and three years later was invited by Andri Parrot to the Louvre as conservator, and as professor in the Ecole du Louvre. In 1968 he succeeded Parrot as head of the Diparternent des Antiquitis Orientales : a post which he still holds with distinction. Professor Amiet has published many books, including ‘Elam’ (1966) ; ‘L’Art d’Agade‘ au Muske du Louvre’ (1976) ; ‘Les antiquitk du Luristan’ (1976) and ‘L’Art antique du Proche-Orient’ (I977). We warmly welcome Professor Amiet to our pages.

Prehistory and Marxism

Abstract: In volume III of ‘The Cambridge Journal’ (1949, 131–47) the present Editor of ‘Antiquity’ wrote an article entitled ‘A defence of prehistory’ in which he referred to ‘the environmentalist school of Fleure and Fox, the hyperdiffusionist school of Elliot Smith, Parry, and Raglan, or the Marxist school of Childe’. Professor Childe wrote a rejoinder which Michael Oakshott, the Editor of ‘The Cambridge Journal’, could not find room to publish. Childe did not publish it elsewhere; there is now a great and continuing interest in his method and theory, and it seemed worth while publishing it at last, 30 years after it was written. Childe died in 1957; ‘The Cambridge Journal’ was short-lived: begun in 1947, it died in 1953.

A mummified foetus from the tomb of Tutankhamun

Abstract: One of the mummifid foetuses fiom the tomb of Tutankhamun displays what must be the earliest evidence of Sprengel’s deformity. The f m l e foetus is still-born, aged eight months or, at the most, nine months. There is radiographic evidence of dislocation at C5/6, tibia vara and increased metaphysial density. Serological investigation of tissue fiom the foetus suggests the presence of bloodgroup M and H substances. Possible rehtionships of this foetus to other pharaonic remains already investigated are discussed. R. G. Harrison is Derby Professor of Anatomy in the University of Liverpool. His collaborators are four : R. C. ConnolIy, Senior Lecturer in Physical Anthropology, University of Liverpool; A . B. Abdalla, Professor of Anatomy and Soheir Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Anatomy, University of Cairo; and M. El Ghawaby, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Ein Shams University, Cairo.

The restoration of Newgrange

Abstract: Those of us who knew Newgrange well as a grass-covered mound were startled when we saw it in its reconstructed state with quartz facing dotted with granite boulders giving a ‘currant cake’ effect. The same surprise c a m to many when they saw the way in which Dr P.-R. Giot had reconstructed Barnenez. Yet, both at Newgrange and Barnenez it is clear that these sites, like many another megalithic chamber tomb, were ortrinally revetted with stone walls. Professor O’Kelly has here responded to our invitation to recount how his excavations from 1962 to 1975 enabled him to advise the Commissioners for Public works in Ireland how to restore Newgrange to its appearance 4,500 years ago.

The King's whetstone

Abstract: One question fundamental to the interpretation of the elaborate sceptre found at Sutton Hoo is why whetstone should have been chosen as its material. Too heavy for convenience, yet neither rare nor intrinsically beautiful, why was this substance thought appropriate for such an important item of regalia? The interpretation so far has been that it symbolized the king as war-leader, ‘the forger, giver and master of the swords of his followers’. While this is undoubtedly an attractive and appropriate interpretation, it lacks literary confinnation; I would therefore like to put forward an alternative (or supplementary) hypothesis based on the evidence of certain passages in Old Icelandic writings where whetstones are mentioned in a mythical context, or are described as being used in non-realistic circumstances suggestive of ritual. Despite their late date, Icelandic sources have often cast valuable light on Germanic religion.

The earliest Neolithic in the West Mediterranean: a new appraisal

Abstract: The principal fact to emerge in recent years is the antiquity of the first neolithic cultures in the western Mediterranean. Listed below (Table I) are radiocarbon dates from sites with impressed ware (occasionally, in southern Italy, associated with painted pottery). There are thus quite a number of dates available. The three seventh-millennium dates are questionable: the Coppa Nevigata date (6200 bc) has often been criticized; the Cap Ragnon date (6020 bc) is certainly too early; and the Velderpino date (6000 bc) remains to be confirmed. The same is true of the Camprafaud date (5950 bc). The sixth-millennium dates are more numerous and come from southern Italy, Corsica, Provence, Languedoc and even Spain (Los Grajos). But without doubt the main bulk is provided by the fifth-millennium dates which convince by their sheer numbers (more than 50). The fifth millennium was the Golden Age of the impressed ware groups of the West Mediterranean.

Tin-plating in the Early Bronze Age: the Barton Stacey axe

Abstract: When, in 1924, I returned to Andover, Crawford and Keiller and a de Havilland g aeroplane were there, busy on ‘archaeology from the air’. I hope this story will interest readers of ANTIQUITY; part of my object in telling it is to record an example of the many interests with which flying brought into contact those engaged in it when it was new, and to show how they in response were able and glad to help the work of the specialists concerned.

