16. Report of the Curator of the Pltt Rlvers Museum (Department of Ethnology) for the year ending 31 July 1957

STAFF
Curator: T.K. Penniman, M.A., Trinity College.
University Demonstrators and Lecturers in Ethnology: B.M. Blackwood, B.Sc., M.A., Somerville College; J.S.P. Bradford, M.A., Christ Church; A.J. Butt, B.Litt., M.A., D.Phil., Lady Margaret Hall.
Secretary to the Museum and Librarian: R. C. Gurden.

During the year arrangements were completed with the Colonial Office, the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, and the General Board of the Faculties to allow Dr. Butt to continue her work among the Akawaio of British Guiana, and she left England in the middle of March and will remain in the field until October. To a grant of money from the Colonial Office was added leave on full salary, and the General Board made a special grant to buy a good cinematograph camera and a battery tape recorder which will be of great use in getting a good linguistic, musical, and pictorial record. A good deal of material has come back to Mr. K.H.H. Walters, who deals with all of our photography and recording, and what we already have shows beyond doubt the great value of a second visit. Dr. Butt has been welcomed as an old friend and much new material and clarification of earlier material have been freely and gladly offered. Moreover, the regular communication between the Museum and the Field stimulates both sides and improves the record of work in progress.

Besides field work in Ethnology, the Museum continued its tradition of archaeological field work. Mr. Bradford spent six weeks in Italy in August-September 1956, and four weeks again in April 1957, the two carefully planned programmes of intensive research being made possible by grants from the British Academy on behalf of the Pilgrim Trust Fund and from the Higher Studies Fund at Oxford.

In Taranto Museum he made a final series of drawings of Neolithic sherds selected from the thousands found during his excavations in Apulia, which covered periods from the Neolithic to the Mediaeval.

He assisted the Italian authorities, at their invitation, in the use of new methods of exploring Etruscan tombs in cemeteries which he had mapped from air photographs taken by himself and others in previous years. Deep drilling combined with 'periscope-photography', i.e. the insertion of a thin metal tube containing a tiny camera and flash-light apparatus, have produced astonishingly clear panoramic views of the contents, plan, and position of the buried entrance-passage of large numbers of tomb-chambers, thus enabling excavators to proceed with great exactness, and to recover complete tomb-groups instead of scattered finds.

The buried plans of the ancient cities of Metapontum and Arpi in South Italy were disclosed by his study of air photographs, and he was enabled to confirm these discoveries by examining the sites on foot. Professor B. Ashmole and Professor Sir John Beazley have kindly given their advice on classical sherds collected from the surface at Arpi, and Mr. Bradford has given a preliminary account of these two cities in Antiquity for September 1957. Other of his finds in Italy included large areas of Roman centuriation, i.e. gridded layouts of roads. Special gratitude is due for facilities given for research in the American Academy in Rome, and in the Italian Air Ministry.

Since our last report was issued, the Museum has published Number 8 of our Occasional Papers on Technology, Mr. H.H. Coghlan's 'Notes on Prehistoric and Early Iron in the Old World', with 220 pages of text, 57 text figures, and 16 pages of half-tone plates, nearly all photomicrographs, at a cost of 25s. The book deals with the craft of workers in iron from the earliest times to about A.D. 1000, and its value is greatly enhanced by a valuable chapter of analyses of iron tools and weapons of many periods, which we owe to the Director of the Department of Research and Technical Development of Messrs. Stewarts & Lloyds, Limited, and we are greatly in the debt of Mr. T. H. Williams, Manager, Chemical Research, and of Mr. P. Whitaker, Manager, Metallographic Research, for the analyses and the photomicrographs in the plates. The book is being very favourably reviewed in the principal technical and archaeological journals of the world, and is in regular demand in this country and abroad.

