REVIEW

Alternative Strategies for Papua New Guinea. Edited by Anthony Clunies Ross and John Langmore. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. viii + 263. Price (papercovers) $5.70.     

PALAEOMAGNETIC STUDY OF HOXNIAN LACUSTRINE SEDIMENTS

The remanent magnetization of samples spanning Zones I to III of the Hoxnian Interglacial at Hoxne has declination values that lie within 30° of the present-day declination, and inclination values that are not more than 10° steeper or 20° shallower than the present-day inclination.     

THERMOLUMINESCENCE AUTHENTICITY MEASUREMENTS ON CORE MATERIAL FROM THE BRONZE HORSE OF THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

The Bronze Horse of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, suspected in recent years of being a modern forgery, is shown by thermoluminescence to have been made in antiquity. Besides the standard thermoluminescence measurements, a new technique was used, utilizing single, highly radioactive grains of zircon separated from the core material of the horse. The zircon grains, because of their high radioactivities (100–200 ppm) and subsequent large internal alpha doses (60–170 krad), are negligibly affected by γ irradiations given to the horse during previous examination. The results show the horse was made 2000 to 4000 years ago, consistent with a work of classical antiquity.     

COPPER AND COPPER ALLOYS IN ANCIENT TURKEY: SOME NEW ANALYSES

This note presents some new analyses for 13 early copper and bronze artefacts from Turkey in the Collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. They were not included in a small programme of early copper and bronze objects from Iraq, Syria and Palestine (Moorey and Schweizer 1972, Archaeometry 14 (2), 177–198) and conclude this pilot-project.