The Double Axe in Prehistoric Europe

Abstract

One of Professor Myres's outstanding activities within the present decade has been in the re-founding of the old tradition of International Congresses in prehistoric archaeology and in anthropology. Prehistorians of many lands have cause to be grateful for the facilities thus afforded them for getting to know one another better, and for the interchange of facts and ideas, and never more so than when the subject has been one to which Professor Myres himself has contributed. Those subjects are notoriously many, but from the International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences held at Oslo in 1936—the second of the new series—I recall with especial vividness his contribution, following those of Professors Childe and Menghin, to the discussion on the paper read by Mr. R. W. Hutchinson on Aegean Battle-axes. And it is a great pleasure to be able to turn to my notes—such as they were—of what he said that morning, as a startingpoint for my brief tribute in this volume to the inspiration of his manysided genius.