bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hunting Strategies in the Central European Palaeolithic
Authors: Gamble Clive
Published: February 2015

It is now generally recognised that the activity known as hunting is a complex but predictable adaptation of small social units to the variable structure of the environment. In the last decade we have passed from the model of the hunter as a ‘catch-as-catch-can’ opportunist to an appreciation of his ability to exploit resources in both a systematic and efficient manner (Wilmsen 1973; Williams 1974; Jochim 1976). The investigation of how hunting decisions are made has led to a fuller appreciation of the component parts of this particular lifestyle, with the result that attention has shifted from technology, as the principal interest, to considerations of resource exploitation, demography, settlement location, interaction, and mating networks (Higgs 1976; Wobst 1974, 1976). In particular the differing adaptations of hunter-gatherer groups have been examined in relation to variations in the global ecosystem which shows a spatial succession of habitat types, grading from generalised to specialised, between the equatorial tropics and the arctic poles (Harris 1969; Yellen and Harpending 1972). While this is a most convenient framework for predicting many variable features of hunter-gatherer organisation, e.g. territory size and cultural patterning, its extreme generality obscures the options that exist within ecosystems at the smaller scale of local adaptation. Thus, far from confining hunting outcomes to broad eco-determinism, decisions made by hunting bands will be influenced by immediate features of the environment such as the location of grazing areas and the configurations of relief. The outcomes as seen in settlement patterns and demographic arrangements may well resemble, at a local level, the expected pattern as influenced by generalised environmental conditions, while viewed at a wider scale the prevailing environment might be highly specialised (Gamble 1978b, 181). The purpose of this paper is to examine, by means of a case study, a comparative structure for palaeolithic hunting strategies that involved the exploitation of large mammals.
The Production and Distribution of Mesolithic Axes in Southern England
Authors: Care Verna
Published: February 2015

Ethnographic data has been used to show that ‘most differences between hunters and farmers are a matter of degree, and there is no sharp dividing line between the two means of subsistence’ (Orme 1977, 46). The early Neolithic of southern England, as defined from the archaeological record, is likely to reflect the adaptations of a mature techno-economic system to an environment already much altered by the activities of late Mesolithic groups and immigrant pioneer ‘agriculturalists’. Case has shown the need for a long period of pioneer activity during which contact with indigenous groups would have taken place and hunting and gathering provided an essential supplementary means of subsistence (1969). By the later Mesolithic, internal population growth and the spread of closed forest, which affected the availability of food resources, may have created internal pressures on the mobile hunter-gatherer subsistence base (Jacobi 1978, Evans 1975). Zones of particularly rich resources, such as the Kennet and Thames valley, may have provided conditions which allowed a reduction in group mobility. Attempts may also have been made in other areas to increase the resources available by limited forest clearance, more controlled use of plant resources, and an increase in the exploitation of coastal environments (Jacobi 1973 and 1978, Mellars 1976, Clarke 1976). Thus, during the crucial period of contact both systems were under stress, and it is no longer valid to attempt to identify a Late Mesolithic with a purely hunter-gatherer economy which was rapidly replaced by a homogeneous group of sedentary agriculturalists with a distinct artifact assemblage.
The Mammalian Remains from the Jericho Tell
Authors: Clutton-Brock Juliet
Published: February 2015

The last volumes of the report on the excavations at Jericho have been delayed owing to the death of Dame Kathleen Kenyon. This article was written in 1977 as a specialist contribution to the final report but, in view of the delay, Dr Clutton-Brock wishes to present the evidence here so that any observations by her colleagues may be considered before the final publication. The provenance of the material has been correlated with the system designed for the final reports.
Prehistoric Boats, Timber, and Woodworking Technology
Authors: McGrail Sean
Published: February 2015

The recent paper by Coles et al. (1978) on the use and character of prehistoric timber is a most timely reminder that the study of wooden artifacts can make a significant contribution to our understanding of early man. This potential may never be realised, however, unless full records are compiled on site whilst the artifacts are maintained in a stable state by ‘passive’ conservation techniques, and samples of the timber are recovered for post-excavation research. In the past much information has been irretrievably lost because these actions were not taken. It is also necessary to be cautious before accepting that wooden artifacts excavated or found before, say, 1960 are necessarily from the period ascribed to them. Not all simple artifacts are prehistoric.
Hand-axes from beneath Glacial Till at Welton-le-Wold, Lincolnshire and the Distribution of Palaeoliths in Britain
Authors: Wymer J. J. , Straw A.
Published: February 2015

