bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Neolithic Dwellings in the Forest Zone of the European Part of the U.S.S.R.
Authors: Bryusov A.
Published: February 2015

The hypothesis that in Neolithic times men lived for the most part in pit-dwellings is fairly widely distributed in archaeological literature. Thus, for example, W. Radig from 188 neolithic sites examined in Germany up to 1930 listed 109 as having pit-dwellings (Grubenwohnungen), an additional sixteen having pit-dwellings with a cone-shaped covering (Grubenwohnungen mit schrägen Pfostenlöchern), eight with vertical walls (Grubenwohnungen mit senkrechten Pfostenlöchern) and two of mixed type. This hypothesis was also widely held among Soviet archaeologists who often described their discoveries of pit-dwellings in their accounts of excavations of neolithic sites. A completely contrary opinion has been put forward by G. Childe in relation to neolithic dwellings in the temperate zone of Europe.
Ancient Egyptian Wheats
Authors: Helbaek Hans
Published: February 2015

Correct identification of remains of cultivated plants is prerequisite to a reasonable concept of the early history of these plants and of agriculture in general. Sooner or later faulty or incomplete identification may lead to wrong conclusions and thus, on the one hand, obscure connections between places and peoples which might otherwise be indicated by contemporary cultivated plants, or on the other, suggest interrelations which did not exist.

Perhaps of all countries in the world Egypt is the one which has yielded the most material for the study of ancient plant husbandry, and yet the introduction of the plants into that country and the species grown is not yet fully elucidated.

Until quite recently Emmer (Triticum dicoccum Schübl.) was the only species of wheat reported in deposits of prehistoric and dynastic Egypt up to the Ptolemaean period. Then Eincorn (Triticum monococcum L.) was added to the list, in that its presence in the Late Neolithic find at el Omari near Helouan, and in the third dynasty tomb of Pharaoh Zoser at Saqqara was claimed by various authors. These identifications were disputed on the basis of reasonable doubt, but no documentation has hitherto been offered to prove the claim or the validity of the protest.
Windmill Hill—East or West?
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: February 2015

Twenty-five years ago Professor Gordon Childe laid the foundations of our knowledge of the foreign affinities of our British Neolithic cultures in a classic paper. In it he gave expression to the view which we have all of us held since that time, that ‘the culture associated with Windmill Hill pottery belongs, like the pottery itself, to a Western family’; ‘Western’ being used in the sense defined by Schuchhardt in his division of the European Neolithic groups. Our knowledge of the complexities of the Windmill Hill culture increased with new discoveries, and we were also able to grasp something of the diversity of the cultures within the Western family at large, particularly as a result of the work of Vouga, Vogt and von Gonzenbach in Switzerland. But the place of the Windmill Hill culture within the family seemed unchallenged, and the present writer re-affirmed a couple of years ago that it seemed to him ‘abundantly clear that the Windmill Hill culture is a member of the great Western family’. It is the purpose of this paper to re-examine the question in the light of certain new orientations in Continental prehistory which make it desirable to ask whether the culture of Windmill Hill can be regarded as an indivisible unit, or whether it may not contain contributions from more than one European source.
A Western Razor in Sicily
Authors: Hencken Hugh
Published: February 2015

In her useful paper on Late Bronze Age razors Mrs Piggott has designated as Class II the bifid razors. For these she suggests dates ranging from about 750 B.C. to about 400 B.C. Without wishing to dispute these dates for the British examples—indeed the date of about 400 B.C. for the one from All Cannings Cross cannot be altered by much—I would suggest that such razors may have been in use some time previously if not in Britain then on the western Continent.

It has been a commonly accepted view that these razors are of Sicilian origin. Sicilian tombs of the centuries before the foundation of the Greek colonies have produced a variety of razors (fig. i) and probably there is some ultimate connexion between these and bronze razors elsewhere. But the one from Cassibile that is considered to be the link between the western bifid razors and Sicily seems to be a unique feature in the island. At least I have not encountered another in the archaeological literature of Sicily, and on a recent visit to Syracuse, Dr Bernabò Brea assured me that he did not know of another Sicilian example. Hence one is inclined to suppose that the bifid razor from Cassibile is not really a Sicilian type at all but a western import. Consequently such clues as can be discovered to its date in Sicily—and these point to the vicinity of the 10th and 9th centuries B.C.—indicate at least a time when such razors were in existence somewhere in western Europe.
The Antiquity of the One-edged Bronze Knife in the Aegean
Authors: Sandars N. K.
Published: February 2015

In the west we are accustomed to walking on bog, we therefore learn to tread light, seeing around us, but just out of reach, the contours of a more solid landscape. We have sequence and relative chronology, but if we tread too heavily, feeling for the subsoil of absolute dates and historical nomenclature, we are apt to flounder, if not to sink. Nevertheless in some places the bog has shrunk exposing solid, rock-like dates, dates that belong to a subsoil of history in a continent already mapped. As such we are concerned with the discovery of those false stepping-stones that lie deceptively on the surface of the bog. In the disclosure of the true rocks and exposure of the false, Gordon Childe has led us for long.

