bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Earliest Wheeled Vehicles and the Caucasian Evidence
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: February 2015

In theseProceedingsover 15 years ago Gordon Childe made a classic survey of the evidence for the earliest wagons and carts in the Near East and Europe, following it three years later with a similar treatment using some additional material which had become available by that time (Childe, 1951, 1954a, b). Since then much new primary archaeological evidence has been discovered or recognized for what it is, and there have been two recent important works of synthesis, that of Boná (1960) on vehicle models in the Middle Danube, and that of van der Waals (1964) of finds of actual disc wheels in the Netherlands. From 1956 a large number of actual vehicle finds have been made in excavations on the shores of Lake Sevan in Armenian SSR; an additional second find comes from Trialeti in Georgian SSR, and new vehicle-burials found near Elista in the Kalmyk steppe, so that we now have a total of nearly 30 wagons, carts and chariots surviving wholly or in part from southern Russia, mainly of the 2nd millennium B.C. In the last 10 years or so, too, new work on the Neolithic and earliest metal-using cultures of East Europe, and on the Kura-Araxes Culture of Transcaucasia and its counterpart in eastern Anatolia has thrown new light on early wheeled transport in such contexts. Despite the penetrating and far-reaching conclusions pursued by van der Waals only four years ago there still seems room for a survey reviewing these in connection with other aspects of this cardinal problem in Old World prehistory.
Settlement and Economy in Southern Italy in the Neothermal Period
Authors: Whitehouse Ruth D.
Published: February 2015

The post-Pleistocene archaeology of southern Italy is a rapidly developing study and for this reason, while many facets of it are still little known, others are undergoing fundamental changes as new discoveries are made. Particularly notable contributions have been made in the last 20 years by, among others, L. Cardini, P. Graziosi, A. Palma di Cesnola, E. Borzatti von Löwenstern, O. Cornaggia Castiglioni and F. Zorzi in the palaeolithic and mesolithic field, R. B. K. Stevenson, L. Bernabò Brea, D. Trump and S. Tinè in the Neolithic sphere and D. Trump, S. M. Puglisi, R.Peroni, F. G. Lo Porto and H. Muller-Karpe for the bronze age. As a result of this work it is now possible for us to reconstruct in outline the later prehistory of southern Italy. Most of the work that has been done has been on individual topics, and, while some attempts at synthesis have been made (most notably those of A. M. Radmilli, D. Trump and R. Peroni), these have taken the form of a culture-by-culture description, as it were a commentary upon a vast composite stratigraphy of the area. No attempt, however, has yet been made to produce a history of the human occupation of the land and it is towards this aim that my paper is directed.

The emphasis in this paper is on settlement and economy in relation to environment. It is through the techniques of his subsistence economy that man deals with (or in evolutionary terms, adapts to) his environment, and in this sense it can be regarded as the most important factor contributing to the nature and development of society.
A Petrological Study of Certain Iron Age Pottery from Western England
Authors: Peacock D. P. S.
Published: February 2015

The Early Iron Age pottery of the Herefordshire-Cotswold region is marked by a predominance of the well-known duck-stamped ware associated with a thinner spread of pottery ornamented with tooled lines. It has been customary to equate the former with the presence of an intrusive culture now generally labelled Western Third B, while the linear-tooled pottery has been referred to the Western Second B culture and is held to represent the indigeneous population. However, this is based on the unwritten assumption that the pottery was produced in or near the home and hence can be used as a cultural type-fossil. Petrological examination suggests that this is unwarranted since it appears that the pottery was the object of a well organized trade involving specialist potters based in the Malvern district. The distribution could thus be due to purely commercial factors, and this necessitates a reassessment of the cultural interpretation. The object of this paper is to present the new evidence and to discuss briefly its implications.

Although concerned mainly with the stamp ornamented and linear tooled ware of the west Midland and Cotswold regions, this paper deals occasionally with undecorated pieces. The ornamented vessel from Pen Dinas, Aberystwyth has been included because of its obvious resemblance to some of the pots from Bredon Hill, Worcestershire, but other stamped sherds such as that from Methyr Mawr, Glamorgan or the Cornish duck-stamped pottery have been excluded on typological grounds.
The Climate, Environment and Industries of Stone Age Greece: Part III
Authors: Higgs E. S. , Vita-Finzi C. , Harris D. R. , Fagg A. E. , Bottema S.
Published: February 2015

In the second article of this series, brief mention was made of a cave at Kastritsa, near Lake Ioannina, whose talus had yielded an industry reminiscent of the last phase at the shelter of Asprochaliko. The evidence for an increase in the size of Lake Ioannina during the Last Glaciation was also outlined. The purpose of this paper is to consider the concomitant environmental changes in relation to the evidence for human occupation.