Two further books in the series are well advanced in preparation, one by Mr. Anthony Baines on Folk Bagpipes, and one by Mr. R.D.G. Faudree on Pottery and Glass. The late Curator, Professor Henry Balfour, left an unusually good collection of bagpipes to the Museum, and it had always been his intention to write about them, following his classic paper on the pibcorn. His collection included bagpipes from Scotland, both Highland and Lowland, Northumbrian bagpipes, Irish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Serbian, Rumanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Czechoslovakian, Russian, Greek, Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Indian bagpipes. To these, we have lately added Galician bagpipes made by Sr. Basilio Carril Fernández of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a maker whose name was given to us by Mr. Baines. We are fortunate in adding Mr. Baines to our list of authors, as he has for fifteen years been a member of the woodwind section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the teacher of many pupils, a founder member of the Galpin Society and editor of its journal, and author of Woodwind Instruments and their History, a book to which the Museum has been glad to supply some of the illustrations. Mr. Faudree has studied and collected pottery in China, India, Baluchistan, Persia, Egypt, and America, as well as in Europe, has excavated in India and in Egypt, and has lately worked on the classical Chinese ceramic texts of the fourteenth century in the light of archaeological excavations at Ching Ho Men in the Liao Province of China. In 1949 he began to apply modern scientific research methods in ceramics and glass to historical materials, starting with a study of the clay minerals in Chinese and Islamic pottery and continuing with the earlier Middle Eastern, Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean. A second part of his programme was devoted to the study of pigments in biscuit wares, followed by coloured glass and glazes. In this work he owed much to the help and support of Professor G.E. Blackman, Dr. E.J. Bowen, and Mr. A.W.G. Kingsbury at Oxford, and to the Director and Staff of the British Ceramic Research Laboratories at Stoke-on-Trent. Full acknowledgements to the many who have contributed their help will appear in the preface of the book.

Throughout the year Museum work has proceeded steadily. Miss Blackwood typed and distributed over 5,000 cards and also distributed about 1,700 typed by the Curator, all these being for early entries in the Accessions Books, many of them requiring some revision in the light of later knowledge. Mr. R.C. Gurden and Mr. A. Wootton dealt each month with the cards for current accessions by gift, purchase, or loan, and also kept the indexes of donors, vendors, and lenders up to date. Mr. Gurden has also completed about 500 detailed cards for the Gunther collection of Japanese netsuke, and has nearly finished the index of specimens in the Examination Schools, while Mr. Wootton has continued the index of the Parsons collection of locks and keys. While the work on arrears continues, Miss Blackwood is responsible for the distribution of cards and the general form of the Regional and Subject Indexes, especially the latter, as the determination of headings is often a headache in so large and varied a collection. As we are nearing the time when all collections and their cards will be arranged in the manner of a good reference library, we have determined at that time to put Mr. Gurden in charge of the catalogue, with Mr. Wootton to assist him and Mr. Gurden will be responsible for keeping the catalogue up to date each month, seeing that new accessions are put on cards and distributed. We can thus be certain that no claims of research or other academic duties will in future allow the catalogue to fall into arrears, and that no undue burden will fall on the more conscientious. Members of the academic staff and others will continue to make the original entries in the Accessions Books, but the uniform method of entry, the system of numbering by year, month, and serial number within the month, the division of labour in labelling and distributing, the labelling of cupboards, cabinets, and drawers, ensure that new accessions get into the catalogue quickly, and that errors can be corrected with reasonable expedition.
 
