Auden: Anthropology at the British Association. 367 
Professor Flinders Petrie referred to the marked distinction to 
be drawn between the sporadic and general use of iron, and 
pointed out that Egyptian History showed 4000 years of the 
sporadic use of iron, obtained, as a rule, from Haematite, the 
so-called ‘Stone of Heaven’; statuettes of which material are 
not uncommon. The earliest dated tools of iron are a saw and 
centre bits referred to 680 B.c. He alluded to the analogous 
case of flint, which was used in Egypt right down to Roman 
times, although bronze had been known for 800 years. Prof. 
Edouard Naville, of Geneva, argued that iron was but little 
used even in the new Empire, and referred to the use of iron 
battle axes as a tribute. Prof. J. L. Myres (who has recently 
been appointed to the Chair of Greek and Ancient Geography 
at Liverpool) drew attention to the difference in the blast 
furnaces used north of the Alps and the open hearth furnaces 
which had existed around the shores of the Mediterranean and 
in Egypt as far back as the 18th Dynasty, and to the resulting 
difference in the quantity of metal produced by the two processes. 
Mr. Arthur Evans found his chief difficulty in accepting Prof. 
Ridgeway’s views in the fact that an earlier phase of iron age 
culture is found further south than Hallstatt in the Cemeteries 
of Bosnia, and that iron was found in the Palace at Knossos in 
undisturbed earth even of the 12th century B.c. ; whereas the 
generally accepted date of the Hallstatt period was from 1ooo 
to 800 B.c. The discussion was in the highest degree valuable, 
and to some of those present recalled the discussion on the 
same subject at Liverpool-eleven years ago, when a good deal 
of dialectic heat was evolved. 
At onother meeting Professor Flinders Petrie gave a de- 
scription of the pottery Soul-houses disclosed by the last winter’s 
work of the British School of Archeology at Rifeh. The object 
of these models was to provide shelter and provision for the 
soul, to keep it satisfied, and thus to prevent it from returning 
to the village. He proved that the increasing complexity of 
the models was a reflex of the evolution of the dwellings which 
they represented. In some of the more complex models not 
only was a stairway provided whereby the soul might mount 
to the upper storey, couches and chairs upon which it might 
rest, fire-places, water jugs, and a little model of a woman 
making bread under the stairway, but even a manger was 
added tor the donkey, and a pond from which it might drink. 
Professor Naville contributed an important paper upon ‘The 
Beginnings of Egyptian Civilisation,’ and described the dis- 
1907 October 1. 