Lake Ioannina lies at 469 metres above sea-level. To the north-east stands the Mitsikeli ridge, with a maximum elevation of 1,810 metres and separated from the Pindus range by the gorge of the upper Arakhthos (fig. 1). To the south-west lies the Tomarokhoria plateau, which in places rises to over 1,900 metres. The basin, a typical polje, is cradled by limestones which range in age from the Upper Triassic to the Upper Eocene. The Flysch of the Pindus borders it on the south-east. The lake lies along the axis of the Perama syncline, which runs north-west-south-east parallel to the Mitsikeli anticline and the Stavraki anticline; faulting is common. The basin would seem to owe its existence primarily to structural factors, although solution doubtless contributed to its present form.
Minoan Stone Vases as Evidence for Minoan Foreign Connexions in the Aegean Late Bronze Age
Authors: Warren Peter
Published: February 2015

This article presents the evidence for the distribution of Late Minoan stone vases outside Crete. This class of evidence has not been discussed previously and as the amount of material involved is substantial, over a hundred vases, it is here set out as a contribution to the discussion of Minoan foreign connexions in the earlier part of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean.

The vases were made in Crete in Middle Minoan III/Late Minoan I—Late Minoan III A 1, c. 1600–1400 B.C., as is shown by the contexts of parallel vases from sites in the island (see the Catalogue). Most of the exports occur in Aegean contexts of this period; for those from contexts later than c. 1400 B.C. it is most reasonable to believe that they too were exported from Crete at the time of their floruit, containing in use for a time afterwards. In any case most of them are fragments, which indicates that their time of arrival and period of use were earlier than the late date of their contexts. Moreover after c. 1400 B.C. Cretan influence abroad ceased (Desborough 1964, 166–7; cf. Furumark 1950, 263–4 for the end of Minoan contacts with Trianda and Phylakopi), nor is there evidence that stone vases were then made in the island.
Stock Rearing as a Cultural Factor in Prehistoric Europe
Authors: Higham C. F. W.
Published: February 2015

Agriculture and stock rearing moulded the life of the English peasant during the Middle Ages. Together, they absorbed the greater part of his energy, time and skill. In good seasons there was plenty, and in times of dearth, the threat of starvation. Tracts were written on the most effective means of stock management and soil utilization, and farming methods varied with regional changes in topography and environment.

There is no reason to suppose that the same does not hold for the prehistoric peasant: yet the economic prehistory of England, indeed of Europe as a whole, remains unwritten. This paper will consider the possibility of discovering the basic economic framework of a number of prehistoric societies through the examination of both faunal and floral remains. The sites in question are restricted to the Alpine Foreland, due to the excellent local conditions for the survival of floral, faunal and artefactual material.
The Hallstatt Sword of Bronze: on the Continent and in Britain
Authors: Cowen J. D.
Published: February 2015

The primary object of the present article is to offer a review of the current state of knowledge of those flange-hilted swords of bronze which characterize the earliest phase of the Hallstatt period, and of some derivative varieties; and to support it by as complete an inventory of the available material as lies within the writer's power. It aspires, accordingly, first and foremost to be a factual survey of a clearly defined group of weapons, which over a significant portion of the area treated were the last of their kind to be made in bronze.

More specifically, it is hoped that the topographical, typological, and chronological aspects of this essay may be found acceptable, in and for themselves, and as a basis for further study. But the interpretation of the character of the Hallstatt sword, and the socio-historical situation presented as a background to that, inevitably lie in a more speculative field, and are offered solely as a possible explanation of the genesis of the type. This explanation, if correct, would indeed make good sense of a number of otherwise disconnected factors. It remains, nevertheless, a hypothesis propounded to account for the origins of the material under review; and can be jettisoned, in whole or in part, without at all impairing the validity of the treatment of that material, once it had come into being.

Though the contemporary swords of iron are certainly overdue for comprehensive and up-to-date treatment, they fall outside the scope of this study.
The Lanhill Long Barrow, Wiltshire, England: An Essay in Reconstruction
Authors: King D. Grant , Young W. E. V. , Clarke A. J. , Cain A. J. , Dimbleby G. W.
Published: February 2015

The destruction of barrows and other monuments of antiquity has become an everyday occurrence. In earlier centuries many things survived, as in Ireland in more recent times, by reason of public superstition or veneration, in which the invocation of the fairies and the little people has played a lively part. It is astonishing how much survived the ages of ignorance. There is irony in the situation. For the main onslaught of destruction, it must be confessed, begins in the self-styled age of culture and enlightenment—from the 17th century to the present day—and of this the greatest slaughter is clearly attributable to our own 20th century.

The Lanhill Long Barrow, once included among the most important antiquities in Wiltshire, has suffered a typical spoliation. When John Aubrey first described and drew the tomb in the mid-17th century, it must have been nearly complete, save for a certain amount of natural weathering. He wrote that the tenant farmer of his day ‘thought to have digged down this hill for the earth to lay on other land’; but he recorded only three small areas of disturbance marked ‘a’ on his original sketch.
The ‘Lower Perigordian’ in French Archaeology
Authors: Lynch Thomas F.
Published: February 2015

An evaluation of the concept of ‘Lower Perigordian‘ is attempted in this paper. The conclusion of this work suggests that the Lower Perigordian is a fallacious concept, that it can no longer be accepted as the first stage of the French Upper Palaeolithic, and that the so-called Lower Perigordian stone industries may not even represent a unified stage in the development of stone-tool technology.

