Welsh Journals

AN INVENTORY OF THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS IN CAERNARVONSHIRE. II: CENTRAL. THE CANTREF OF ARFON AND THE COMMOTE OF Eifionydd. The Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1960. This volume is the second which the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire is devoting to Caernarvonshire. The first, covering the cantref of Arllechwedd and the commote of Creuddyn, appeared in 1956. The present volume deals with the cantref of Arfon and the commote of Eifionydd. The third will cover the cantref of Llyn. The fact that, for the first time, three volumes have been planned for a single Welsh county reflects the development of the art of compiling inventories since the days of the seven county volumes published by the Commission between 1911 and 1925. The appearance of the Anglesey volume in 1937 set a new standard for the work of the Commission; but a comparison between it and the Caernarvonshire inventory shows the growth in precision and detail since pre-war days. The preparation of the present volume involved the examination of 1,630 buildings and 1,070 possible earthworks. The entries relate to 781 monu- ments distributed over twenty-four parishes with an area of about 145,000 acres; the first volume dealt with 680 monuments in twenty-seven parishes. This second volume contains eighty-two plates, 194 maps, plans, and drawings, a list of finds-147 in number-extending from the prehistoric period to the days of the early Nonconformist chapels, a section on early communications in Caernarvonshire, a glossary, and a general index. We must await the appearance of the third volume for a detailed evaluation of the material; the introduction to this volume directs attention only to a few matters of particular interest. But the sober, solid statistics of the volume, while they daunt the mere reviewer, suggest that there can hardly be a surviving monument of any importance which has escaped the Commission and its investigators. The list of protected sites suggests something of the types of monument listed in the text. As many as sixty- seven are described as worthy of preservation; they include castles, churches, houses, hill-forts, inscribed stones, standing stones, megalithic chambered tombs, groups of huts and enclosures, and Roman sites. The Palaeolithic Age is not represented in this area (the very word does not appear in the index). The Neolithic period provides seven chambered tombs, twelve standing stones, and one stone circle. Certainly, there is nothing in the area to compare with the remarkable Graig Lwyd axe factory described in the first volume. The Bronze Age is reflected in the cairns and tumuli (their distribution is shown in fig. 3), the somewhat mysterious mounds of burnt stones, and the distribution map of prehistoric finds (fig. 9); that map suggests a widespread occurrence of bronze REVIEWS