Margaret Guido: The glass beads of the prehistoric and Roman periods in Britain and Ireland. London: Society of Antiquaries, distributed by Thames and Hudson, 284 pp., 4 pls., 38 figs. £ 20.00.

Abstract: are discussed and explained. I t is unfortunate, however, that the editors provide no introduction to the statistical concepts of sampling theory itself, although these concepts are continually referred to and are fundamental to any use of sampling in archaeology. It may have been more satisfactory to place Hamond’s very clear explanation of random sampling, Central Limit Theorem, estimated standard error and so on at the beginning of the book, greatly expanded as a general introduction. Other sampling theory concepts are scattered through the book in the articles by Peacock, Winham and Cherry. The acceptance of rigorous sampling in Britain would surely have been aided by a clear introductory account of the statistical assumptions and procedures. In the reviewer’s opinion, a clearer account of the statistical basis on which the call for a development of sampling theory in British archaeology is based would also have identified some of the real limitations of probabilistic sampling in an archaeological context, These difficulties and restrictions are not squarely faced in the volume. In the first place, unless the archaeologist’s sample of material is sufficiently large (which it seldom is), it is not possible to infer the mean of the population from which the sample is derived unless that population has a Normal frequency distribution. This is often not the case in archaeological populations. Second, the confidence limits of a random sample estimate cannot be determined if the population size (N) is unknown. In many instances, as in Peacock‘s shell middens, the sampled population size cannot be ascertained prior to excavation. Similarly, the more precise stratified sampling procedures cannot be used unless something is known beforehand about how the sampled population is distributed. Third, most probabilistic sampling in other disciplines is concerned with generalizing from a sample to a population from which the sample is taken. But there often seems little value in this in archaeology because the sampled population is itself an extremely biassed surviving sample of some other original population of material which is itself related in some uncertain way to human behaviour. For example, it is not at all clear why or how one should estimate original densities of features on a site, so that the value of sampling by random trenches (suggested by the editors, p. 113) is difficult to see. Usually more important in excavation sampling is full coverage of the area to be sampled, avoiding the gaps often produced by random and stratified random sampling. Indeed, the Oxford Unit’s (Jones, Ch. 13) aim of examining variation in densities across sites using SYMAP would be more efficiently served by regularly spaced samples. Champion (p. 218) makes the same cautionary point. There is a danger, then, that probabilistic sampling is applied in British archaeology, not because it is considered intrinsically superior to judgement sampling (Jones, p. 196) but because, for the moment it is considered de riguarr. This excellent book will, it is hoped, awake the British archaeologist to the necessity of adopting rigorous sampling and survey, but this adoption must be made with a clear conception of difficulties, limitations and aims. The more statistically minded contributions to the book (Hamond, Orton) are more restrained than the editors. IAN HODDER

Lyonesse revisited: the early walls of Scilly

Abstract: The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago some 27 miles (43 km) WSW of Land’s End, Cornwall, and lie within an oval area about 12 miles (19km) SW-NE and 5 miles (8km) NW-SE. Five islands (St Mary’s, Tresco, St Martin’s, Bryher and Agnes; Fig. I) are inhabited, most of the permanent population of 2,000-plus being on St Mary’s. Some 40 further smaller isles bear vegetation, several with signs of former occupation, and there are several hundred more descending to mere rocks and reefs. The total exposed land surface at HWNT is c. 3,900 acres (1,600 ha). Scilly is almost entirely granite, the lowlying area between the isles being mainly a fine, white, granite-derived sand. Scilly is also the most southerly detached landmass of Britain and is botanically just within the extreme northern range of various species (Lousley, 1971). The islands are constitutionally quite separate from Cornwall, with a divergent recent social history (best accounts: Matthews, 1960; Gill, 1975). and a separate, only partly Celtic, linguistic one (cf. Thomas, 1979b), relevant here where place-names can reflect physical development. The archaeology of Scilly, first brought to wider notice by Borlase (1756), has long centred around the inordinate number of post-neolithic entrance-grave cairns (Hencken, 1932; Daniel, 1950), and has only recently been accorded a full length study (Ashbee, 1974).

The Election of Archons from Solon to Telesinos

Abstract: Le temoignage qu'apporte la Constitution d'Athenes sur la procedure employee pour elire les archontes ne doit pas etre recuse. Il s'accorde, en effet, avec les indications qu'Aristote fournit d'autre part dans la Politique. Solon avait organise la designation des archontes par tirage au sort. Abandonnee pendant la tyrannie, cette methode a ete retablie en 487/6 et desormais appliquee selon le principe des dix tribus clistheniennes.