One may preach on almost any subject from a text in The Dawn of European Civilization: I am however more concerned at present with the paper written in 1948 for these Proceedings in which Childe reviewed the beginnings of the Late Bronze Age north of the Alps, and the nature of the connexions between temperate Europe and the Near East at that particular moment, and especially as shown by a number of bronze ornaments, implements and weapons. More interesting still was the suggestion of a possible link between the exploitation of metal in the eastern Alps and the last phase of prosperity of the Minoan-Mycenaean world just before its collapse with the repercussions of that collapse.
An Italo-Celtic Helmet
Authors: Lantier Raymond
Published: February 2015

Among the objects exhibited between December 3rd, 1954, and January 23rd, 1955, at the exhibition in the Hotel Libert at Alençon, organized by the Archaeological Society of the Orne, to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Empire, was an Italian helmet of bronze, that formed part of the Napoleonic relics of Count Le Marois. I owe it to M. Le Marois that I am able to publish this interesting object.

There is a tradition that the object was found on the field of the battle of Cannae in the presence of General Bonaparte, who gave it to his aide-de-camp Le Marois. However, we know that Bonaparte never visited the celebrated field of battle. Also the catalogue of the Alençon exhibition lends no countenance to this tradition and gives the following information: ‘this helmet was found in excavations made in Italy in the presence of General Bonaparte’. An Italian origin is certain and, leaving aside the warlike provenance of Cannae, it may be accepted that the piece was found in the course of excavations, very probably in a grave. If it is not absolutely improbable that Bonaparte was present at the discovery, this is only a mere hypothesis; the helmet could quite as well have been offered to him on another occasion.
Central European Urnfield Culture and Celtic La Tène: An Outline
Authors: Sprockhoff Ernst
Published: February 2015

When the Saxons from the mainland of Europe sailed up the Thames around the middle of the 5th century A.D. to lay the foundation-stone for the Anglo-Saxon Empire, they brought with them a signum sacre which has been handed down to us as the decoration of an urn from the burial-ground at Lackford in Suffolk. This consists of the figure of a horse, against which at the rear is a swastika (fig, 1, 1). Already at that time this sign had clearly a long history—a similar combination, closely related in style, is known to us from the first half of the last millennium B.C.; at that time it represented the Northern idea of the movement or journey of the ‘divine’ sun (fig. 1, 2), which idea has been brought down to us in plastic form from more than five hundred years earlier in the sun-chariot from Trundholm on Zealand.
Pins and the Chronology of Brochs
Authors: Stevenson Robert B. K.
Published: February 2015

Prehistorians have unreservedly extended the Early Iron Age in territories north of the Roman Empire to include, in addition to a pre-Roman Iron Age, a Roman Iron Age during which the native barbarism evolved without a break though not unaffected by the Empire. That a Late Iron Age continued in Scotland, as in Scandinavia, during post-Roman times has been less readily realized. Professor Childe nominally ended his Prehistory of Scotland with the 4th century A.D. and spoke of an unbridged chasm thereafter, four or five centuries long, to which few and undecisive relics were attributable. The extent of archaeological perplexity 30 years ago was such that J. G. Callander maintained that Skara Brae represented the same Iron Age culture as the brochs and earth-houses. Following the studies of brochs and wheel-houses by Lindsay Scott and Lethbridge, which agreed that they formed a single culture datable to the first three centuries A.D., the latter wrote recently that the culture of the Western Isles between the 3rd century and the 9th ‘is completely unknown and I think unsought’.
The Tribes of Southern Britain
Authors: Radford C. A. Ralegh
Published: February 2015

This paper deals with a period of transition from prehistory to history. This age of transition is one which the Prehistoric Society cannot overlook, for its very title implies an interest in the historical method. But the transition raises special problems. History, starting from the written record, is largely occupied with political questions and political entities. Man, as we learnt from Aristotle, is a political animal and no-one, who studies the archaeology of the historical ages, would wish to deny the profound influence of political factors on the development of cultures. But prehistory, based on the natural sciences and on archaeology, focuses attention primarily on material phenomena, though the growing interest in the sociological implications of these phenomena points the way to a better appreciation of the political factors, which were operative in prehistoric as in later times.
The Groove and Splinter Technique of working antler in Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe
Authors: Clark J. G. D. , Thompson M. W.
Published: February 2015

The excavations carried out between 1949–51 at the Proto-Maglemosian site of Star Carr, near Seamer, Yorkshire, yielded abundant remains of the wild animals hunted during the Pre-boreal stage phase of the Post-glacial period in north-eastern England (J. G. D. Clark, 1949, 1950, 1954). Examination of this material has thrown much light on the methods used to make implements and weapons from the antlers and bones of animals killed primarily for food. The particular object of this paper is to draw attention to the technique used by the Star Carr people to obtain material for barbed points by cutting strips or splinters from stag antlers and to consider its significance in relation to some of the main developments of European prehistory during late Pleistocene and early Post-glacial times.
The Chronology of the Mousterian at Gorham's Cave Gibraltar
Authors: Zeuner F. E.
Published: February 2015