The terms ‘industry’ and ‘assemblage’ will be used in this paper in the sense defined by Braidwood (1946, 133–6). An industry is a collection of tools of one category of material (here stone or bone only) which appears in archaeological context, or in an untransported geological context. An assemblage is ‘… a variety of categories of artifacts and non-artifactual materials which appears in archaeological context.’ The non-artifactual aspect of an assemblage most notably provides information on geological context and physical relationships. Many of the collections of tools to be dealt with below can in no way be considered assemblages, but we still know something of their archaeological contexts, so they have not yet sunk to the level of Braidwood's ‘aggregations’. ‘Culture’ will be used in its anthropological sense to mean the whole of patterned, learned behaviour shared by a group of human beings, and the effects of this behaviour on material artifacts. If set off by quotation marks, ‘culture’ may refer also to the ‘material culture’ of other writers or be a convenient translation of the French word ‘civilization.’
The Origins of the Flange-hilted Sword of Bronze in Continental Europe
Authors: Cowen J. D.
Published: February 2015

In the present study it is proposed to set out, in somewhat greater detail than has yet been attempted, the case for an independent and wholly indigenous development of the flange-hilted sword of bronze in extra-Aegean Europe. That these were not the first tanged or even flange-hilted swords to be made goes without saying. At a time which on any view must be earlier by a clear margin the Mycenaeans were enjoying the use of splendid rapiers of which the hilts were furnished with highly developed flanges. And in Anatolia swords with substantial tangs are known from towards the end of the 3rd millennium. The argument, accordingly, is for independent invention of the same device in more than one period and place—a concept which some prehistorians seem to find unpalatable to the point of disbelief, however simple and natural the device.

In the circumstances it is not altogether surprising that the subject has been long debated, and our main conclusion warmly contested, not so much in point of detail (on which in the ultimate the verdict must stand or fall) as on the broader ground of general resemblances, or even of preconceived ideas on probability. To analyse the ebb and flow of conflicting views is no part of the present purpose. It will suffice to observe that we have yet to see demonstrated a coherent chain of development by which the swords of central Europe can be derived from those of the Aegean, much less from Anatolia.
The Experimental Earthwork on Overton Down, Wiltshire, England: The First Four Years
Authors: Jewell P. A. , Dimbleby G. W.
Published: February 2015

The Overton Down earthwork was constructed in 1960, the first of a series designed to study the changes which take place with time in a bank and ditch, and in selected materials buried within the bank. Full details of the construction of the earthwork are given by Jewell (1963); as this report will be referred to repeatedly, for simplicity it will in future be called the Basic Manual. The experiment was designed to be sectioned at intervals of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and, perhaps, 128 years, though, in the early stages particularly, observations would be made at more frequent intervals. This paper deals with the results of the two- and four-year sections, together with such other observations as were made. Even at this date it has not been possible to complete the analytical work on all the buried objects; deficiencies will be made up as far as possible in future reports.
Radiocarbon dating and the expansion of farming culture from the Near East over Europe
Authors: Clark J. G. D.
Published: February 2015

The pursuit of radiocarbon dating is one of those elegant exercises in pure science that is fully justified as an end in itself and has justly brought world renown to its inventor. The purpose of this communication is merely to examine one of its many applications, namely the light it has thrown on the westward spread of farming from the ecologically focal regions of south-west Asia to Europe and north Africa. Because of its impact on the evolving ecosystem the spread of farming is of special concern to botanists. Even more so is it a preoccupation of students of man, since it symbolizes a transformation of human society of which the effects are still being felt. The evidence for this phenomenon itself falls into two broad and partly overlapping categories: first there is the indirect evidence afforded by plant ‘indicators’, notably fossil pollen, and second, the direct evidence gained through the investigation of materials from the actual settlements of the prehistoric cultivators themselves.
A Mesolithic Site on Iping Common, Sussex, England
Authors: Keef P. A. M. , Wymer J. J. , Dimbleby G. W.
Published: February 2015

The Iping Mesolithic site, found by Mr O. Knowles of Iping, lies on undulating Lower Greensand near the edge of a marsh which extends down to a pond and permanent spring (Sheet 181 O.S. 1″. 8485–2221). The site was totally excavated in 1960–61, by the West Sussex Excavation Group, following its accidental discovery. It consisted of a roughly circular area, about 25 feet across, of stained sand (Layer C) stratified between white sands (Layers B and D), all underlying the topmost deposit of heather on peat (Layer A). The white sand occurs as wind-blown material intermittently over the Lower Greensand of west Sussex, south Surrey and Hampshire. The darker stained layer was less than 6 inches thick and contained an abundant flint industry of cores, waste flakes and finished tools. The industry is of Maglemosian aspect and is important for its association with a well-preserved pollen which has yielded information about the contemporary environment.
The Greek Mainland, c. 1150 — c. 1000 B.C.
Authors: Desborough Vincent
Published: February 2015

In this article, an attempt will be made to review briefly the relative significance of surviving Mycenaean and intrusive elements on the Greek Mainland south of Macedonia during the late 12th and the 11th centuries B.C. Not all the area has been thoroughly investigated. Indeed there is no district that would not repay further exploration and excavation, but certain regions such as Arcadia, North Elis, the Megarid, Phocis and Locris, much of Boeotia, Phocis and Locris, and even parts of Attica, Corinthia and the Argolid need basic surveys. This irregularity of our knowledge should be borne in mind.