It is so rare for Palaeolithic artifacts to be found unequivocably stratified beneath glacial till, that the recent report by Alabaster and Straw (1976) of such an occurrence in Lincolnshire warrants some comments. Three hand-axes (fig. 1) were found between 1969 and 1973 in the quarry of Stephen Toulson and Son Ltd at Welton-le-Wold (TF 282884, 5 km west of Louth). They were found in association with fragmentary faunal remains of elephant, deer, horse and possibly Irish Giant Deer (see appendix by Boylan, in Alabaster and Straw 1976). Both artifacts and fauna came from a narrow zone in the Upper Division of the Welton Gravels underlying some 13 m of glacial till. This Upper Division, comprising silts, sands and flint gravels, is considered to have been deposited by periglacial aeolian and niveofluvial processes, whereas the Lower Division contains more water-bedded sands. The conclusion of the investigators was that as the animals represented could not have lived under the severe environmental conditions that prevailed during the accumulation of this Upper Division of the gravel, they had presumably been derived from an earlier temperate, interglacial deposit. The relative concentration of animal remains, the finding of two conjoinable elephant molars and the fairly fresh state of the artifacts suggests that they had not travelled far before coming to rest in the gravel. No sediment was traced in the quarry area which could have been a likely source.
Fire Ecology, Animal Populations and Man: a Study of some Ecological Relationships in Prehistory
Authors: Mellars Paul
Published: February 2015

The occurrence of fires in many types of woodland and forested environments would have benefited human populations in several different ways. In addition to greatly increasing the mobility of the human groups, the occurrence of fire in many types of forest would have led to substantial improvements in the economic potential of the environment. Improvements in both the quantity and nutritional quality of the food supplies available to herbivorous animals would have increased not only the total carrying capacity of the environment for these species, but also the relative growth-rates and reproductive rate of the animals. In certain cases it is likely that burning would have increased the overall ‘productivity’ of ungulate populations by a factor of × 10. Similar improvements may have been achieved in the yields of certain vegetable food resources. The potential impact of these environmental changes on the population numbers and settlement patterns of human communities is discussed, and it is suggested that the adoption of systematic policies of forest burning by hunting and gathering populations may have led in certain situations to the emergence of more complex patterns of man-animal relationships which were closely similar to those of traditional ‘herding’ or ‘pastoralist’ economies.
Palmette and Circle: Early Celtic Art in Britain and its Continental Background
Authors: Frey Otto-Herman , Megaw J. V. S.
Published: February 2015

Following an outline of some aspects of continental Early Celtic art in which the importance of Mediterranean plant-derived motifs and compass construction work is emphasised, the authors consider some significant aspects of the development of the various sword sub-styles. An analysis of selected insular pieces points out the differences from, rather than the seeming similarities to continental Celtic art. It is argued that the earliest of such pieces cannot antedate the developed third century sword style(s) though absolute chronology is impossible to achieve as yet. A final section indicates that the later insular styles see a unique re-emergence of the reliance on compass based designs.
Interrupted Ditch Enclosures in Britain: the use of Aerial Photography for Comparative Studies
Authors: Palmer Rog
Published: February 2015

Analyses have been directed towards providing an objective basis for the untested assumption that interrupted ditch enclosures, discovered in riverine situations by aerial reconnaissance, are related to the high-lying neolithic causewayed enclosures. The results of a series of attribute analyses appear to justify the unity of the enclosures, while at the same time suggesting a division into four geographical groups. Aerial photography has been used to provide data for comparative studies. In this case, sites known only from the air have been compared with excavated enclosures which show similar characteristics. The resulting classification is thought to demonstrate the feasibility of such an application of aerial photographs.
The Meare Heath Trackway: excavation of a Bronze Age structure in the Somerset Levels
Authors: Coles J. M. , Orme B. J. , Beckett S. C. , Girling M. A. , Morgan R. A.
Published: February 2015

The prehistoric structure described in this paper is only one of a large series of wooden roads and trackways that run into and across the Somerset Levels. The Levels themselves consist of a number of wide expanses of moorland separated by ‘islands’ of rock and sand, the whole covering a region in Somerset of about 200 square miles. In the northern part of the Levels, the peats of the valley of the River Brue have for long been subjected to hand-cutting and machine-cutting by a number of individuals and peat-companies. Through their activities, many prehistoric discoveries have been made and these have been reported at intervals in these Proceedings and elsewhere. In 1973, the Somerset Levels Project was formed to organize and conduct fieldwork and excavations in the Levels, and, through co-operation with both the Department of the Environment and the many peat interests in the Levels, the Project has been able to undertake many more investigations of prehistoric remains than had previously been possible; about 15 reports relating to recent works have been published, and those relevant to the present paper are listed in the References.