Through the kindness of Dr J. Waechter I have been able to study the deposits of Gorham's Cave on the spot, to investigate the evidence for fluctuations of the sea-level afforded by the Rock of Gibraltar and to identify the fauna. The material thus obtained suggests a chronology for the prehistoric industries of Gorham's Cave which is of more than local interest. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr Waechter for allowing me to do this work on his excavation and for his constant and efficient co-operation. This became particularly important during the last season (Spring 1954) when I was unable to re-visit the site, so that he had to make certain observations for me. I also wish to acknowledge the help I received from Dr I. W. Cornwall in the analyses of samples from the strata, and from Mr Antony Sutcliffe with the identification of the osteological material. The latter will be published in full in Dr Waechter's final report but a preliminary list is here included since some of the palaeontological evidence supports the results obtained in the laboratory. A contribution towards the expenses incurred in carrying out the field work was received from the Central Research Fund of London University and is herewith gratefully acknowledged.
Iberian Beakers
Authors: Smith M. A.
Published: February 2015

The idea that the Beaker ware found over a large part of western and central Europe was Spanish in origin was made popular by the writings of Alberto del Castillo and Bosch Gimpera some thirty years ago. Although others have argued that the greater density of Beaker finds in central Europe makes that region a more likely homeland for the pottery, the Spanish theory is still the more generally accepted. Its implications for European prehistory are obvious: for if Beaker ware evolved from local Spanish traditions, then it is events in Spain which determine the terminus post quern for its appearance in Europe. Moreover, Castillo and Bosch Gimpera propose even more precise starting-points for different varieties of Beaker ware in Europe, since in the Peninsula they interpret different styles as stages in the development of the pottery, and therefore regard them as necessarily consecutive. At the same time if, as Castillo maintained, Beaker ware represents an evolution of early Spanish pottery, then its inventors, as descendants of the original neolithic population, might well be distinct from the later metal-using peoples in the Peninsula, among whom the pottery is found. It would therefore be plausible to suggest that Beaker ware was diffused in the Peninsula by the movements of a separate (basically neolithic) group; and the existence of such a group south of the Pyrenees would strengthen the hypothesis that in Europe also the pottery was spread by the migrations of a separate ‘People.’
The Excavation of Two Round Barrows at Poole, Dorset
Authors: Case Humphrey
Published: February 2015

The excavation of these barrows was undertaken in the autumn of 1949 for the Ministry of Works in advance of building. They stood immediately adjacent to each other on Plateau Gravel overlying the Bagshot Beds towards the western extremity of the Hampshire Basin, and only a hundred yards north of the crest of the Bourne Bottom which leads down to Bournemouth and Poole Bay about three miles distant (fig. 1). The surrounding heath is rich in round barrows, and the district has yielded plentiful evidence of prehistoric man.
Early Crops in Southern England
Authors: Helbaek Hans
Published: February 2015

In 1939 a comprehensive survey was undertaken of the prehistoric plant husbandry in Great Britain and Ireland. The result of this work was published in 1944 by Knud Jessen and the present writer. One obvious and serious omission, due to circumstances connected with the impending war, was that a series of collections in the southern part of England was not examined. Since these included the Windmill Hill Collection in the Morven Institute Museum at Avebury opportunities for elucidating the initial plant breeding in the British Isles were evidently not exhausted.

This deficiency in Cereals has been commented upon and has been felt severely by the authors and the readers alike, especially in Britain, and the idea of resuming the investigation was repeatedly discussed. In 1951 the writer was offered the opportunity of taking up the thread once more, and the examination of the pottery and grain deposits of southern England was carried out in the spring of 1952.
Tankards and Tankard Handles of the British Early Iron Age
Authors: Corcoran John X. W. P.
Published: February 2015

British Iron Age tankards and their handles have been somewhat neglected in recent archaeological literature and so far have not received a separate study. This paper is intended to bring together such information as is available to the writer in the hope that it may prompt a greater interest in this minor field of Iron Age craftsmanship. The first part is a general discussion of those tankards which are either complete or could be reconstructed, their handles, and handles found unassociated with any vessel. The second offers some comment on chronology and typology. The appendix contains a distribution map and an inventory of all the known examples. A list of acknowledgments is at the end, but special mention must be made here to the generosity of Mr R. W. Feachem, who unreservedly placed at the writer's disposal all his material which had been collected for a similar study but which he relinquished on hearing of the present paper.
The Mesolithic in the South of France: a critical analysis
Authors: Smith M. A.
Published: February 2015

At the time when the type-sites of the Dordogne were being explored French archaeologists were equally active further south in their country. From caves and surface sites in the Mediterranean provinces local landowners, doctors and clergy were collecting material which not only matched most of the palaeolithic tool forms being distinguished in the south-west of France, but was later to provide Déchelette with many of his illustrations for the neolithic and metal ages. It was not uncommon for flints, pottery and metal all to come from the same cave.