The century immediately preceding the period under discussion appears to be characterized by extensive depopulation in many areas, and by the destruction of a number of major Mycenaean sites. Invasion would seem at least in part to have been responsible for the upheaval, though that upheaval was so great that the side effects of some climatic change are perhaps not to be ruled out as a contributory cause. So far as one can tell, an increase of population was registered only in Achaea, and in the relatively secluded Aegean-facing coasts of the Peloponnese and Attica. It would not be incorrect to say that the whole fabric of Mycenaean civilization on the Mainland, with the possible exception of Thessaly, had suffered a fatal blow in the period shortly before 1200 B.C. The course of Mycenaean history faltered and then (at different times in different areas) ceased, a phenomenon observable partly in the further abandonment of sites, but perhaps more in the discontinuation of the characteristic chamber tomb and tholos cemeteries.
Barbarian Europe and Early Iron Age Greece
Authors: Snodgrass A. M.
Published: February 2015

This paper is concerned with the nature of the relationship that existed between Central Europe and the Aegean area in the early 1st millennium B.C. Interest in Aegean-continental connections has been strong for a considerable time, but has been intensified, particularly from the continental standpoint, in the past fifteen years. Although some of these studies have been concerned with the contacts between 2nd millennium (Late Bronze Age) Greece and the north, others have examined in detail the evidence for the links between the Urnfield culture and Greece during the 10th, 9th and 8th centuries. For Greece, this is an utterly different period from the preceding one; the evidence for foreign contacts suddenly becomes scarce and that for military disasters is virtually non-existent. Yet some scholars have reached very similar conclusions, involving the transmission of objects and of the people who carried them from Central Europe into Greece, for this period as for the preceding Late Bronze Age. Such arguments have a recent exponent in Professor W. Kimmig, whose paper Seevölkerbewegung und Urnenfelderkultur ranges over the whole period from about 1200 to 700. His list of objects and practices in this period, which he considers to have been donated by the Danube-Balkan peoples to the Mediterranean world, is comprehensive indeed: it would include bronze shields and body armour, the equipment of Goliath, the knobbed ware of Troy VII B, the practice of cremation in the Iron Age, the ritual spoliation of weapons in graves, iron swords, spears, knives, bits, lugged axes, spits, fire-dogs, bronze personal objects generally, clay idols, the maeander pattern and the swans of Apollo.
Was Native Copper used in Transcaucasia in Eneolithic Times?
Authors: Selimkhanov I. R.
Published: February 2015

The majority of scientists hold the opinion that mankind first knew metal in the form of native copper. In particular, at this period the malleability of native copper was realized, and its brittleness when cold worked, as well as the need of annealing to cold forge the necessary tools. The melting of copper was discovered later when native copper was met with in association with ores.

These opinions are shared by H. H. Coghlan and H. Otto and W. Witter, though the first mentioned also pointed out that in some regions artifacts made from copper alloys existed in early periods while artifacts made of pure copper might be met with in the latest periods.

V. I. Vernadski also had some doubt about the unconditional validity of this theory. However, he did not deny that where native copper was distributed it was the first metal replacing (although only partly) stone and bone for making tools. In certain cases such an assertion has been supported by old and unreliable analyses of ancient artifacts, as well as by some mistakes in the determination of their age.
The Characterization of Obsidian and its application to the Mediterranean Region
Authors: Cann J. R. , Renfrew Colin
Published: February 2015

Evidence of contact between cultural groups is of great importance to the study of prehistory. Although the development of absolute dating methods has decreased our dependence on the discovery of such contacts for chronology, they are essential material when the origin and spread of culture is being studied. In the past, cultural contacts have generally been demonstrated by typological similarities of artifacts, but unfortunately many typological comparisons are open to discussion, and it can be exceedingly difficult to be certain of direct contact by this means alone.