A great help to advancement of order has been the regular provision by Mr. H. F. Walters of large cupboards on castors, which can be moved easily even when heavily loaded. This year he has provided four, each 8 feet high by 4 feet 4 inches wide by 2 feet 6 inches deep, internally fitted to suit the material they contain. There are now 20 of these tall cupboards, and 7 of the same width and depth but 4 feet 6 inches tall. Mr. R. P. Rivers has assisted him in making these, and in addition to labelling them, has made and fitted metal label-holders to several hundred cabinet drawers, thus ensuring a great saving of time and temper, both in teaching and research, and in satisfying the considerable numbers of research workers from all parts of the world without disrupting our normal programme too severely. To make room for new cupboards and fittings, the Curator and Mr. Gurden cleared and distributed a considerable number of collections from large cabinets, and then used them for large homogeneous collections previously divided among many small cabinets. Disposal of these small ones left room for several large cupboards, so that the ratio of wood to specimens was considerably less. Further room was gained by transferring two carpet-looms to the Science Museum at South Kensington, where they are used for practical demonstration. When the firm of Messrs. D. and B. Gladding was bombed, its machines were divided between the two Museums. Then the looms at South Kensington were destroyed by enemy action, and it seemed right to replace them in an historical series where they are used, rather than to store them here as solitary examples of English carpet weaving.

Previous reports have described the slow general post going on to make room for a clear run exhibiting the large collection of musical instruments, and thus to complete the amalgamation of the very considerable Balfour gift of 1939 with other exhibitions. This year Mr. Wootton cleared the last two in a long line of large free-standing cases of the old South Kensington type, and designed a flat screen down the centre of each with a movable V-shaped screen at both ends, giving fourteen surfaces for exhibition, and easy removal of instruments wanted for photography or any other purpose. The screens were made and painted by Mr. Rivers. In one is exhibited the Lute family, plucked, bowed, and played by percussion, including lutes, guitars, citterns, and violins, arranged by subject and area. In the other is exhibited the Zither family, plucked, bowed, and struck, including stick-, tube-, trough-, and board-zithers, these last, whether as psalteries or dulcimers, being the prototypes of our stringed keyboard instruments. He further cleared and redecorated, with help from Mr. Rivers, a wall-case 21 feet long and 81/2 feet tall, and arranged a series of large musical instruments to show specimens of each class, i.e. Autophones, whose own inherent resonance is caused to vibrate by friction, percussion, or plucking; Membranophones, instruments with taut membranes made to vibrate by percussion, friction, or sympathetically; Aerophones, in which the sound is caused by a vibrating column of air; and Chordophones, in which strings are caused to vibrate by percussion, friction, or plucking. Each of these classes is also represented by a free-standing case of smaller instruments. In another case, Mr. Wootton rearranged our Musical Bows by areas. For all the free-standing cases, he looked out information and did hand-written labels with numerous drawings to show the manner of playing, and for the wall-case, contributed similar drawings and supplied information for the printed labels. Mr. Rivers built several stands to hold instruments in position, including an excellent stand in the Burmese style to hold one of their most beautiful harps, once owned by the Prince Moung-yan of Rangoon, and the Curator contributed a long illustrated account of the instruments of our two complete Burmese orchestras, the Saing and the Anyein, given to us by Mr. M. V. Portman in 1886, all on view in the Museum, but in separate places, since there is no part of the Museum where the very large and the small instruments can be safely shown all together as they should be. The Curator made himself responsible for arranging by subject and area the autophones and membranophones which are not on view, clearing for the purpose a range of cupboards 32 feet long and about 7 feet high, while Mr. Wootton, with the help of Mr. I. M. Allen, restored instruments which had suffered damage in the past, including the membranes of drums, and the frets, bridges, and strings of others, to a condition in which they could be stored without further damage occurring. For the stringed instruments, which had suffered in the past from crowding and piling, Mr. H. F. Walters fitted several of his larger cupboards with sliding bars at the top and half-way down, so that the instruments could be hung in order in several rows, and Mr. Wootton then arranged instruments not on view by subject and area in a 28 foot run of these cupboards, each 8 feet high. In the year now starting he will undertake an evolutionary arrangement of the reed instruments, clarinets, oboes, pibcorns, and bagpipes, the area group showing places from which the Museum has bagpipes being already exhibited in the wall-case. Thus there will be order and decent appearance for a collection of about 5000 musical instruments.