These old collections, or such of them as can be traced, are the basis of what is known about the prehistory of the south of France. Unfortunately, much of the material has come down to us with very little information, apart from provenance, and although some details of excavation were carefully recorded it seems generally to have been considered that plans of caves were more informative than sections through them.

Topographically the south of France consists largely of a narrow alluvial plain, stretching right round the Gulf of Lions between the Italian and Spanish frontiers and broadening out in the delta of the Rhône. Today the region is distinguished from the rest of France by its Mediterranean climate. East of the Rhône, in Provence, this coastal climate is soon modified to the north by the high mountains, but in the old province of Languedoc between the Rhône and the Pyrenees the typical Mediterranean vegetation is carried up onto the rocky limestone plateau, or Garrigue, until it reaches the barren Causses of the Massif Central. In France, the western limit of this climatic zone falls between Carcassonne and Toulouse, but eastward and to the south the Mediterranean conditions continue, so that the south French plain forms a climatic unit with the coastlands of Italy and Spain.

This plain, shut in to the north by high land, is most easily accessible from the sea or coastwise from adjacent Mediterranean countries. Easy communication with the rest of France is confined to the great river valleys of the Rhône and Aude which cut through the mountains to the north and west.
Third Report of the Sub-Committee of the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes
Authors: Stone J. F. S. , Wallis F. S.
Published: February 2015

Fourteen years have elapsed since the appointment of the sub-committee in 1936 to consider the petrological identification of stone implements with special reference to the area covered by the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries; and two reports have been published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, VII (1941), 50 and XIII (1947), 47, outlining briefly the results of its work. Considerable progress has been made since the appearance of the Second Report and it has therefore been deemed advisable to issue a more comprehensive Third Report summarizing as far as possible all results and thus making available in compact form many of the facts accumulated.

In the Second Report, we drew attention to the fact that in 1945 the value of the work to archaeology was appreciated sufficiently for the Council for British Archaeology to raise what was virtually a regional monopoly on to a national basis, and to appoint, as Honorary Secretary, Mr W. F. Grimes, M.A., F.S.A., Director of the London Museum, to coordinate the work of the existing museum federations. A generous grant towards the cost of the work was made in 1949 by the Lever hulme Trust, since it seemed unlikely that extension of studies would be possible from museum resources alone.
The Geological Age of the Cromer Forest Bed
Authors: Azzaroli Augusto
Published: February 2015

The present writer has had recently the opportunity to carry out a revision of the deer of the Cromer Forest Bed series of East Anglia. The entire work is to be published in the Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History). The stratigraphical conclusions will be summarized here.

The occurrence of relatively archaic species together with more modern species in the Forest Bed fauna has puzzled many palaeontologists. Whereas the older authors concluded that it was wholly Pliocene (Reid, 1890, with bibliography) or partially or totally derived (Dubois, 1905), more recently a tendency has become prevalent to attribute the whole fauna to the early Pleistocene, and to explain the more archaic species as relics (Osborn, 1922; Zeuner, 1945). It may be shown that all these interpretations are untenable.

A Pliocene age is ruled out by the presence of species which immigrated into Europe after the close of the Villafranchian. On the other hand, the older representatives, once attributed to the Pliocene but actually of Upper Villafranchian age, do not constitute isolated relics: an entire faunal assemblage characteristic of that epoch is present. Moreover, primitive species occur in the Forest Bed fauna together with their more advanced descendants, and the fauna is richer in species than in any other locality.
The Colonisation of Scotland in the Second Millennium B.C.
Authors: Scott Lindsay
Published: February 2015

The settlements in Western Britain and Ireland which are earliest known to us from the chamber tombs have been ascribed to movements up Atlantic trade routes from the Mediterranean before the middle of the 2nd millennium. Such movements at so early a date must be conceded to be surprising; but the broad case for believing in them is a cogent one, and earlier suggestions that the chamber tomb cult implied only missionary settlers, or even that the cult was transmitted without movement of population at all, have rightly been discarded. None the less it is far from easy to visualise precisely the processes of settlement and trade, and the thesis has hardly yet been critically tested. It is the purpose of this paper to attempt as precise an account as can be given of the settlements established in Scotland in the 2nd millennium, and of the trade which these settlements developed. As a preliminary, attention will be called to certain conditions of primitive trade, settlement and transport as a help in judging the conditions likely to have applied in Northwest Europe in the 2nd millennium. Since the level of culture to be inferred for the early settlements is one of the questions which this paper must discuss, these considerations can be no more than suggestive, yet they should at least help to free us from presumptions which we might otherwise too readily import from the conditions of trade, settlement and transport with which we are immediately familiar.
Excavations at Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar
Authors: Waechter J. d'A.
Published: February 2015

Gorham's Cave is one of a group of seven which lie at the base of the cliffs on the east side of Gibraltar, below Europa Advance Road, which is about two hundred feet above them. There is now a beach in front of the five southern caves but this has only been in existence for a few years, and arose from the depositing of tunnel spoil over the cliff edge. Four of the caves are named, starting from the south end of the beach, Bennett's, Gorham's, Vanguard and Boathoist; the remaining three have local names which change from time to time. The beach, which is now called Anderson Beach, will probably disappear in a few years and the sea will again reach the base of the cliffs.