The wooden trackway described here has been known to exist for almost 90 years, but so far as we are aware it has never before been fully examined, nor has it had the benefit of specialist studies dealing with dendrochronology and with fossil coleoptera associated with the trackway. These, allied to extensive wood identifications and pollen analyses, allow a more closely defined description and interpretation of the trackway which appear to us to alter the original concepts as published previously.
Two Shoulder Blades with Healed Lesions from Star Carr
Authors: Noe-Nygaard Nanna
Published: February 2015

Two shoulder blades with healed lesions found at the Mesolithic settlement Star Carr are described, one of an elk (Alces alces (L.)) and the other front red deer (Cervus elaphus L.). Their presence at the site throws light on the question of seasonal occupation, indicating that the site has been populated at least during winter time. In addition, some comments are made on the supposed lesions on the elk from High Furlong, Lancashire.
Early Neolithic Land Use in Yugoslavia
Authors: Barker Graeme
Published: February 2015

Ever since the publication of Gordon Childe's Danube in Prehistory, almost fifty years ago, the first neolithic colonisation of temperate Europe through the Balkans has been one of the cornerstones of European prehistory. There is still a consensus of opinion in most of the recent literature on the general character of this process: that it involved the transmission of farming techniques and probably the movement of groups of peoples—the first farmers. Farming was ‘carried into central Europe up the Danube … a stone-using agricultural peasantry was widely established in eastern Europe by 5000 B.C.’ (Piggott 1965, 46). However, it has been extremely difficult to proceed beyond this kind of general statement, because there is still an alarming shortage of detailed economic evidence from early neolithic sites in the Balkans. Plant remains and animal bones have been reported from neolithic sites scattered across the area (Murray 1970; Renfrew 1973), but in many cases the recovery of this kind of economic evidence was not the primary objective of excavation and, as a result, the methods employed to gather such evidence have rarely been sufficiently refined to meet the stringent requirements of modern faunal and plant analysis. Alexander (1972, 34) noted recently that, in the case of the First Neolithíc of Yugoslavia, ‘there is as yet no detailed analysis of the animmal bones from any site’ and adequate faunal and botanical reports from early neolithic excavations are still all too few in the Balkan area as a whole.
Social Dimensions of Early Neolithic Denmark
Authors: Randsborg Klavs
Published: February 2015

In 1947 C. J. Becker, in his fundamental classifying work on the Early Neolithic phase of the socalled ‘Funnel-Beaker Culture’, described this set of phenomena within a frame of reference which can at best be termed ‘tribal’ (Becker 1947). For instance, in the late period of the Early Neolithic, Period C of the sequence, he observes certain differences, primarily of the type of decoration, in the pottery of respectively Northern Jutland and Southern Denmark. This result is connected with the differential patterns of distribution for other cultural features including forms of burial. Accordingly, the southern complex is baptized ‘The South Danish Megalithic Group’, the northern one ‘The North Jutland Non-Megalithic Group’. In Southern Denmark simple—‘earth’—graves are very few, while a much higher number of dolmens with Early Neolithic C pottery is known. In North Jutland the number of earth graves is considerable, but the picture is blurred by a relatively high number of dolmens too.

Each of these assemblages, and a few minor ones not to be mentioned here, is seen as referring to a ‘tribe’ or ‘a group of tribes’ sharing the said types of graves, decorations on pottery, and, for instance, specific types of weapons. No clear-cut borderlines can, however, be drawn between the complexes as the geographical differences of the distributions consist of statistical concentrations of one or another trait in one area rather than of mutual exclusions. Only the type of decoration on the North Jutland pottery does not seem to occur outside this zone, while the reverse is not the case.
Petrological Identification of Stone Implements from Derbyshire and Leicestershire
Authors: Moore C. N. , Cummins W. A.
Published: February 2015

The petrological examination of stone implements from Leicestershire commenced in 1947, when Mr W. A. Seaby of Birmingham Museum, assisted by Mr F. W. Cottrill of Leicester Museum, started to record the implements from the county. The work of thin-sectioning was undertaken by Professor F. W. Shotton of Birmingham University. In 1955, Mr J. Bartlett, then Deputy Director of Sheffield Museum, began a similar study in Derbyshire, and he also called on Professor Shotton for the petrological identifications. Within a few years, all the stone implements in Leicester, Sheffield, Derby and Buxton Museums had been sectioned, as well as those in Mr J. P. Heathcote's private museum at Birchover and a number of smaller private collections. By 1958, about 200 implements had been sectioned, 170 from Derbyshire and 30 from Leicestershire, and Professor Shotton had handed over the petrological work on the Derbyshire implements to his colleague, Dr G. R. Coope. During the last few years, while mainly concerned with Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire (Cummins and Moore, 1973), we (the authors) have also examined a number of implements from Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Then, at the Implement Petrology Meeting at Birmingham in May 1972, we were invited to complete this work and prepare it for publication. Professor Shotton and Dr Coope very generously handed over their Derbyshire sections and the Leicestershire sections were kindly loaned by Leicester Museum.
The Remains of a Late Glacial Elk Associated with Barbed Points from High Furlong, Near Blackpool, Lancashire
Authors: Hallam J. S. , Edwards B. J. N. , Barnes B. , Stuart A. J.
Published: February 2015

In July 1970, the complete skeleton of a male elk (Alces alcesL.) was discovered at Poulton-le-Fylde in a series of aquatic deposits. Uncontrolled excavation recovered most of the skeleton and part of a barbed bone or antler point of ‘Star Carr’ Proto-Maglemosian appearance. Subsequent investigation recovered the remainder of the skeleton and part of a second barbed point, allin situ. These lay in an organic detritus mud which pollen analysis has shown to belong to Zone II of the conventional NW European sequence, assigned to the Allerød Interstadial. The date is therefore likely to lie between 1000 and 2500 years earlier than that of Star Carr.