In a previous report, the Curator spoke of the splendid work which Mr. Goble of Headington had done in restoring to perfect playing order our virginal, made by Marcus Jadra in 1552. The Museum has a rare and unusually small piano, only 3 feet 10 inches by 1 foot 4 inches by 6 inches, made by Pohlman in London about 1770. It was in alarmingly bad condition, and on Mr. Goble's advice, we sent it to Mr. Hugh Gough in London. It has come back to us in perfect playing condition, and has a really beautiful tone.

Work on exhibitions illustrating the Bronze and Iron Ages made good progress. The Museum's publication of Mr. Coghlan's book on iron with the micrographs by Messrs. Stewarts & Lloyds gave Mr. Allen the opportunity to make a selection of material with the advice of the Curator and to set up an exhibition with the help of Mr. K.H.H. Walters and Mr. Wootton with the title 'Some early Attempts to make Iron useful, and Progress towards Steel', with specimens and illustrations displaying what the ancient iron-workers knew at various periods between about 800 B.C. and A.D. 900. To this exhibition Mr. J.W. Anstee of the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading kindly contributed specimens of his own iron-working to illustrate the construction of pattern-welded swords. Mr. Allen also completed the examination of about 40 Bronze Age implements of copper and bronze by hardometer, and chemical and metallographic analysis, and wrote reports. Mr. Wootton drew the implements and the micrographs from the sections prepared by Mr. Allen, and Mr. K.H. Walters is photographing them in groups for our forthcoming exhibition on the British Bronze Age and for eventual publication. The spectrographic analyses were very kindly done by Dr. Maurice Cook of the Imperial Chemical Industries, and by Dr. E. T. Hall of the University Laboratory of Archaeology and the History of Art, with whom we have arranged for further analyses. Mr. W.F. Bennett of Swanley, Kent, has undertaken the spectrographic analysis of about 20 specimens of copper and bronze from the Far East for an exhibition we are now planning, and we are grateful for his help.

Before leaving the subject of improvement in exhibitions and their attendant storage, the Curator cannot forbear to mention an improvement most pleasing to himself and to the whole Staff. The new Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory to the south required the destruction of a pleasant shrubbery at the end of the quadrangle behind our building, and moving two of our storage buildings which partly encroached on their land deprived us of part of our hedge and a tree. For some years our quadrangle has been broken up by deep excavations for heating ducts and drains, and the rubbish from the repair of the great roof of the University Museum has been left in piles because there was no suitable road to take it away. The Curator decided on flower borders by the Library and Workshop buildings to replace lost amenities, and with the help of the Surveyor to the University, Mr. J. Lankester, the Clerk of the Works, Mr. T.R Davies, and the Superintendent of the Parks, Mr. G.J. Morris, the yard has been levelled and covered with small gravel, and the six-foot flower borders made. As it was very late in the season, and there was a drought, the Parks could not supply all that they desired, but a very good beginning was made, and the Curator, Miss Blackwood, and other members of the Staff contributed plants and work, so that we have a very good show for the first season. We are contributing shrubs and plants this autumn, so that ultimately we shall have something in flower the year round. Already our peace of mind and pleasure in coming to work have greatly gained. We are also happy to thank the Surveyor and the Clerk of the Works for putting an end to the flooding of our area in heavy rain-storms, due to the number of huge roofs which slope in our direction.
 
In addition to his work on the Museum Catalogue and assistance to the Curator in the better ordering of exhibition and storage, Mr. Gurden has been responsible for the routine administration of the Department, including the ordering of supplies and equipment and books, keeping and presenting accounts to the auditors, supervision of the Library with over 100 regular readers as well as outside research workers, sales and exchanges of our publications, regularly increasing, keeping the catalogue of negatives up to date, and attending to the needs of many, including foreign research workers, who visit the Museum, usually dealing with their needs independently, but sending on those who need such attention to the appropriate member of the Academic Staff.
 