The cave is named after Major A. Gorham who explored a fissure at the back of the main cave in 1907, and for convenience both have been called by his name. The finding of an archaeological deposit was due originally to two members of R.E.M.E., when temporary access had been made to the beach from the cliffs above, and excavations were carried out in the upper level by Captain G. B. Alexander, R.E., and Lieut. Monke, R.E.

In 1948 the Governor of Gibraltar asked that full scale excavations should be carried out and two seasons' work have now been devoted to the cave under his patronage and with the help of funds supplied by the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund.
Palaeoliths from the Fen District
Authors: Baden-Powell D. F. W.
Published: February 2015

New discoveries during recent years of Palaeolithic implements near March and other places in the Fen District are important, because little is known of the cultural stages which can be correlated with the marine March Gravel. As far as I know, the only palaeoliths which have been reported so far from the Fenland area are:—

(1). A flake of Levalloisian type from Griffin's pit, one mile south-east of Wimblington; and a flake of Clactonian type from Bedlam Farm, 1 mile north-east of Manea (Baden-Powell, 1934, figs. 4–5, p. 217).

(2). An ‘almond-shaped’ implement reported from March by the Geological Survey (Skertchly, in Whitaker, 1893, p. 113). Apparently this specimen has not yet been fully described or figured.

(3). Five Acheulian implements and various flakes from Tottenhill south of King's Lynn; also flakes from South Wootton north of King's Lynn. Most of these implements were found by Dr C. B. Plowright, and were mentioned by H. J. Hillen (Hillen 1911, p. 118) and by J. E. Marr (Marr, 1920, pp. 186–7 and 1926, p. 120). These specimens were presented to the King's Lynn Museum, where there is also an Acheulian implement from East Winch, near the Nar Valley.

(4). A number of implements from various gravels in and around the south-eastern Fens, mentioned by J. G. D. Clark (1938, pp. 253–4). One from Burnt Fen was identified as Levallois v.
The Problem of the Survival of the Tripolye Culture
Authors: Sulimirski T.
Published: February 2015

The archaeology of the Pontic lands conceals several unsolved problems, and the puzzle of the sudden breakdown and disappearance of the Tripolye culture ranks as one among the most striking of these. Several scholars who have dealt with Tripolye culture have expressed views, but none of them has proposed a really satisfactory solution.

In the twenties of this century the commonest view was that the Tripolye population simply left their native country at the end of the late Stone Age. E. v. Stern was of the opinion that the fact that the Tripolye culture disappeared suddenly at the summit of its development, and that another culture very akin to it appeared simultaneously on the Aegean territory, is clear proof of a great movement which brought the Tripolye population from the Pontic steppes down to their new homeland in the Aegean.
Battle-axes in the Aegean
Authors: Hutchinson R. W.
Published: February 2015

Tracking the elusive Indo-European has been a favourite sport of archaeologists and philologists ever since the days of the brothers Grimm, and surely some share of their power of telling fascinating fairy stories must have descended on their philological and archaeological successors.

Some authorities have tried to associate the spread of Indo-European languages with that of cremation burials or with the diffusion of a particular physical type. The German school of Penka and Kossinna regarded these languages as the product of the Nordic race, and connected this diffusion with a group of cultures characterized by double axes or hammer-axes of stone, by axe-adzes of copper, and by certain varieties of pottery such as corded ware, globular amphorae, etc.

I am not here concerned with the origin of these weapons. The axe-hammers may indeed ultimately be derived from stag-horn types of the mesolithic age. The copper axe-adzes are more restricted in their chronological and geographical setting. Still more restricted in their distribution and more definitely associated with Indo-European speaking peoples are two groups of metal battle-axes found especially in Persia and associated by M. Godard with the Kassites, the halberd-axe and the spiked-butt battle-axe. The first group, derived apparently from the ‘axe with double perforation’ does not really concern us since it seems almost to be confined to Persia, though its parent the ‘Hache à double évident’ occurs first in a double form in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, becomes acclimatized in Syria, and is found so far afield as Vapheio near Sparta, and Mycenae.
Mesolithic Sites in the Neighbourhood of Flixton, North-east Yorkshire
Authors: Moore John W.
Published: February 2015

The setting of the discoveries (1947–9) described in this paper is the relatively flat and low-lying basin of the easterly and coastal end of the Vale of Pickering in north-east Yorkshire. Abounding hereabouts are many ditches nearly all of which serve as field boundaries draining what is mostly quagmire of varying depth. These empty their waters into the Hertford river or Muston Drain, a canalised version of an ancient stream which rises near the coast and flows directly inland. Sections revealed in these drains, supplemented by borings, show the area around Flixton to possess a stratified series of Late Glacial and Early Post-glacial deposits distinct from anything yet known in the greater part of the Vale to the west. Although the Pleistocene geology of the Vale of Pickering is not yet adequately understood, the presence of these deposits makes the Flixton area of far more than local interest.