Study of the bones showed at least 17 lesions, of which 3 were probably made some weeks before the animal died. The remainder were probably approximately coincident with death. These lesions were of types which implied the existence of sharp, hard-pointed projectiles (? flint-tipped arrows) and chopping blades (? axes). They were almost exclusively on limb-bones and ribs. The death had occurred in winter, both antlers having a splinter of pedicle attached, and the animal had evidently escaped butchery to die in a pool. The finds have been placed in the Harris Museum Art Gallery, Preston, by the owners Mr and Mrs J. Divine.
Prehistoric Roads and Tracks in Somerset, England: 3. The Sweet Track
Authors: Coles John M. , Hibbert F. A. , Orme Bryony J. , Pettit M. , Rushton D. , Switsur V. R.
Published: February 2015

The excavation of the Sweet track at two sites in the Somerset Levels has yielded unique material of the late fourth millennium bc. The track was built across a reed marsh, and the builders used a variety of timber obtained from both nearby fen-wood and from the dry land of the Burtle sand and the Poldens. Pollen analyses indicate that certain areas of the Levels were particularly favourable for forest clearance and cultivation, and the debris from the track shows a range of woodwork so far unique to the British Neolithic.
Ancient Agriculture in the Highland of Britain
Authors: Feachem R. W.
Published: February 2015

The purpose of this paper is to give an account of the ancient agriculture of the British highland, by indicating the broad distribution of the remains and by describing some examples in detail. The paper is based for the most part on records compiled in recent years in the course of the routine field reconnaissance carried out by the Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey, during which work on ancient highland agriculture was directed and prepared for publication by Mr James Fox, F.S.A., Assistant Archaeology Officer, Ordnance Survey. The illustrations are reproduced from documents held by the Ordnance Survey with the sanction of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Crown copyright reserved.

The highland areas of Britain comprise: 1, the southwest of England; 2, Wales; and 3, England and Scotland from the River Trent to the Arctic Ocean. Most of the new information about ancient agriculture in the highland refers to area 3. It will be convenient first to summarize the situation in 1 and 2 and then to discuss area 3 in greater detail.
Passage-grave art in the Boyne Valley
Authors: O'Kelly Claire
Published: February 2015

The art in question is found on the structural slabs of a group of megalithic tombs in the valley of the Boyne in Ireland. The tombs are all passage-graves and are characteristically situated on the highest local ground and grouped in a ‘cemetery’. The Boyne cemetery is about 15 km from the east coast and about 50 km by road north of Dublin. In an area approximately 4 × 4 km are situated the three large tumuli of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, as well as over 40 other monuments, more than half of which are passage-graves (fig. 1).

The three large mounds are only a few kilometres apart; in fact, from any one of them the other two can be seen since all are in commanding situations. They are similar as regards size and appearance, that is to say, each consists of a mound of stones, or stones, earth, etc., circular in plan and flat-topped, about 85 m in diameter at the base and 12 to 15 m in height. The base of each is surrounded by a continuous kerb of large slabs, 97 at Newgrange, an estimated 110 at Dowth, and an estimated 120 at Knowth. Newgrange is the central tumulus, Dowth is to the north-east, and Knowth to the north-west.
The petrological identification of stone implements from East Anglia
Authors: McK. Clough T. H. , Green Barbara
Published: February 2015

For many years a programme of examining stone implements has been organized by the Council for British Archaeology's Sub-Committee for Implement Petrology. The East Anglian aspect of this programme, covering the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, has long been active, being administered from Norwich Castle Museum under the auspices of the CBA, first by the late R. Rainbird Clarke and more recently by the authors of this report. The petrological work has been very largely undertaken by Dr F. S. Wallis and Mr E. D. Evens in co-operation with the Geological Department of Bristol University. The results embodied in this report, with those for Yorkshire recently published (Keen & Radley, 1971) and other identifications noted in the CBA's Annual Reports, and with the Fifth Report on south-western implements which appears elsewhere in these Proceedings (Evens, Smith & Wallis, 1972), may be taken together as a measure of the debt which prehistorians owe to Dr. Wallis and Mr Evens—the ‘Evens and self’ of much correspondence.
The working of copper-arsenic alloys in the Early Bronze Age and the effect on the determination of provenance
Authors: McKerrell Hugh , Tylecote R. F.
Published: February 2015