Besides the work already mentioned, Mr. Wootton labelled a very large number of current accessions and entered some of them, assisted Mr. Gurden in the regular provision of leaflets and maps distributed to students, and for Dr. Butt drew a large number of Akawaio Indian heads showing paint and tattoo marks, which Mr. K. H. Walters made into lantern-slides and furnished prints for publication. Mr. Wootton also supplied drawings for several outside museums which inquired about our collections, as well as drawing all the specimens with micrographs and typing the reports for Mr. Allen's work on bronze and copper, and restoring the specimens to their original appearance with 'Loy', a cold-worked metal which does not cause corrosion, and will take any colour. He found time to make two excellent plaster casts of axes of the Dong-Son period in Viet-Nam, lent to us by the Musée de l'Homme, and made a good beginning in drawing the text figures for Mr. Faudree's forthcoming book in our series.
 
During the past year Mr. K.H.H. Walters photographed 135 items. Of these, and also from negatives brought to him from various other sources, he produced 390 finished prints and 130 lantern slides, mounted a great number of prints and labels, restored torn documents, and processed a lot of roll film. As usual, he acted as lanternist for our lectures, assisted on occasion by Mr. Rivers, and during the hottest weather, when the sun beats the thermostatic control of his studio under the roof, gave a great deal of help in the workshop and Court towards the making of cabinets, cupboards, and frames for Museum specimens. He has already received and played over some 4,200 feet of excellently recorded magnetic tape from Dr. Butt in British Guiana, 600 feet of 16 mm. film, mainly in colour, and about 60 colour transparencies all of very good quality, and is binding these last as lantern slides. As the material come to hand, he is examining it, and advising Dr. Butt on its quality and on possible improvement of results. He is now completing arrangements and apparatus for recording on tapes our large collection of recordings on soft wax cylinders. We are glad to say that he has been promoted, and is now a Senior Technician.
 
We have already spoken of the considerable number of chemical and metallographic analyses which Mr. Allen has completed for our exhibition illustrating the British Bronze Age, and for eventual publication. He has also prepared and supplied metallurgical information for the Committee for Ancient Mining and Metallurgy of the Royal Anthropological Institute at the request of Mr. H.H. Coghlan, and is collecting information about ancient metallurgical and other furnaces of the British Isles for a general survey which is being undertaken by the Centro di Studi Prehistoricie Archeologici di Varese under the direction of Dr. Costantino Storti. Mr. Allen's two chapters on 'The Explanation of some Terms used in describing the Metallurgy and Metallography of ancient Iron', and 'An Eskimo Knife collected by Sir John Ross', appeared this year in Mr. Coghlan's 'Notes on Prehistoric and Early Iron in the Old World', number 8 in the Museum's Occasional Papers on Technology. Further work well advanced for eventual publication is an article on British Bronze Age Halberds and another on Leaded-Bronze Oriental Gongs. In the course of work on the latter, he undertook the analysis of a portion of a gong of the Dong-Son period for Mr. G. de G. Sieveking, Curator of Museums, Federation of Malaya. Much of his time has been employed in the cleaning and restoration of specimens, and in the preparation of mixtures for their treatment, as well as entering specimens. He also made himself responsible for arranging a large collection of bows in a more orderly manner so that any which may be called for are more quickly produced.
 
In this last, he was assisted by Mr. Rivers, who has been of the greatest help to the whole Staff, both Technical and Academic. His part in helping the Technical Staff has already been mentioned at various times, especially his major work with Mr. H.F. Walters, the Chief Technician. But he has been very helpful to the Academic Staff daily in finding and setting out a large amount of material for lectures and practical classes, and for putting it back where it belongs afterwards, a task which requires a good knowledge of the collections.
 