During the early part of the summer of 1947, I examined some gravels forming an exposure in the face of a ditch. Nothing of archaeological interest was seen at the time, but one week later I made a second, somewhat casual, scrutiny of the same section and upon this occasion I found and extracted the flint blade which presaged a closer scrutiny of the section and eventual excavation within the area (Site 1). It was not until the excavation of Site 1 had been nearly completed (Nov. 1948) that other sites were located.
A Stone-Axe Factory at Pike of Stickle, Great Langdale, Westmorland
Authors: Bunch Brian , Fell Clare I.
Published: February 2015

The work of the Stone Axe Sub-Committee of the South-western Group of Museums and Art Galleries, familiar to readers of these Proceedings, has made it evident that an important stone axe factory must have existed in the immediate area of Great Langdale, Westmorland. The name ‘Stake Pass,’ applied to stone axes of Group VI of the Committee's classification, indeed referred to a small working-floor discovered at this locality by Professor D. M. S. Watson over thirty years ago. The present paper first records the discovery by Mr Brian Bunch of what was evidently the main factory at Pike of Stickle, as well as a number of subsidiary working-places, and then goes on to describe the material from the sites and to discuss the distribution of the finished products as evidence of early trade.
A Preliminary Report on Excavations at Star Carr, Seamer, Scarborough, Yorkshire, 1949
Authors: Clark J. G. D. , Godwin H. , Fraser F. C. , King J. E.
Published: February 2015

The object of the excavations described in this preliminary report was to recover evidence of:

(a) the more perishable elements in the material culture of a Maglemosian community,

(b) the fauna on which this community largely subsisted and

(c) the vegetation which formed the ecological setting of man and beast alike.

The best way of appreciating the need for such an investigation and of judging the measure of success attained in this first season is to consider how knowledge of the Maglemosian culture in Britain grew up between the two world wars. There appear to have been two main clues, namely single finds of barbed bone points, commonly, though probably wrongly, referred to in the early literature as ‘harpoons,’ and flint industries of a type associated with analogous points on Maglemosian sites in the Baltic area.
Excavations at Little Woodbury, Wiltshire (1938–39)
Authors: Brailsford John , Jackson J. Wilfrid
Published: February 2015

The excavations of the Iron Age site at Little Woodbury were carried out by the Prehistoric Society in 1938–39 under the direction of Dr Gerhard Bersu. The first part of the report, published inProc. Prehist. Soc.VI (1940), 30–111, was Dr Bersu's account of the structures revealed by excavation. This second part deals with the pottery, by far the most abundant material recovered, and discusses its significance for the history of the site and its relation to other Iron Age settlements in Wessex. The general conclusions are given first, and the detailed evidence on which they are based follows, with a catalogue of the pottery and two appendices.
Prehistoric Discoveries in Siam, 1943–44
Authors: van Heekeren H. R.
Published: February 2015

It is probably well known that the Japanese compelled Allied prisoners of war to work on the Bangkok-Moulmein railway, which was constructed during the war through the jungles of Siam and Burma. The author, who was captured in Java, arrived at the base camp of Nom-Pladuk on the 9th of February, 1943, and was sent at once to Taroewa, a village situated some 8 miles up-country. Being a member of the so-called ‘nail-shift,’ I started from this camp whenever opportunities presented themselves to study the entire region of the railway and the immediate surroundings as far north as the ‘Three Pagodas Pass’ on the Siam-Burma frontier, where the connection with the Burma section of the railway was accomplished. The total distance involved is somewhat over 140 miles, and the course of the river, the Mei Fingnoi, or Meklong, was always followed. Since all my discoveries were made along the first 75 miles of the railway, the remaining part need hardly be mentioned.

From the outset, I was constantly on the alert for prehistoric remains, this being possible since much ground was removed during the construction of the railway, but methodical investigations were naturally out of the question, while much of the material collected was subsequently lost again. All my scientific notes were taken from me by the Japanese.
The Stone Age of the Libyan Littoral: The Results of a War-Time Reconnaissance
Authors: McBurney C. B. M.
Published: February 2015

Military service during the 1942–43 campaign in Libya provided an opportunity for myself and a few friends to make a preliminary reconnaissance of stone age remains along the 1200 miles of coast between Alexandria and Tripoli. Under the circumstances many of our observations were necessarily of a very incomplete and cursory nature. I have nevertheless thought it worth while presenting them as a whole, since they do at least provide a first estimate of the culture-sequence in this interesting and little-studied area. One cave and a few vaguely described, or very scanty, surface finds appear to make up the sum total of previously published discoveries.
The Neolithic Cultures of South-East Italy
Authors: Stevenson Robert B. K.
Published: February 2015

South-east Italy, from the spur to the heel of Italy's boot, forms a natural geographic and cultural unit, separated from the Balkans by the Adriatic yet joined to them by the same sea. It is an area of plain and plateau bounded to the west and north by the Apennines, which come down to the sea at the Gulf of Taranto and again north of the Gargano peninsula.

