Archaeological Facts Research Articles

The ‘Philippus’ Coin at Rome

In two papers published in 1933, ‘The Philippus in the West and the Belgic invasion of Gaul’ (Num. Chron. 1933, 88) and ‘The distribution of Gaulish and British coins in Britain’ (Antiquity 1933, 268), Dr. G. C. Brooke put forward, in explanation of the imitation in Gaul of the gold staters of Philip II of Macedon two centuries after their original issue, the theory that these coins were introduced into Central Gaul by the Romans about 120 B.C. when they came into contact with the tribes in that region, and that the Philippus had been ‘brought into normal currency in Rome’ in the second century B.C. after the arrival of great numbers of Philippi in the spoils of war from Greece and Asia Minor in the first half of that century. As Dr. Pink has pointed out, Dr. Brooke's date is several years too late to suit the literary evidence; but it need not be questioned that the gold stater of the type of Philip did not reach Gaul till long after the first issue in Macedon. That it came through Rome, however, does not seem to be supported by any archaeological facts, and involves a serious misconception of Roman monetary economics.

Prof. A. Wiedemann

ALFRED WIEDEMANN, professor of Egyptology at the University of Bonn, died suddenly at the end of 1936 in Bonn, at the biblical age of over eighty years. Both on his father's and his mother's side he belonged to academic families: his father, like his elder brother, Eilhard, was a well-known professor of physics and chemistry, and so was his mother's father, Mitscherlich. Wiedemann himself, although devoted from his youth to Egyptology, felt always a keen interest in natural history and anthropology, and was one of the first among his Egyptological fellow-students to become enthusiastic over de Morgan's theories on Neolithic Egypt. To the latter's book on the tomb of Naqada he contributed an exhaustive study on the methods of burial in the Naqada necropolis, and the origin of the Egyptian people: it was characteristic of Wiedemann to attempt to draw historical conclusions by interpreting Egyptian religious texts and Egyptian rites in the light of recently established archaeological facts.

The Antonine Frontier in Scotland

The second edition of Sir George Macdonald's Roman Wall in Scotland has provoked a new interest in the problems presented by that limes; and no contribution to the discussion is likely to be more stimulating than that propounded above (p. 80 ff.) by Professor Collingwood. The bold thesis there developed is that the Antonine Wall was the slightest of barriers, a toy frontier manned by a garrison whose energies were divided and wasted between patrolling and the legitimate work of defence. So curious a design resulted from the fact that the Lowlands between the Walls had been largely depopulated before the new frontier was established. This interesting view, coherent enough in itself, is put forward in order to supply a lack in Sir George's book, which studies the frontier objectively, without attempting to explain why it was erected; and it is freely admitted that the archaeological facts upon which such a view might be based are insufficient to justify an authoritative statement of a case. Thus, we are in the happy position of being able to admire both author and critics. Sir George's caution is ranged against Professor Collingwood's temerity ; the one avoiding treacherous ground, the other treading nimbly across it, getting a foothold where he can.

Rivers Medal, 1934, and North African Studies

THE selection of Miss Gertrude Caton-Thompson for the award of the Rivers Memorial Medal for 1934 by the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute will be cordially endorsed by all who follow the progress of archaeological studies with any degree of close interest. The medal is awarded annually, and was founded to perpetuate the memory of the late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers by recognising work of outstanding merit in any branch of anthropological studies. Miss Caton-Thompson's work as an excavator of archaeological sites has covered a varied field in time and space. It has ranged from the earliest prehistoric period to the fringe of historic times in Egypt, the Libyan Desert and southern Africa. Her investigation of the Zimbabwe culture of Southern Rhodesia has not only pricked the bubble of speculation, but it has also based the solution of an obscure problem of African ethnology on an assured body of archaeological fact. No one will question that Miss Caton-Thompson's work is “characterised by wide knowledge, sound judgment and insight”, to quote the words of Dr. H. S. Harrison in making the presentation of the medal at the meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute on April 9, at which Miss Caton-Thompson delivered a lecture on the results of the Institute's archæological expedition to the oasis of El Kharga, of which she has been in charge. The importance of these investigations may be gauged from her examination of their bearing on some Stone Age problems of North Africa, problems which recent studies, especially by French archaeologists, show to be assuming an increasing importance in the reconsideration of the prehistory of North Africa and its relation to the origin and development of the later palæolithic and mesolithic cultures of Europe. (See NATURE, 133, 107; 1934. 134, 975; 1934. 135, 550; 1935. An account of the investigation of the rock-shelter of Afalou in Algeria will appear shortly.)

The Aryan Doctrine

HOWEVER much we may feel assured that ultimately truth will prevail, in the practical affairs of life it often befalls that we must watch the dry light of reason pale and flicker in the hot breath of a theory which, illogical and perversive of fact though it may be, appeals to the emotions, the passions and the interests, of the uninstructed, but socially and politically powerful, elements among mankind. The dogma of the Aryan race, which recently has burst like a shell over an astonished world, though formulated on a view of racial affinities fundamentally obsolete and a biased interpretation of archaeological fact, with the aid of the mystic symbols of the swastika, the arm raised in salute and a Messianic leader, has swept Germany off her feet by setting up an ideal, which recalls the ancient glories of the Germanic peoples in a period of political and economic depression, and holds out a promise of their revival through a racial regeneration.