The importance in this respect of the study of raw materials used in places far from their place of origin and presumably deliberately imported has long been realized. Recently more attention has been paid to the careful characterization of such materials; the detection, that is, of properties of the specimen under study which are characteristic of material from particular sources. By this means it is often possible to assign a source to a given specimen. The petrological identification of British neolithic stone axes is perhaps the most comprehensive archaeological characterization study yet undertaken. Demonstrations of trading links made by such methods, if based on a sure identification and a comprehensive survey of possible sources, are not open to the criticism and doubt which may be directed at typological similarities. The variety of techniques now available for the analysis and identification of materials makes this field a promising one for the archaeologist.
The Pins of the Jugoslav Early Iron Age
Authors: Alexander John
Published: February 2015

In his monumental study of Greek Pins, Jacobsthal examined a number of pins from Jugoslavia. These he found to be very different from the Greek series and in the present paper some four hundred pins have been studied in the hope of providing an extension to his work. Since pins were in use before fibulae and were conservative in their forms, many in the period under review in Jugoslavia, the 8th–2nd centuries B.C., are survivals from or elaborations of Bronze Age types. In this they differ from the fibulae which are nearly all borrowings from contemporary southern and western neighbours and this gives the pins their particular interest.

The dating of objects, including pins, has been placed on a firm footing in recent years by the detailed study of some of the more important Iron Age cemeteries, and in this paper the periods distinguished at Vače (Slovenia), Glasinac (Bosnia) and Nin (Dalmatia) will normally be used in preference to the more distant and often unrelated East Alpine Hallstatt terminology.

Distinctive Bronze Age pin series come from neighbouring Greece, Hungary, Austria, and Italy and their relative influence in Jugoslavia can be assessed. In the Late Bronze Age, East Alpine types were found throughout Jugoslavia, and Hungarian influence was strong in the inland river basins of the Lower Save, Drave and Danube; it also penetrated into Bosnia.
The British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic: Some Problems, Methods of Study and Preliminary Results
Authors: Roe D. A.
Published: February 2015

This is an interim report on a Cambridge Research Thesis which has been in progress for three years, and which will eventually cover the major part of the British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. The whole project may be divided into four phases:

1. Collection and examination of all the available material;

2. Selection of those groups of implements appropriate for study;

3. Application of objective methods of study, mainly in the field of metrical and statistical analysis;

4. Interpretation of the results.

The present paper gives some account of what has so far been done under the first three of these headings. It is still too early to attempt any major conclusions, although it is perhaps fair to indicate the lines along which it can be hoped they will take shape.
Jade Axes from Sites in the British Isles
Authors: Smith W. Campbell
Published: February 2015

Several years ago during the investigation of neolithic chambered tombs in Galloway a fragment of green jade polished on two opposite flat faces was found in the floor of the ante-chamber to Tomb I at Cairnholy in Kirkcudbrightshire. It was only about 3 centimetres square and 1.5 centimetres thick but, nevertheless, Professor Stuart Piggott and Mr T. G. E. Powell recognized that it had once formed part of a flat triangular axe of a type already known from several places in Scotland. A fine collection of such axes in jade existed in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Edinburgh. In an appendix to their paper on the chambered tombs Piggott and Powell listed the jade axes recorded from British and Irish sites and republished the map compiled by Miss L. F. Chitty and published by Sir Cyril Fox in 1933. This appendix also contained brief notes supplied by me on thin microscope sections of the Cairnholy fragment and of five other British axes reported to be made in jade. Some of these identifications were only partly correct, and have now been revised (see below, pp. 145, 158, 159 and footnote 2, p. 153).

Some years later the question of the identification of the material of reputed British jade axes arose again and it was decided to examine as many of the axes in Piggott and Powell's list as could be borrowed and to utilize in their examination determinations of density and refractive index, and, where possible, to obtain X-ray powder photographs and to have thin sections prepared.
The Inception of the Final Bronze Age in Middle Europe
Authors: Powell T. G. E.
Published: February 2015

When, in 1948, Childe reviewed in these Proceedings the later phases of the European Bronze Age he expounded a series of new views on the causation and chronology of episodes apprehended in archaeology by the spread of cremation urn cemeteries, and by advances in bronze technology. He also put forward proposals for changes in terminology, for he was well aware of the haphazard and casual way in which archaeological nomenclature had come about. Childe's interpretation of the origins of the urnfield cremation rite was valuable as a stimulus to a reassessment of the problem, but research in the years that have followed has produced so much new information that a very different story can now be told. Nor has the terminological reform seen much progress. The grounds on which Childe has been opposed as regards the nomenclature of subdivisions of the later Bronze Age have carried weight because it has been generally agreed that at least for the zone of the North Alpine foreland, a genuine cultural break should be recognized in and after the phase that Reinecke originally defined and nominated: Bronze D. This phase is the ‘End Bronze Age’ of many scholars, and what comes after is either ‘Hallstatt’ or ‘Urnfield’, appropriately subdivided and so Childe's Bronze phases E and F have not been accepted.
Some Pottery from Eastbourne, the ‘Marnians’ and the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Southern England
Authors: Hodson F. R.
Published: February 2015

The pottery illustrated on Plates XXI-XXII and figures 1 and 2 was found some forty years ago by the Rev. W. Budgen at Green Street Drove, Eastbourne (Budgen 1922). It is displayed in the Lewes Museum, and I must thank the curator Mr N. E. S. Norris for permission to study and republish it.