The earliest copper alloy of the British Bronze Age is arsenical copper, a material relatively short-lived when compared with the succeeding tin bronze but of no little importance when tracing the stages and progress of prehistoric metal working. Like tin, arsenic functions as a mild deoxidant and confers the useful property of work-hardening upon the metal. Copper-arsenic alloys need to be strengthened by cold working, and it was probably this requirement as much as any other that would have led to their eventual disuse and replacement by cast tin bronzes. The normal source of arsenic for such alloys is generally agreed as a constituent of the copper ore actually smelted, usually the grey tetrahedrite tennantite mineral (Coghlan and Case, 1957; Tylecote, 1962), although other suggestions have been made (Charles, 1967).
The Surbo bronzes—some observations
Authors: Branigan Keith
Published: February 2015

The group of bronzes from Surbo, Apulia, published in volume 36 of the Proceedings (Macnamara, 1970) form a most important addition to our knowledge of prehistoric relations between the Aegean and the Italian peninsula. They also form a suitable basis for further discussion of four related problems, the date of the Surbo group itself, the chronology of the Mycenaean short swords of Sandars type F (Catling's type Fii), the feasibility of Mycenaean contacts with western Europe, and the reliability of hoards for the dating of bronze tools and weapons. I should like to comment briefly on each of these problems in turn.
Working with Radiocarbon Dates
Authors: Waterbolk H. T.
Published: February 2015

C-14 datings can not only provide us with estimates of the absolute age of objects or occupation layers, but also, when available in sufficient numbers, with initial and terminal datings for cultural phases, thus defining their duration. The value of this is obvious: differential duration in different areas can at last provide definitive answers to long-disputed questions concerning the direction of cultural movement.

Working with large numbers of C-14 dates is, however, not entirely free of problems. We are, for example, regularly confronted with larger differences between datings expected to be of similar age than can be accounted for by mere statistical error (Vogel, 1969a) or which can be explained by contamination or other simple causes. One can stop at this point and accept a limited testimonial value for C-14 dates (e.g. Steuer and Tempel, 1968), or one can try to go further by calculating average dates, assuming (for the most part incorrectly) that the chance of a date being too young is equal to its chance of being too old (Neustupný, 1968). The danger in this procedure is that one loses sight of the individual character of each determination: in fact one sample is much more securely associated and more closely contemporary with finds of a particular cultural phase than another, and the chance of contamination or admixture is different for each sample.

Another problem is that the number of C-14 dates that one must take into consideration is often so large that they cannot be digested without some form of graphic presentation, and for this there is as yet no uniformity of practice.
Die spätpaläolithische Steinindustrie aus Jabloňany in Mähren (ČSSR)
Authors: Klíma Bohuslav
Published: February 2015

In der Fachliteratur wird oft darauf hingewiesen, dass die Schlüsse über die Dichte der urzeitlichen Besiedlung in bestimmten Gebieten, die hauptsächlich aus kartographischen Darstellungen der Fundplätze auf Grundlage des der-zeitigen Forschungsstandes abgeleitet werden, in der Regel zu früh gezogen werden und dem tatsächlichen, bisher noch weitgehend unbekanntem Stande nicht entsprechen. Manchmal erbringen weite Territorien, die als von manchen Kulturen unberührt gelten, erst unter dem Drucke konzentrierten Interesses und systematischer Forschung Beweise darüber, dass sie keine Ausnahmen darstellen, sondern gleichfalls den vorgeschichtlichen Gesellschaften in den jeweiligen Phasen ihrer anthropogeographischen Entwicklung Unterkunft boten. So war dies auch bei der postpaläolithischen und mesolithischen Besiedlung in Mitteleuropa und namentlich auf dem Gebiete der Tschechoslowakei, von welchem es noch knapp vor dem zweiten Weltkrieg (J. Skutil, 1936) nicht möglich war, verlässliches und beweiskräftiges Fundmaterial jener Periode zu erbringen, für deren allseitige Erkenntnis sich J. G. D. Clark schon damals besondere Verdienste erwarb.
Report on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes from Yorkshire
Authors: Keen Laurence , Radley J.
Published: February 2015

This is the first report by C.B.A. Group IV (Yorkshire) on the petrological identification of stone axes since 1962 when the group undertook to help members, in part financially and in part with organisation, to obtain sections and petrological identifications of implements in their possession. Some of the sectioned artifacts are in the possession of individual members but the bulk belongs to public museum collections.