Among accessions from Africa during the past year we may mention the gift by our pupil Mr. C.M. Turnbull of a long playing disc with 20 recordings of music made by himself on a recent expedition to the Ituri Forest in the Belgian Congo, and are glad to say that he is now on a further expedition to study the pygmies of that region. From Miss Barbara Latham we purchased a splendid cloth, about 6 feet by 9 feet, of multi-coloured stripes in cotton with a yellow silk pattern, identified by our pupil Nana Nketsia IV as a Kente cloth from Togoland about 70 or 80 years old and very rare now even in Togoland. Another pupil, Miss E. Jackson, obtained for us four handsome examples of Hausa weaving from Northern Nigeria of native grown and-dyed cotton. These long strips, locally embroidered, would have been sewn together with similar strips to make garments. From Mrs. Byam Grounds we received among other gifts a very finely woven cloth such as those worn by West African Chiefs about 1899, which Mr. C. Okonyia, one of our Nigerian pupils, believes to be the work of the South-eastern Ibo people. Mr. P.H. Herbert contributed a collection made by himself, mainly from the Baganda tribe of Uganda; Mr. Brian Clarke an Arab costume from Algeria; Mr. and Mrs. Peetz a collection from several tribes in Madagascar made by her father, Mr. W.E. Gregory about I908; Lt.-Col. R.H. Cunnington a number of well-made pots from Basutoland; and last, but by no means least, the Trustees of the Powell-Cotton Museum of Quex Park, Birchington, Kent, added to the considerable generosity of the family over many years about 50 specimens collected by Miss A. Powell-Cotton in Zululand in 1935, all completely documented, as are all their previous gifts, in a manner to satisfy the most exacting standards. Two valuable loans were a Mendi mask from Sierra Leone, by Mr. Malcolm H. Green, and an elaborate head-dress worn by Damara women in the Ngami region of Bechuanaland, by Major Sir Ralph Furse, K.C.M.G., D.S.O. (and bar).
 
Among important accessions from the Americas were a collection of 4I specimens representing the Guajiro and other tribes on the Venezuelan-Colombian border, tribes from which the Museum had previously nothing, collected and given by Mr. Ross Salmon; and a collection made by Mr. David Maybury-Lewis among the Serente Indians of Central Brazil, commissioned by the Museum, which had previously no specimens from this tribe but now has 45 examples representing their material culture with full documentation. We also thank Miss Elinor Ewbank for a small collection of Cree Indian quill-work of the mid-nineteenth century.
 
Particularly interesting additions to our Asiatic and Indonesian collections were a collection of pottery and sherds representing Chinese cultures of various periods, Yang-Shao, Shang, Chou, Warring States, Han, Wei, T'ang, and Sung from an exchange with the Newbury Borough Museum arranged with the Curator, Mr. H.H. Coghlan. Then in a collection given by Mrs. E. J. Green from Java, Timor, and British North Borneo were included several lovely bowls of the Sung type, probably made ous skills which they are generous in sharing, so that when we older ones go, there will be younger ones who can continue and improve on our work for the Museum. As usual, the Curator continued to serve on the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, the Committee of Management of the Griffith Institute, and Board of Management of the Egyptological Fund, the Committee for the Fine Arts, and the Joint Advisory Science Committee of Council. He continued to serve as Diploma Secretary for Anthropology, Interviewer of Research Students, and Secretary to Heads of Science Departments.

Miss Blackwood lectured twice weekly in all three terms, and gave a long practical class once weekly for students of the Diploma in Anthropology, and two shorter practical classes each week to students working for the Preliminary Examination in the Honour School of Geography, in the former being assisted by Mr. Bradford and Dr. Butt, and in the latter by Dr. Butt. In Michaelmas and Hilary Terms her general title was Lands and Peoples, the first term being devoted to Hunters and Herders, and the second to Cultivators. These lectures were given both to Diploma and to Geography students. During Trinity Term she gave The Higher Civilizations of Pre-Conquest America, these weekly lectures being attended by Diploma students and some from other Faculties. She also gave three lectures followed by museum demonstrations on Some African Arts and Industries for Overseas Cadets going to Africa, and three lectures and demonstrations on Ethnology of the Western Pacific to Cadets bound for that area. As always, a great deal of her time was taken in dealing with the requirements of a considerable number of research workers, both those who visited the Museum, and those who wrote for information.