Three of the vases stand out from the others because they are misformed wasters—‘cripples’ Budgen called them. It is most likely that they were fired at the same time and it seems reasonable to treat this small series as a closed group. They appear, in any case, to have been found in the same pit (Budgen 1922, 355). The rest of the pottery, or at least the more complete vessels, could have formed part of the same assemblage, but there does not seem sufficient evidence to insist on any further associations within this material.

Whether associated or not, the pottery merits republication as a whole, both for its intrinsic interest and as a tribute to the skill and patience bestowed on its reconstruction by Budgen, and one purpose of this paper will be simply to present this material. However, the small group of three ‘cripples’ raises some fundamental problems of interpretation and the main part of the paper will attempt to discuss some aspects of the British Iron Age and its classification in a more general way.
Fourth Report of the Sub-Committee of the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes
Authors: Evens E. D. , Grinsell L. V. , Piggott S. , Wallis F. S.
Published: February 2015

Near the conclusion of the Third Report, which summarized the work on 710 specimens, the authors stated that it was ‘likely to be the last major report of the South-Western Sub-Committee’, and so it seemed at the time. During the 10 years that have elapsed since then, another 490 specimens have been examined, from the following counties and museums or collections:

This report therefore extends the list of specimens examined by this Committee from 710 to 1200, and it is believed that this really is the last major report of this body.
A Painted Rock Shelter on Mt Elgon, Kenya
Authors: Wright Richard
Published: February 2015

In March 1960 Mrs D. R. Tweedie discovered a painted rock shelter at 8,000 feet in the forests of Mt Elgon, about 15 miles west-north-west of Kitale, Kenya. The site is of particular interest because it is the first recorded instance of representational rock art in Kenya with any claim to antiquity.

The writer visited the site during September 1960 to copy the paintings. Tracings were made on cellophane stuck to the rock with sellotape. Glass ink was used as suggested by Dr L. S. B. Leakey, but in the more awkward copying positions a chinagraph pencil gave accurate lines more easily. With a warm pencil no pressure on the rock was needed to produce an outline. A photographic record was also made on colour film with flashbulbs.

The paintings have been preserved from weathering by a deep, dry overhang, and trees growing immediately in front of the shelter. They are also preserved from vandalism by the extreme difficulty of finding the site without guidance. Most of the paintings form a frieze at the left-hand side of the shelter, which is the best protected region.
The Excavation of the Long Mortuary Enclosure on Normanton Down, Wilts
Authors: Vatcher Faith De Mallet
Published: February 2015

The Long Mortuary Enclosure on Normanton Down was excavated by the writer on behalf of the Ministry of Works throughout October, 1959. Originally a rectangular-ditched enclosure with internal banks, the banks had been completely ploughed out and the surface indications were so slight as to be visible only at certain times.

The National Grid reference is SU 115411. The Enclosure is situated on the Upper Chalk of the Salisbury Plain on a gradual southern slope, at an average height of 320 feet above sea level.
The Later Prehistory of Malta
Authors: Trump D. H.
Published: February 2015

For many years down to 1953, our knowledge of Maltese prehistory could be summed up succinctly if rather unkindly in the phrase—‘Neolithic 3,000 B.C., Bronze Age 2,000, Punic 1,000.’ In that year, J. D. Evans's researches were published in these Proceedings. These at last provided a framework for his Period I, no longer called ‘Neolithic’ because the overlap of its later phases with metal-using cultures in nearby Sicily made it unlikely that metal was quite unknown. It was assigned a duration from the mid-second to mid-first millennium B.C. The absolute chronology will need revision in the light of the C-14 dates not then available and the correlations with the Sicilian development have met with some criticism. In any case, the isolation of the different phases was an enormous advance on which all further work in Malta will have to be based, even if, as at the time of writing begins to seem likely, certain amendments to the sequence become necessary. The later prehistoric Period II, lasting down to the 9th century when the Phoenician settlement opened Period III, was described in much less detail.

Enormous quantities of material of the first period, megalithic buildings as well as pottery and small finds, were available for study: the material remains of Period II were much more scanty, there being in effect at that time only a single site known of each of its three phases, which were correspondingly named after the Tarxien Cemetery, Borġ in-Nadur and Baħrija. In 1956, Evans published a more detailed study of the first of these phases bringing forward evidence for attributing to it the local dolmens. Phases II B and C were not ready for such treatment as the only excavations were at Borġ in-Nadur in 1881 (a sketch plan found in a Valletta photographer's shop twenty years later being the only record) and 1921-7 (disturbed levels overlying a Period I temple); and at Baħrija in 1909 (three days' work). These two phases therefore remained the most urgent problem in the prehistory of Malta. Accordingly, further excavation was undertaken on their type sites by the Museum Department of the Maltese Government in the spring and autumn of 1959.
Perspectives in Prehistory: Presidential Address
Authors: Clark J. G. D.
Published: February 2015