Considerably more material for the study of the neolithic cultures in this area has been found since T. E. Peet drew attention to their interest nearly forty years ago (II). Yet while the main kinds of pottery are recognised, positive evidence for their succession is still scarce. This is chiefly due to the lack of fully stratigraphic digging, as well as to a tendency to regard the objects found on any single site as ipso facto contemporary with one another or at least as due to a continuous occupation. Some confusion is probably also caused by the number of separate stations all usually called ‘Matera.’ Even so the main phases are now distinguishable, and the chief differences of opinion are regarding the extent to which the characteristic range of pottery of each of these, with all that that implies, continued alongside of the innovations.

The following account based on war-time reading, and brief visits to Matera museum and a number of sites, will stress the view that there was fairly complete replacement: in this and the resulting division into three distinct periods, tentatively indicated by Rellini in 1929 (14c), it goes beyond the views of most Italian archaeologists, as well as previous English resumes. In particular Laviosa-Zambotti in her recent important study of Italian cultures and their relations with Central Europe and the Balkans (8b), while admitting that the various wares are due to a series of influences from outside, concludes that they are truly associated and therefore largely synchronous. This may be due in part to her leaning toward ‘short’ chronologies elsewhere. However, particularly in view of J. S. P. Bradford's remarkable crop-site discoveries (2), it seems worthwhile to set out the existing evidence for a more elaborate scheme, to be tested by future excavations.
Prehistoric Boats from North Ferriby, East Yorkshire
Authors: Wright E. V. , Wright C. W.
Published: February 2015

The discovery of part of a large ‘sewn’ boat on the banks of the Humber at North Ferriby, East Yorkshire, in 1937, was announced just before the late war. Exploration which revealed many of the outstanding details of construction as well as the limits of the find, was carried out during 1938 and 1939, with a view to full excavation and, if possible, salvage in 1940. This prospect naturally disappeared on the outbreak of war, leaving us in some anxiety whether the boat would survive destruction by the waters of the river. The danger induced us to remove at intervals just before and during the war three sections from the lower end which would otherwise have been lost. Of these sections about half the pieces were stored in the Municipal Museum at Hull where they were destroyed when that building was set on fire by incendiary bombs and burnt down in 1942. The rest were kept at North Ferriby and, although shrunken and cracked for want of treatment, at least survive. In spite of our attentions a considerable amount of the remaining part of the boat was carried away.
A Neolithic Site at Ronaldsway, Isle of Man
Authors: Bruce J. R. , Megaw E. M. , Megaw B. R. S.
Published: February 2015

When, in 1935, Dr Grahame Clark rediscovered the unpublished finds from a site at Glencrutchery, near Douglas in the Isle of Man, he at once realised that he had come upon the relics of a culture that was new to British archaeology. Its age and affinities were quite unknown, and in his most useful pioneer study (Clark, 1935, pp. 85–91) of the material, Dr Clark suggested that it should be assigned to a period which he called the ‘Ultimate Bronze Age’ of the Island, perhaps contemporary with the Iron Age in Britain.

Investigation of material from other Manx sites subsequently made a much earlier dating seem likely, and this impression was confirmed in 1943 by the discovery of a richly-furnished dwelling site at Ronaldsway. Thanks to this chance discovery it is now apparent that we have to deal with a new facet of Neolithic civilisation in these Islands. So far it is known to us only in the Isle of Man.
Excavations and Prehistoric Discoveries in France (1940–1944)
Authors: Lantier M. Raymond
Published: February 2015

During these four hard years of German occupation and in spite of hindrances of all kinds—preliminary permits to be obtained, censorship and severe limitations imposed on the liberty of the scientific press—research and the publication of works on our national antiquities have not meanwhile been interrupted. Excavations have been carried on with an activity, which the struggles for liberation during the summer of 1944, have not invariably retarded. The reviews and publications of the learned societies of the departments, although perceptibly reduced in bulk, continued to record discoveries and to print erudite articles. A new documentary review, Gallia: Excavations and Archaeological Monuments of Metropolitan France, was even published for the first time in 1943. Edited under the aegis of the National Centre for Scientific Research, its object is to publish, with the least delay possible, the reports of excavators upon their discoveries. Such results could not have been attained without the co-operation of all archaeologists, editors and printers, in fulfilling a single and imperative duty, namely, to assure the continuity of French archaeology in spite of the uncertainties and distress of the period. This amounted moreover, at the same time to a form of service and was one of the aspects of resistance to the invader. All were thus only following the example, set at the time of the first world war by Camille Jullian, the great historian of Gaul, who then placed his science and his eloquence at the service of his country. The book, dedicated to him by Albert Grenier, is no mere biography; it traces another page of the history and archaeology of contemporary France.
Les plages anciennes portugaises entre les Caps d'Espichel et Carvoeiro et leurs industries paléolithiques
Authors: Breuil Par L'Abbé H. , Vaultier Maxime , Zbyszewski Georges
Published: February 2015