We have already mentioned her considerable work in organizing the form of the Catalogue, and her contributions to it, work specially recognized by the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography and by the Visitatorial Board in prolonging her term of office beyond the retiring age. Since he started the card catalogue in 1939, the Curator has relied on her daily perseverance, ability, and flair for organizing complex and varied material in a task that we knew from our first discussion would take many years, but which both of us regarded as the first essential for full use of the resources of a great Museum of international repute. The number of cards now is about 500,000. Besides the catalogue, she undertook a good deal of other Museum work, sorting the cabinet drawers of African arm- and leg-ornaments, arranging them by smaller geographical units, so that any given specimen can be more quickly found, sorting and labelling textiles from the Lengua tribe of the Gran Chaco, breaking down an early mass entry in the Accessions Book, and completed the sorting and distribution of a large number of pipes for tobacco and opium, snuff-taking and betel and areca nut apparatus into 48 large drawers, each labelled by subject and area. She also labelled and entered a large number of new accessions, several times collecting these from donors' homes and bringing them to the Museum. These included the remainder of the Parsons collection of locks and keys, which came to us on the death of Miss C.E. Parsons. On hearing the complicated regulations of British Railways for moving the large and heavy Dutch strong-box, she dismantled her well-beloved Baby Austin to allow the village strong men to load the box, and at fearful risk to the car springs, brought both box and car safely from Cambridge to Oxford.

Among other activities, she attended the 32nd International Congress of Americanists held at Copenhagen in August 1956 as representative of the University and delegate from the Museum, acted as Examiner in Ethnology for the Diploma of the Museums Association, and served on the Councils of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Folk-Lore Society. Publications during the year include 'A Study of Artificial Cranial Deformation in New Britain' by Beatrice Blackwood and P. M. Danby, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 85, 1955 (published 1956), pp. 173-91, Plates I-IV. Part I, 'The Living', is by Miss Blackwood, and Part II, 'The Skull'. is by Mrs. Danby, who used the material collected by Miss Blackwood in New Britain in 1938. Miss Blackwood also contributed the section 'Museum News' to Folk-Lore, lxvii, Sept. 1956, and lxviii, March and June 1957, as well as various book reviews in The Antiquaries Journal, The Museums Journal, and Folk-Lore.

Mr. Bradford's field work in Italy has already been described. He lectured once weekly in all three terms, his Michaelmas lectures being on The First Farmers in Europe, a Survey of Neolithic Economy and Society, the Hilary lectures on Asian Nomads, with special reference to Scyths, Huns, and Mongols, and the Trinity lectures on Tribal Life in Britain in the First Millennium B.C. He also assisted in practical instruction to Diploma pupils in all three terms, tutored 26 Geography pupils in Ethnology, and served as an examiner for the Preliminary in the Honour School of Geography and for the Diploma in Anthropology. During the year he gave four external lectures: in November 1956 to the Oxford University Archaeological Society on Aerial Discoveries in Attica and Rhodes; at the University of Nottingham, on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, Aerial Discoveries on Classical Sites in Mediterranean Lands; in February 1957 at the University of Leicester on History from the Air; and in April, at the University of Rome, by invitation of the Istituto di Topografia Antica, a department of the University, an illustrated lecture in Italian entitled Ricerche Archeologiche Aeree nelle regioni Mediterranee negli anni 1943-I957, summarizing some of his discoveries and the methods of making them.
 