The Presidency of the Prehistoric Society to which you have done me the great honour of calling me, differs from that of some other societies in that, though the period of office is four years the President is only required to deliver one Address. No doubt we owe this mercy to the fact that our customs have taken shape during an age, which it would be tempting providence to call more humane, but which is at any rate less tolerant of some forms of avoidable boredom than some previous ones. Yet even in these less rigorous times I suppose we should feel uneasy if we allowed our Presidents, or ourselves, to escape scot free: one year in four we must undergo the rite and trust that in some obscure way it will help us to avoid the evil eye and ensure at the cost of an hour's suffering a further spell of prosperity and well-being for the Society.
Excavations at a Mesolithic Site at Downton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire
Authors: Higgs Eric
Published: February 2015

The investigations described in the present report owe a main part of their interest to the fact that they help to fill a gap in the prehistory of Wessex, a region which though ranking as the richest in Britain for traces of the later prehistoric cultures based on farming, has hitherto been markedly deficient in evidence for mesolithic settlement. Their other claim to interest is the addition they have made to our very scanty evidence for artificial shelters associated with mesolithic communities in Britain.
Report on the First Season's Fieldwork on British Upper Palaeolithic Cave Deposits
Authors: McBurney C. B. M.
Published: February 2015

During the Easter and Summer of 1958 a programme of investigations into British Upper Palaeolithic cave deposits was initiated on behalf of the Prehistoric Society, with the aid of a grant from the Research Fund. The work was further supported by the Crowther Beynon Fund of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Cambridge. Labour in the field was provided by students in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University, with notable assistance from several members of the Society in different areas.

The prime objectives of the work, which is still in progress, are to define more precisely the character of the different stages in the British Upper Palaeolithic, and to study them against their chronological and environmental background. In this way it is hoped to throw light on wider problems of the relation of British finds to the rapidly emerging picture of the Late Glacial hunting communities of Central Europe and the Low Countries.
Close ny chollagh: an Iron Age fort at Scarlett, Isle of Man
Authors: Gelling Peter S. , Potts W.
Published: February 2015

Close ny chollagh lies on the southern coast of the Isle of Man (fig. 1), about one mile south-west of Castletown, and is one of the group of Manx fortified coastal sites. It is not on a promontory, having land adjacent to it on two of its four sides, but the deep gully to the south combines with an artificial ditch along the rest of the landward side to make it a position of some strength.

When it was chosen for excavation in 1953 it was thought that the Manx promontory forts belonged to the Viking Age, and Close ny chollagh did indeed have a mediaeval level in which the principal building was a long-house of Scandinavian type. There was also, however, an Iron Age level, separated by a sterile layer from the later one, clearly demonstrating for the first time an Iron Age origin for one of the Manx promontory forts. It is to this Iron Age phase in the history of the fort that the present report is devoted.
A Late Bronze Age Urnfield on Steyning Round Hill, Sussex
Authors: Burstow G. P.
Published: February 2015

In the autumn of 1949 when ploughing was taking place on a south-eastern spur of Steyning Round Hill (Map Ref. 51/166099), fig. 1, two schoolboys D. Atkinson and M. J. Manetta found the remains of nine Late Bronze Age urns with cremated bones just under the surface of the plough soil. They lay in a circular area roughly 30 feet in diameter covered with large flints. Most of these urns were wisely left in situ until the Steyning Grammar School Archaeological Society under the direction of the Headmaster, Mr J. Scragg, and Mr W. Gardiner, assisted by Messrs N. E. S. Norris, G. Mason, and the writer, members of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society, undertook a methodical exploration. Our grateful thanks should be recorded to the farmer, Capt J. T. Mackley, who permitted the excavation and to all who helped in the work and dealt with the finds, as well as to Mr D. C. Tutt for kindly drawing the plan and pottery.
Some Aspects of the Physiography of the Thames Valley in Relation to the Ice Age and Early Man
Authors: Wooldridge S. W.
Published: February 2015

The physiographic approach to the problems of Pleistocene chronology has often been under-rated and sometimes completely ignored.

It will be well to begin this paper with a quite general statement of the basis on which this approach depends. In simplest terms it rests on the fact that the deposits with which we are concerned and to which it is sought to apply the method of palaeontological or archaeological dating were all accumulated on land-surfaces. These surfaces are themselves a proper subject of study by geomorphologists. The deposits are an integral part of the developing surface of the land. Any conclusions concerning their age and origin must be consistent with the general physiographic sequence. Physiographic considerations do not in themselves provide a very close or detailed chronology, but their indications are evidently worthy of consideration in any general purview of the difficult chronological problems concerned. Your ‘geo-chronologist’ needs to be, to this extent, a geomorphologist, as well as a palaeontologist or typologist. River-gravels and glacial ‘Deckenschotter’ mark, in general, old valley-floors and the movement of ice, in part at least, is controlled by the form of the underlying surface, subject to the evident fact that ice can, in some circumstances, move uphill.
Megalithic Art in the North-west of Britain: The Calderstones, Liverpool
Authors: Forde-Johnston J. L.
Published: February 2015