The programme was initiated by Mr D. P. Dymond, a former group secretary, and since 1964 has been continued by Mr Laurence Keen. A considerable quantity of axes remains to be sectioned. The rate of sectioning at present is about one hundred and twenty a year. Attempts by the writers to increase the rate of sectioning have been unsuccessful because it has proved impossible to interest capable technicians in the project. However, grateful acknowledgment must be made here to Mr E. D. Evens who has willingly arranged for the sectioning of virtually all the axes in the following Register. The majority of thin sections was made by Mr E. W. Seavill. The writers would also like to thank Dr F. S. Wallis, who has also kindly checked the geological part of this report, Dr D. W. Humphries, Professor W. F. Grimes, Mr J. Bartlett who has kindly made available for publication material in his keeping, Mr H. Coope, and Dr K. C. Dunham, who have made the petrological identifications.
Explanation in Prehistory
Authors: Harriss J. C.
Published: February 2015

Jacquetta Hawkes in a paper called ‘The Proper Study of Mankind’ (Hawkes, 1968) has made an impassioned plea against what she considers to be the ‘dehumanization’ of prehistory at the hands of those who have sought to apply to it numerical methods and the techniques of the natural sciences. There can be few who do not sympathize with her denunciation of aimless manipulation of data and the use of techniques for their own sakes; and many must share Clark's fear that prehistoric archaeology will serve merely ‘… to provide intellectual games for the meritocracy’ (Clark, 1967, 472). But such comments as these only prompt the question ‘what are we studying prehistory for?’ or ‘what is prehistory about?’

The well-being of any academic discipline depends upon the posing of questions like these, for if a subject is to develop at all, it must undergo periods of self-analysis when some of its practitioners take stock of what they themselves and others are doing. The analysis may be concerned with methods and techniques and may either tacitly or openly accept the existing philosophy. Or it may consider the philosophy of the subject directly, by asking if the priorities of a past age are still acceptable or whether in the different climate of thought of the present, they must be changed. Self-analysis of this kind may however produce a state of unease and disquiet.
Territorial Patterns in Bronze Age Wessex
Authors: Fleming Andrew
Published: February 2015

The work presented in this paper arose from an attempt to study society and economy in England during the period conventionally referred to as the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. The discussion of questions of this sort is traditionally supposed to be less reliable and important than taxonomic studies aimed at the construction of a relative chronology; this is largely because the basic assumptions of typology have not been questioned very much recently. The establishment of an absolute chronology has also been a major object of research, but now that the Mycenaean import horizon has finally collapsed (Newton and Renfrew, 1970) there is a vacuum which is hardly filled by the handful of radiocarbon dates available. We have the vaguest of ideas about what was actually happening in terms of people, but our understanding of when it was happening, and in which order, is only marginally better.

Most information has come from the contents of burial mounds, but the topographical aspects of the barrows have been neglected, despite the immensely valuable information collected by Grinsell for much of southern England, including lists of all known barrows and what has been found in them. Without this information, this kind of study would have been impossible. Grinsell's maps of round barrow distributions in Dorset (Grinsell, 1959, maps 2 and 4) and Wiltshire (Grinsell, 1957, maps IV and V) suggest that even on one geological solid (in this case chalk) there are great differences in the densities of these monuments, that bell- and disc-barrows are not distributed at random, and that a study of the sizes and types of cemetery might prove rewarding, although maps at this scale can only provide general indications.
Pits and Post-holes in the British Early Iron Age: some alternative explanations
Authors: Ellison Ann , Drewett Peter
Published: February 2015

From ethnography and social anthropology ‘the prehistorian learns how particular peoples adapt themselves to their environments, and shape their resources to the ways of life demanded by their own cultures: he thus gains a knowledge of alternate methods of solving problems and often of alternative ways of explaining artefacts resembling those he recovers in antiquity. Study of ethnography will not as a rule … give him straight answers to his queries. What it will do is to provide him with hypotheses in the light of which he can resume his attack on the raw materials of his study’ (Clark, 1957, 172). Such a controlled use of ethnographic parallels has recently been applied successfully in the spheres of art and burial practices (e.g. Ucko, 1969, 262 and references there cited) but not as yet to the study of prehistoric settlement patterns or economy. In this paper it is hoped to show how the consideration of ethnographic parallels can help us to reach some possible alternative interpretations of two classes of excavated evidence: the pits and the two-, four-, five- and six-post-hole structures found mainly on Lowland Zone Iron Age settlements in Britain. These, usually interpreted in the literature as storage pits, ‘drying-racks’ and ‘granaries’ have been taken to be characteristic features of the ‘Woodbury Type’ economy of the earlier pre-Roman Iron Age in the Lowland Zone (Piggott, 1958, 3–4 and Bowen, 1969, 13–5), bearing in mind that ‘the type site must be clearly distinguished from the economy, and the economy itself seems to have been as variable as possible within the rather narrow Iron Age technical limits, (Bowen, 1969, 13).
An Acheulean Industry with Prepared Core Technique and the Discovery of a Contemporary Hominid Mandible at Lake Baringo, Kenya
Authors: Leakey Margaret , Tobias P. V. , Martyn J. E. , Leakey R. E. F.
Published: February 2015

The material discussed in this paper was obtained during 1966 from the region to the west of Lake Baringo. Excavations were conducted in two areas about a mile apart, on either side of the Kapthurin River. The positions of these excavations are to be found on the 1: 50,000 Survey of Kenya map, Sheet 90/4 of Series Y731, Edition I-D.O.S. The first is located at ZR 314/637 and the second at ZR 316/621. Fig. 1 is based on a small section of Sheets 30/4 and 31/3 and is reproduced by permission of the Director of Surveys, Nairobi. A hominid mandible and a living site were discovered in the first area whilst in the second a factory site was found. These sites lie in the Kapthurin Beds of the eastern area of the Kamasian Hills. The beds are possibly upper Middle Pleistocene and are divided from the underlying Chemeron beds which are of Plio/Pleistocene age.