Sull'origine della teoria localistica di Massimo Planude

Abstract: A la suite des travaux que les linguistes contemporains consacrent depuis peu a son oeuvre, Maxime Planude tend aujourd'hui â etre presente comme l'inventeur de l'hypothese localistique. L'etude, â la fois philologique et linguistique, de la question conduit â montrer que son originalite n'est pas aussi absolue : des passages d'Apollonius Dyscole et de Priscien contiennent des vues sinon identiques, du moins analogues aux siennes.

The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979

Abstract: Mrs Mary Aiken Littauer, a valued contributor to ‘Antiquity’ over some years, has a few bones to pick with Dr Ahmad Afshar and Dr Judith Lerner about their Note in our March 1979 issue.

The Sherborne controversy

Abstract: In the third edition of his ‘Ancient hunters’ (1924) W. J. Sollas dismissed the Sherborne bone as ‘a forgery perpetrated by some schoolboys’, a view which was challenged by Arthur Smith Woodward in 1926. Sollas replied, but Woodward took the matter no further. MY Farrar asks us to reconsider the whole matter with him, and suggests that the falsity of the Sherborne bone i s by no means a foregone conclusion. Mr Farrar has been working in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) since 1948. He has been especially involved in the Cambridge city and Dorset inventories of Roman remains, with the formation of the National Monuments Record, and at present with Roman military and urban remains in northern England. Privately his interests lie mainly in Dorset where, in the fifties, he came into contact withJoseph Fowler (in his early youth ajlint-hunter with Canon Greenwell), and it was out of his work that MY Farrar’s own interest in the Sherborne bone arose.

Observations on the Ancient Uses of the Spada Reliefs

Abstract: Les huit reliefs a sujets mythologiques du Palais Spada (Rome) apparaissent comme des produits typiques du temps d'Hadrien, combinant les motifs grecs et les themes idylliques dans le gout de la haute societe de l'epoque. Ces reliefs ont ete inspires par l'esprit rhetorique et moralisateur que la litterature romaine tardive a abondamment illustre. Des procedes litteraires tels que l'ekphrasis et l'antiphonie sont a l'origine d'une decoration destinee, comme celle-ci, aux edifices de luxe.

Philoktetes : Sophoklean Melodrama

Abstract: Les problemes d'interpretation qu'a suscites cette piece s'evanouissent des que l'on se rend compte du role des elements de melodrame qui ont ete introduits par imitation d'Euripide. On s'explique alors facilement l'intrigue, avec ses revirements, ses surprises et ses inconsistances, aussi bien que les roles d'Ulysse, de Philoctete et d'Heracles, qui visent tous â produire le meme effet.

Lucas de Heere's Stonehenge

Abstract: Dr Jan Albert Bakker, of the Albert Egges van Giffen Instituut voor Prae-en Protohistorie, University of Amsterdam, presents us with what he has called, in a letter to the Editor, ‘an article on sixteenth-century Stonehenge drawings, partly well-known, partly not’. His main concern is with the Flemish painter Lucas de Heere's drawing and description of Stonehenge. Published in 1937 by two Dutchmen, it is perhaps fitting that it has taken a third, in Dr Bakker, to draw the attention of British archaeologists to what they have overlooked for more than 40 years. Dr Bakker, who has excavated and studied hunebeds and their contents in Drenthe, was stimulated by Professor Piggott's ‘Ruins in a landscape: essays on antiquarianism’ to study the authorship and the nature of the L.D.H. drawing of Stonehenge. Dr Bakker would like to express his gratitude to Miss Linda Therkorn, Amsterdam, for assistance in preparing this article in English.

Hoyle on Stonehenge

Abstract: In 1966 [Sir] Fred Hoyle published two papers on the possible use of Stonehenge as an eclipse predictor (1966a,b). He has now (Hoyle, 1977) returned to this theme with a very clearly written and well-illustrated book that is essentially an expansion of the material in the two 1966 papers. In brief, Hoyle proposes that the extant features of Stonehenge I provide the necessary means systematically to observe the sun and moon and to keep track of the nodes of the lunar orbit. This would provide sufficient information to allow eclipses of the moon to be predicted. He also proposes that by the time of Stonehenge III this method was superseded by the use of the Saros cycle of 18 years 11 days to predict eclipses. This last method almost certainly implies that written records of events at full moon were kept. Since there is no evidence from the British Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age of writing or numeracy this proposal is purely speculative.

Moving the stones to Stonehenge

Abstract: Mr Garfitt is a Consultant Forester. He has been forestry adviser to large landed estates all over England and Wales from 1946 when he left the Royal Indian Navy. Before that he followed a degree in Forestry at Oxford by six years in the Colonial Forest Service (Malaya). Mr Garfitt says that his work involves intensive inspection of woodland and provides opportunities for the discovery of earthworks and artifacts. He is interested primarily in the prehistoric periods because of the opportunities they provide for imaginative reconstruction, as those who read on will discover. Mr Garfitt lives at The Swedish House, Spring Hill, Nailsworth, Stroud, Glos. GL6 0LX.