The recent discovery of decorated stones in the cruciform Passage Grave of Barclodiad y Gawres, in Anglesey, has made a notable addition to the volume of megalithic mural art known in Britain. The examples of such art described in the present paper increase the number still further. In his discussion of the chamber tombs of England and Wales, Daniel mentions the Calderstones as a possible former burial chamber. At that time (1950), the six Calderstones were arranged in a circle and stood in a small enclosure outside the Menlove Avenue entrance to Calderstones Park, Liverpool (fig. 1). This arrangement was, however, comparatively recent; the original monument was destroyed early in the nineteenth century. The markings were first published in 1864. In 1883, J. R. Allen made measured drawings of the stones, showing the disposition of all the markings known at the time. The same drawings were used by Stewart-Brown in 1911. Allen's drawings recorded only those portions of the stones above ground; examination of the areas then below ground level has revealed a number of new markings.
A Maglemosian Site at Brandesburton, Holderness, Yorkshire
Authors: Clark J. G. D. , Godwin H.
Published: February 2015

The object of this article is to record the discovery of a group of Maglemosian spearheads from Brandesburton and of a single specimen from the foreshore at Hornsea, both in the Holderness region of East Yorkshire; to describe the new finds in detail and to compare them with those previously known from eastern England; and to record (Part II) the results of a palaeoecological investigation of the immediate area of the Brandesburton discovery. The opportunity has been taken to examine and describe afresh all previously known specimens of closely similar type from England, each of which has been redrawn from three aspects and details of which have been photographed to illustrate the technique of manufacture.
The ‘Dolmens’ of Malta and the Origins of the Tarxien Cemetery Culture
Authors: Evans John D.
Published: February 2015

The material from the cremation cemetery which was found by Sir T. Zammit in 1915 stratified above the earlier remains in the Tarxien temples raises some of the most fascinating and intricate problems in the whole of Maltese prehistory. Who were these bizarre people, whence did they come to Malta and at what date ? The excavator, basing himself on the ‘Copper Age’ appearance of the culture and the various parallels with early Trojan, Cycladic and Cypriote materials to be observed in it, suggested that their arrival in Malta should be placed somewhere about 2000 B.C. and that they had probably come from the East. Zammit's parallels were, as I hope to show here, basically correct as far as they went, but his chronological inference was invalid because he did not allow sufficient time for the relatively slow cultural movements which brought material of this type from the Eastern to the Central Mediterranean. This was largely due to a failure to trace the intermediate steps in detail, a failure which has not subsequently been made good by any other student. Professor Childe has compared the metal types of the Tarxien Cemetery with Danubian and Sardinian ones, and the two-storied urns with Italian Iron Age types, but admitted that at that time the date of the culture might by reasonably placed anywhere between about 1800 and 800 B.C. The dating question is of great importance, since, if the Tarxien Cemetery can be confidently dated to some period in the second millennium B.C., it provides us with the first known examples of inurned cremation in the Western Mediterranean.
Bronze Cut-and-Thrust swords in the Eastern Mediterranean
Authors: Catling H. W.
Published: February 2015

The recent discovery in the reserve collection of the Cyprus Museum of a bronze cut-and-thrust sword of the form well known as Naue Type II provides an opportunity for a fresh consideration of the significance of the appearance of this weapon type in the Eastern Mediterranean during what, in that area, were the closing stages of the Late Bronze Age.

This paper begins with a detailed account of the sword in the Cyprus Museum both on its own account and as an illustration of the class as a whole. Then follows a catalogue, illustrated by the distribution map (fig. 1), of the known examples from the Eastern Mediterranean, in which emphasis is laid as far as possible on the dating evidence for individual examples. Finally, a general summary is attempted of what is known about their origin and some discussion is offered on their general implications.
Some early pottery of Samos, Kalimnos and Chios
Authors: Furness Audrey
Published: February 2015

It is generally recognized that the neolithic arts, and prominent among them, the art of making pottery, spread from a Mesopotamian or Syrian centre westwards into Anatolia, the Aegean and so to the Danube: but in the present light of knowledge it is far from easy to demonstrate this process by means of comparisons of the earliest known pottery in each area. In particular the immediate origins of the Greek neolithic wares are obscure; and while they have good parallels in the Balkans, geographical considerations lead one to suppose that the Balkan cultures were derivatives of, rather than ancestral to, cultures of, for example, the North Aegean sea-board. In these circumstances, links between neolithic Macedonia and sites further east are of special interest. In this paper it is hoped to show, through a detailed comparative study of material from Samos, Kalimnos and Chios, that there existed in these East Aegean Islands a culture related to the earliest civilizations of Troy and Thermi (fig. 1), but which also exhibits parallels to Heurtley's ‘Late Neolithic’ material in Macedonia.

The pottery from the lowest levels of Poliokhni in Lemnos almost certainly belongs to the series now to be described. The site, excavated throughout many seasons by the Italians, revealed three or more distinct strata beneath a level corresponding with early Troy I; but there are not many notices of it available and no illustrations or photographs. The recent publication by Brea in these Proceedings gives few details of the relevant levels.