This year saw the publication by G. Bell & Sons Ltd. of Mr. Bradford's Ancient Landscapes, Studies in Field Archaeology, a volume of 300 pages and over 100 pages of illustration, air photographs, ground photographs, maps, and diagrams. The book describes the methods of air archaeology, and describes discoveries made in countries all over the world, but the emphasis is placed on Europe, and particularly on the author's finds in Mediterranean lands since 1943. Chapters are devoted to Neolithic, Etruscan, and Roman buried landscapes, and to town-planning in Classical and Mediaeval Europe. The chapter on Roman centuriation is the first detailed analysis to appear in English. Articles on the latest discoveries in Etruscan tombs appeared in the Illustrated London News of 30 March 1957, and in the New Scientist of 2 May 1957, and 'KortLœgning fra luften af 2000 gravhoje' appeared in Naturens Verden for June I957. The Antiquaries Journal for July-October I956 published Part 2 of his 'Field-work on aerial discoveries in Attica and Rhodes', this part being 'Ancient field-systems on Mt. Hymettos'. He reviewed the Atlas des centuriations romaines de Tunisie in Gnomon, a German periodical, and Excavations at Gözlü Kule, Tarsus for the Burlington Magazine. Among other activities he contributed 20 photographs with descriptions of the Neolithic settlements he found and excavated in Apulia to an exhibition arranged by the London Institute of Archaeology to coincide with the Prehistoric Society's conference on Mediterranean Prehistory held in April 1957, and continued to act as Secretary to the inter-faculty committee on the appeal fund for an annual lecture to commemorate the life and work of the late Sir John Myres. To mark the Museum's long association with Sir John Myres and his gifts to our Museum and Library, the Curator decided that the Museum should be responsible for the cost of the first 5,000 copies of the appeal, and we are glad to say that the response so far has been very encouraging.

In the Michaelmas Term Dr. A.J. Butt gave a weekly lecture and practical course on The Material Culture of the Prescribed Area, East Africa, and in Hilary Term gave a weekly lecture with some practical instruction on Amerindian Tribes of the Guianas in South America, as well as assisting Miss Blackwood in the practical courses for Diploma and for Geography students. In addition to these lectures, she showed a colour film taken by Dr. Bassett Maguire of Akawaio Village Activities, and gave a commentary on three occasions, to the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, to the University Anthropological Society, and to students of Geography. In spite of the considerable amount of work involved in preparing for her second expedition to British Guiana, she found time for sorting several thousand amulets and charms into 55 large drawers, each labelled by area, the work involving a good deal of research into documentation for some specimens; entered and fully catalogued the Serente Indian collections from Brazil brought by Mr. Maybury-Lewis, and Mr. Ross Salmon's collection from the Venezuelan-Colombian border, the whole amounting to over 100 items; and obtained information from lenders of negatives and prepared and filed cards with very full documentation for each collection of slides made by Mr. K.H.H. Walters, the result being 30-50 slides each for the Banyoro (Dr. J.H. Beattie's negatives), the Tiv of Northern Nigeria (Dr. P.J. Bohannan's negatives), the Pygmies of the Congo (Mr. C.M. Turnbull's negatives), and the Mondari of the Southern Sudan (Miss J. C. Buxton's negatives). The Museum owes much to the generosity and interest of those who have added so much to our teaching collections.

During the course of the writing of this report, film and tape-recordings from Dr. Butt continue to come in regularly, all of high quality, and we here express our gratitude for the grant from the General Board of the Faculties which made it possible for us to gain permanent records of such value, not only on this expedition to British Guiana, but on future expeditions.

Such activities as the Curator has mentioned have been over and above the task of looking out, setting up, and putting away material for lectures and practical work, a business that takes the best part of three full days a week during term. Readers will be glad to know that we are now at a point in the building queue where we may expect some additional building, so that we shall be free of some of the work involved in using the public galleries for teaching, when we have rooms in which material can stay as long as we need to use it for teaching, and need not be so often set up and taken away.

As usual, we are happy to record our gratitude to our oldest and liveliest member, Mr. F.J. Nipress, for the many unobtrusive services which allow us to get on with our work in a civilized and untroubled manner.

There were 8,805 visitors to the Museum, including parties from 56 schools.

T.K. PENNIMAN