The geology of the area was first described by J. W. Gregory (1921). It was subsequently studied and re-assessed by V. E. Fuchs (1939 and 1950) and by McCall, Baker and Walsh (1967). The most recent study has been made by Mr J. E. Martyn of Bedford College, London, who was engaged in geological mapping of the area west of Lake Baringo in 1966 and 1967. A report on the Kapthurin Beds by J. E. Martyn follows this introduction.

During the course of mapping, J. E. Martyn and his assistants found a number of fossils in the Chemeron beds. He showed these to Mr Jonathan Leakey who noticed an incomplete hominid temporal bone amongst them.
The Prehistory of Upper Pleistocene and Recent Cattle. Part I: East Mediterranean, with Reference to North-West Europe
Authors: Jarman M. R.
Published: February 2015

There is a considerable literature concerning the prehistory and palaeontology of cattle, both at the infra- and inter-species levels. In spite of the wealth of published material, however, deficiencies remain. The majority of the publications concern small areas of study, and few general syntheses are available; the few syntheses which do exist, such as those of Reed (1961) and Zeuner (1963) do not do justice to the information at present available. Most of the detailed work is concentrated in North-West Europe, and developments in many fields, particularly those of evolutionary genetics and economic prehistory, have rendered obsolete many of the premises underlying published hypotheses. This is true for nearly all discussions of animals in their relationships with prehistoric man, but a general reassessment of the situation is available (Higgs and Jarman, 1969) while Payne (1969) has treated the sheep-goat group in particular. The work concerning cattle may conveniently be divided into two overlapping groups. First there are those studies which are primarily concerned with palaeontological considerations, with the description of specimens from a taxonomic and ecological point of view. The second group comprises investigations into the relationship between man and cattle and because of the prevailing climate of thought has concentrated overwhelmingly on the domestication of cattle and their subsequent exploitation. Thus the ‘Man and Cattle’ Symposium (Mourant and Zeuner, 1963) contains papers concerned with the history of the relationship from the Neolithic to the present day. Mesolithic and Pleistocene cattle are not discussed in any detail, and are only mentioned as a standard of comparison by which changes may be recognized. This assessment of the relative potential importance of the evidence is the product of the preferred hypothesis of the time, and before discussing the evidence offered for the domestication of cattle and their later history, it is important to understand the formative influence of the theoretical framework underlying the data.
Metal analyses and the Scottish Early Bronze Age
Authors: Coles John M.
Published: February 2015

The analysis of Early Bronze Age metal objects in Europe has been the concern of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Metallurgie at Stuttgart for a number of years. In 1960 the first major results of this ambitious programme were presented in a volume generally described as SAM 1, orStudien zu den Anfängen der Metallurgie(Junghans, Sangmeister and Schröder, 1960). Using the trace elements arsenic (As), antimony (Sb), silver (Ag), Nickel (Ni) and Bismuth (Bi), SAM 1 described the content and distribution of 12 European metal groups, each devised on the basis of the varying concentrations of these trace elements in Bronze Age metal. This programme was the first to attempt to examine metallurgy in this way for the whole of Europe. A number of regionally restricted studies had already been carried out before the appearance of SAM 1; the Irish, and some British, material had been previously examined by Coghlan and Case (1957) and by Britton (1961). In 1964 a major review of the Stuttgart production appeared, in which the method of combining the elements into groups was criticized on archaeological grounds (Butler and van der Waals, 1964). Subsequently a new approach was devised by Waterbolk; in this, the Stuttgart method of attempting to find clusters from a gigantic range of analyses, each one treated exactly as another, was abandoned, and replaced by a more archaeological approach in which typology and association were used (Waterbolk and Butler, 1965). The significance of the groups produced by this method are only now being assessed.
British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Handaxe Groups
Authors: Roe Derek A.
Published: February 2015

In the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society for 1964, the writer presented (Roe, 1964) an interim report on his programme of research on the British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic material, describing methods of studying assemblages of handaxes by metrical and statistical analysis, and outlining the first results obtained. The present paper offers a summary of the final results obtained for certain aspects of the same research project, in particular the discerning of various groupings among the 38 handaxe assemblages considered. The Groups which emerge are clusters of sites whose industries are similar in terms of the morphological range and usual degree of refinement of their handaxes.

