A second Wenner-Gren Foundation regional supper conference was held at Harvard University on November 6, 1953 (see AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 55: 353 for an account of the first such regional conference of this series). This conference took as its general theme the subject of method and theory in archeology and was based, more specifically, upon a paper by Professor C. F. C. Hawkes of Oxford University, England. Professor Hawkes, the McCurdy Lecturer in Old World Prehistory in the Peabody Museum a t Harvard for the Fall of 1953, prepared his comments in advance and these were duplicated and distributed to a large group of archeologists, of both Old and New World interests, throughout the New England region. Some fifty persons, including both professionals and graduate students, attended the three-hour afternoon conference session. General discussions were opened by a group of special discussants, including Walter W. Taylor Oxjwd UniversityN THIS rewriting of the theme which I prepared, in October 1953, for the I conference recorded above, I have been greatly helped both b y t h e comments made on it b y the participants, a n d b y much else that I have heard a n d read o n theory and method in archeology during m y four-month stay in the United States. T h e New World's interest in the subject should certainly have a n Old World counterpart. And I hope that m y attempts to think toward one have profited from American thinking in the New World field of study, although, naturally, they themselves belong properly to the Old World field, with which alone I can claim adequate acquaintance. A t a n y rate m y starting point will be familiar to American readers, namely, Walter W. Taylor's book A Study of Archaeology, which is concerned mainly with New World archeology. As a n Old World archeologist, I a m of course not competent to assess or criticize Taylor's detailed contentions in this book. But all readers will know the general objection t h a t he raised in it against New World archeology, for having limited itself to what he called "mere chronicle"-an almost exclusive preoccupation with charting the connections, in space a n d time, of the types of archeological material obtained from sites. H e insisted t h a t such 155

This article is something both more and less than the lecture that it represents. The lecture was given in London last December to open the Conference on the Southern British Iron Age which is reported here below by Mr Frere (p. 183). But it had the disadvantage of all introductory lectures to conferences, that they cannot anticipate what the other speakers will be saying later. And in this case, what the others said later was sometimes so new and striking as to leave the introductory lecture rather far behind. Of course, that was the measure of the conference’s success; yet I was gratified to find that what had happened, by the end, was that the others had not so much contradicted as carried further, in their various special fields, much of what was suggested in my more general talk. This surely means—and I think we can be gratified all round—that in the dozen years since the Council for British Archaeology last caused a general survey to be put forward, or the twenty years since Childe was writing in Prehistoric Communities, we have taken our Iron Age studies through a process of expansion, and of revaluation, and yet have emerged still pretty well together.These milestones in their history are worth remembering. Horae Ferales, in which Kemble and Franks first brought our Iron Age metalwork to recognition, appeared in 1863, and John Evans’s Coins of the Ancient Britons in 1864; Arthur Evans’s monograph on the Aylesford cemetery, with both metalwork and pottery shown for the first time in their European setting, in 1890; Canon Greenwell’s on the Yorkshire chariot-burials in 1906.

No abstract

An iron sword of anthropoid-hilted type (pl. XXIV, 1, 3) was found in 1944 at Shouldham in West Norfolk, some five miles east of the margin of the Fens, and since 1949 has been on loan to Norwich Castle Museum. It is here published by kind permission of the owner, Mr W. R. O. Woodward. The sword was discovered while gravel was being dug in an arable field about 200 feet south-east of the site of the medieval church of St. Margaret, which fell into ruins after the Reformation. The sword was found at a depth of 1 foot 6 inches lying across the chest of an extended human skeleton inside the boundary of the medieval churchyard, as graves of that period were found adjacent though they had not disturbed this pre-Christian inhumation. There is no indication either on the ground or on air-photographs that a barrow had formerly existed, and the burial is probably to be regarded as an isolated interment.The overall length of the sword, to the end of the branching arms, is now 21⅜ in. (54 cm.), but this has been slightly diminished by corrosion. The straight-edged blade is 16⅜ in. (44 cm.) long and the hilt measures 3¼ in. (8 cm.). At both ends of the hilt curving arms of round cross-section branch outwards to end in knobs, now of unequal size owing to differential rusting. The surface of the grip bears traces of transverse ribbing, perhaps imitating that found in bronze on other examples of the type.

The buckle (PL. Iva) was found during the latest season of excavation on the site of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Finglesham [I]. It has not yet been sent for laboratory treatment, but though some of its constructional details are obscured by the corrosion of the bronze backplate, all its other surfaces, including the underside of the loop and tongue and the edges of the ornamental plate, have been protected during the long centuries underground by a layer of very good, bright yellow, gilding. As it lay in the grave, indeed, the metal gleamed with very nearly the incorruptible brilliance of gold itself, and the front of the buckle has since needed only the gentlest of washing to be revealed in its present smooth, glossy and almost unflawed state. The ornament of the plate, thus perfectly preserved in its pristine condition, could at once be seen as something out of the common, and something of the greatest interest for students not only of Germanic art and archaeology, but of Germanic religion and mythology too.