Depuis 8 mois, nous avons, entre autres terrains riches en Paléolithique ancien, exploré la plupart des plages anciennes au Nord et au Sud de Lisbonne, du cap d'Espichel au Sud, à la presqu'île de Peniche au Nord, soit environ 120 km. de côtes, dont auparavant (grotte de Furninha excepté) on ne savait rien du point de vue préhistorique. Les sîtes les plus importants qui nous ont livré du matériel, parfois en très grande quantité, sont du Sud au Nord:

(a) Entre Sado et Tage: les plages anciennes du Fort de Barralha (Espichel), de Lagosteiros et de Foz da Fonte, au Nord du cap.

(b) Entre Tage et Serra de Sintra: plages de S. Juliao da Barra et du Guincho.

(c) Au Nord de la Serra de Sintra, les plages de Magoito, Açafora, Ericeira, Beiramar.

(d) Autour de Peniche, les plages de Consolaçao, Porto de Lôbos, phare de Peniche et grotte de Furninha, dans sa falaise.

Nous avons recueilli de nombreuses observations géologiques et archéologiques, et récolté, sur ces anciennes plages, un matériel lithique considérable, principalement en quartzite, parfois en basalte ou en silex, voire en calcaire dur. De sorte qu'en attendant une description plus détaillée qui ne tardera pas trop à paraître, nous sommes en mesure de tirer dès maintenant quelques conclusions d'ensemble sur ce littoral et ses industries paléolithiques marines.
The Deverel Urn and the Picardy Pin: A Phase of Bronze Age Settlement in Kent
Authors: Hawkes C. F. C.
Published: February 2015

In March 1929, foundations were being dug for the new Biological Laboratory at St. Lawrence College, Ramsgate, overlooking the coast of Thanet, 4 miles SSW. of the North Foreland. In the course of digging, the workmen came across an ancient excavation in the chalk rock, lying beneath several feet of humus and filled with earthy chalk rubble. Intact in this excavation was a hand-made pottery urn (fig. 1, and pl. v, 1), and inside the urn were three large pins of cast bronze (fig. 2, 1–3). The earthy chalk rubble also contained a small number of ancient animal bones and teeth, and shells of the common sea mussel. The discovery was witnessed, and the finds were collected, by Mr C. E. Baldwin, M.A., then Senior Science Master at St. Lawrence College. The urn, extracted in fragments, was subsequently identified as a Bronze Age vessel by the late Mr J. E. Couchman, and the pins were recorded by Miss Lily F. Chitty in the British Association Card-Catalogue of Bronze Age Implements. In 1939 Mr Baldwin, now Headmaster of the County School, Camberley, Surrey, kindly consented to submit the finds for examination by the present writer in the British Museum, and permitted their subsequent exhibition (the urn restored) to the Prehistoric Society, and their publication here.
The Dual Nature of the Megalithic Colonisation of Prehistoric Europe
Authors: Daniel G. E.
Published: February 2015

In a note in the last issue of these Proceedings, Professor C. Daryll Forde commented on some of the tentative conclusions set forth by the present writer in two articles in earlier issues, and went on to a general discussion of the morphology and diffusion of prehistoric burial chambers. During the last few years it has been generally held by archaeologists that the megalithic colonisation of western and northern Europe was dual in character, consisting of two separate movements—the one diffusing Passage Graves, the other diffusing Gallery Graves: this notion is implicit in the recent writings of Childe, Hawkes, Estyn Evans, Powell and Megaw. It has seemed to me abundantly clear that, even if these two sets of movements were ultimately from the same Mediterranean source (and this, too, is open to question), as far as western and northern Europe was concerned they were two distinct and separate movements. This conclusion Forde challenges, and regards all Gallery Graves as local developments from degenerate Passage Graves in the various regions of Europe to which the Passage Graves were diffused. It has seemed worth while to the present writer, before meeting Forde's detailed criticisms, to deal with his general thesis, and it is the purpose of this article to argue and describe the dual nature of the megalithic colonisation of Europe.
Excavations at Little Woodbury, Wiltshire
Authors: Bersu Gerhard
Published: February 2015

The aim of the Prehistoric Society in undertaking excavations was to uncover systematically a complete settlement and to discover as much as possible about it as a social and economic organism. Little Woodbury had much to recommend it. The existence of a good air-photograph meant that no efforts need be wasted on unproductive work, besides promising interesting results for the interpretation of air-photographs. Being typical of a whole group, its elucidation might be expected to throw light upon a number of similar sites. Further, experience has shown that incontestable results are to be won most readily where the habitation is not too dense and where occupation has been confined to one period. The air-photograph seemed to promise the former, while the test excavations carried out by Mr C. W. Phillips, F.S.A., in March 1938, suggested that the settlement was substantially of the Iron Age A culture.