The Thesis for which the research was undertaken was completed in March, 1967 (Roe, 1967), and is available for consultation. It is of course quite impossible to quote in the present paper more than a small part of the evidence upon which the final conclusions depend.
The Origins of Domestic Sheep and Goats: a Reconsideration in the Light of the Fossil Evidence
Authors: Payne Sebastian
Published: February 2015

In recent discussions of the origins and process of animal domestication (Reed, 1961, Zeuner, 1963), both authors rely on two kinds of evidence: on the one hand, the present distributions and characteristics of the different breeds of whatever animal is being discussed, together with its feral and wild relatives, and, on the other hand, the past record, given by literary and pictorial sources and the bones from archaeological and geological sites. Increased recognition of the limitations of the past record, whether in the accuracy of the information it appears to give (as in the case of pictorial sources), or in the certainty of the deductions we are at present capable of drawing from it (this applies especially to the osteological record), has led these authors to argue mainly from the present situation, using the past record to confirm or amplify the existing picture.

Arguing from the present, many hypotheses about the origins and process of domestication are available. The only test we have, when attempting to choose between these, lies in the direct evidence of the past record. The past record, it is freely admitted, is very fragmentary: the information provided by the present situation is more exact, ranges over a much wider field, and is more open to test and control. Nevertheless, the past record, however imperfect it is, is the only direct evidence we have about the process of domestication.
Notes on the Possible Misuse and Errors of Cumulative Percentage Frequency Graphs for the Comparison of Prehistoric Artefact Assemblages
Authors: Kerrich J. E. , Clarke D. L.
Published: February 2015

For many years archaeologists interested in the study of the Palaeolithic in North Africa and Eurasia have been using cumulative percentage frequency graphs for the comparison of prehistoric artefact assemblages. For examples we refer to the references at the foot of this text. However, it is perhaps time to carefully review this technique and its future utility.

Statistical techniques and mathematical models are slowly infiltrating and reshaping the discipline of archaeology—increasing the power and depth of both analysis and synthesis. It is perhaps already possible to distinguish the cumulative advance of these techniques in archaeology from the initial role of demonstrative aids and methods of data display towards an increasingly powerful analytical role with a capacity for predictive inference. In the ranks of the first generation we have the early use of graphs, frequency polygons and histograms for mapping severely limited numbers of percentages or attribute ratios. In the second generation of statistical techniques the impact of the computer is felt for the first time and archaeology is developing an array of exploratory attempts to integrate the probing capacity of such methods as factor analysis, matrix analysis and principal component analysis.
The Anatomical Study of Cremated Fragments from Archaeological Sites
Authors: Spence T. F.
Published: February 2015

Cremated remains, usually interred in urns, most commonly occur in cemeteries dating from the latter part of the Bronze Age, the closing phase of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and the Pagan Saxon period. Although such remains are fragmentary, they are now recognized as providing a basis, after appropriate treatment and anatomical study, for assessing the numbers of individuals cremated, together with their age and sex (Gejvall, 1947). Sometimes, additional information can be gleaned about endemic pathological conditions (Lisowski, 1955).

The physical characteristics of the cremated remains vary from site to site, depending, as discussed by Gejvall (1963), on such factors as the method used in cremation, the firing temperature, and the extent of any subsequent pulverisation—natural or artificial. But despite the fact that there is always a large proportion of unidentifiable fragments, there are invariably certain parts, often of appreciable size, which can be recognized. It is from these fragments, when separated, that information about the number of individuals present, together with their sex and age can be obtained.
An Investigation of Prehistoric Diet and Economy on a Coastal Site at Galatea Bay, New Zealand
Authors: Shawcross Wilfred
Published: February 2015

The importance of attempting to reconstruct diet from a study of biological data from archaeological sites has been stressed by earlier workers, both in Britain and the United States. The present study is based on materials recovered from the excavation of a midden deposit at Galatea Bay, on an offshore island of the North Island of New Zealand, by Mr J. E. Terrell, whose complete report (No. 1) is to appear in the Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand. The site overlooks a sheltered area of sea from the mouth of a small and now dry valley (see pl. IX) and the excavation revealed an initial, specialized cooking area which was replaced by dumps of food waste and then abandoned. The most characteristic elements of the midden were marine shellfish valves and a much smaller quantity of vertebrate bones. However, the apparent frequency of the shellfish could not be taken as a sure guide to their importance over the vertebrate animals because the nature of the animals and their surviving evidence makes it impossible to directly compare them. Shellfish, though individually small, are found in large numbers and are thus best studied by means of estimating populations derived from samples. Vertebrate populations on the other hand can be measured by more direct means, though it must be recognized, as Mr Terrell points out, that such an excavation is itself only a sample. In his report Mr Terrell examined the effects of dehydration, size and sifting upon the shell samples and then compared the archaeological population with those of living shellfish, so enabling him to demonstrate the relative influence of natural and cultural causes on the archaeological population. These findings provide basic evidence which will be referred to during the course of the present paper.