bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Typology & Origins of Beakers in Wales
Authors: Griffiths W. E.
Published: February 2015

The recent publication by Dr H. N. Savory of a corpus of beakers found in Wales enables us, for the first time as far as that part of Britain is concerned, to draw conclusions about the beaker cultures based on a considerable body of evidence from an area forming a geographical unit within the Highland Zone. In his discussion of this, Savory has raised general questions of considerable interest with regard to the origins and development of the British beaker cultures, and in particular to the derivation and spread of the A-beaker culture. The purpose of the present paper is to re-examine this evidence and to supplement it with the evidence from beaker graves in Wales (tabulated in Appendix I), including burials of beaker type not actually accompanied by pottery (Appendix II). The conclusions reached differ in some respects from those of Savory.

The belief formerly held that Wales is poor in beakers is no longer tenable. The precise number is of course uncertain since the sherds from sandhill sites cannot be allocated to an exact number of vessels, but it seems clear that at least 64 separate beakers must be represented, and perhaps fragments of an additional number whose total is unknown. Not all of these survive in their entirety: only about half have been preserved either intact or sufficiently complete for their shapes and the main outlines of their decoration to be ascertained and all these are illustrated in figs. 1–7; but even the unrestorable fragments preserve elements of decoration and can tell us much about the vessels to which they originally belonged.
Early Metallurgy of Copper In Ireland and Britain
Authors: Coghlan H. H. , Case Humphrey
Published: February 2015

This paper arises from the work of the Ancient Mining and Metallurgy Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute, of which Committee the authors are Chairman and Deputy-Chairman respectively.

The method of research has been to obtain drillings from the uncorroded metal of typical Early Bronze Age implements, for analysis in research laboratories. Ninety-eight analyses are published below in Tables I–III (pp. 106–21). They are of 51 halberds (fig. 1), 39 axes of various types and 7 knives or daggers of Beaker Culture type. The halberds are classified according to Ó Ríordáin; and certain of the axes according to Raftery; broad and thick-butted (fig. 2, 41–2) referred to below as ‘thick-butted’; narrow and thin-butted (fig. 2, 23) referred to below as ‘thin-butted’; other types of axe are bevelled (fig. 2, 25), similar to the thin-butted, but generally squatter, with edges bevelled; and flanged (fig. 2, 95), the thin-butted type with flanged edges. Certain thin-butted or flanged axes are decorated and these are classified I (fig. 2, 85) or III according to the system of Megaw and Hardy; some axes cannot be classified, being unfinished; a few are anomalous wafer-like forms.
Excavation of a Barrow near the Hardy Monument, Black Down, Portesham, Dorset
Authors: Thompson M. W. , Ashbee P. , Dimbleby G. W.
Published: February 2015

The barrow whose excavation is described below was situated about 770 feet above Ordnance Datum a hundred yards south of the Hardy Monument on Black Down Hill, Portesham, on the edge of a large gravel pit. In the winning of gravel during the war the face of the pit had been worked round the barrow on both sides destroying the southern half of the ditch and part of the south side of the mound. As the mound was slowly falling into the gravel pit, it was decided by the Ministry of Works to excavate the barrow before further deterioration took place. The first-mentioned author undertook the supervision of this work for the Ministry in April and May, 1955, with a further fortnight in October of the same year, with the kind permission of the owner, Mrs H. Tuke.
Late Bronze Age Settlement on Itford Hill, Sussex
Authors: Burstow G. P. , Holleyman G. A. , Helbaek Hans
Published: February 2015

In the years between the two World Wars considerable research was done by Sussex archaeologists on the Late Bronze Age settlements of the South Downs (figs, 1 and 30). Several habitation sites were partly excavated, notably Park Brow near Worthing by Mr Garnet R. Wolseley in 1924, New Barn Down, Harrow Hill near Worthing by Dr E. Cecil Curwen in 1933, and Plumpton Plain, near Brighton, by Dr E. Cecil Curwen and Mr G. A. Holleyman in 1934, and an analysis of the pottery from these sites by Professor C. Hawkes has provided a typological and chronological basis for subsequent research.

After World War II the authors, inspired by the work of Dr J. F. S. Stone on the Deverel-Rimbury Settlement on Thorny Down and of Dr G. Bersu at Little Woodbury, decided to strip completely a small group of earthworks of probable Late Bronze Age date on Itford Hill near Lewes. In the spring of 1949 the site, together with the adjacent linear earthwork and group of lynchets, was surveyed by Mr E. W. Holden and Mr G. A. Holleyman. Excavations were carried out for each of five seasons (1949–1953) by means of volunteers and with the financial backing of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society.
The Fogou of Lower Boscaswell, Cornwall
Authors: Clark E. V. , Ford E. B. , Thomas C.
Published: February 2015

This fogou was known to antiquaries as early as 1842. In that year Buller refers to it as ‘one of those subterrain caverns situated in a small garden’, and as ‘one of those (fogous) which have never been inspected, so little interesting, no one, I suppose, thought it worth the trouble and expense of moving a mass of stones with which this entrance was enclosed, there being no prospect of discovering anything to justify the curiosity of him who undertakes the work’. The site, about half a mile from the northern coast of Cornwall, lies below the hamlet of Boscaswell, half a mile from the village of Pendeen, which consists of some cottages and many walled enclosures, large and small. One of these, that referred to by Buller as ‘a small garden’, oval in shape, adjoins the fogou at its eastern end. It forms part of a complex which contains a fogou-passage running from west to east, a creep, and a section now roofless extending into the enclosure. The latter undoubtedly perpetuates the site of a courtyard house into which the fogou originally opened.
Notes on some distinctive types of bronzes from Populonia, Etruria
Authors: Maxwell-Hyslop K. R.
Published: February 2015

The weapons from Populonia and Vetulonia have been the subject of an admirable study by Signora Tallochini and I am most grateful for her help when I was working in the Archæological Museum at Florence, where I was afforded every facility for studying the bronzes from these sites.

Tomb 7 at Piano delle Granate, Populonia, an inhumation ‘fossa’ grave contained the bronze dagger (fig. 1, no. 1), a fibula with slightly thickened round bow, a bronze ring, fragments of bronze nails and bronze hooks, and fragmentary remains of the bows and pins of fibulas. There was no pottery. The description and contents of the tomb are published in Notizie degli Scavi, 1917, p.76 and also in A. Minto, Populonia: la Necropoli arcaica, Florence, 1922, p. 64. This tomb was one of a group of ‘fossa graves’ excavated in 1915 and situated close to the seashore on the flat area known as Piano delle Granate. When I visited Populonia in 1953 it was still possible to locate the tholos tombs and the fossa graves, which, with many cremation burials, were found all over this area, in spite of the thickness of the ‘macchia’ often entirely covering the tombs. An examination of the relative position of the chamber tombs and fossa graves certainly confirmed Minto's conclusion based on a study of the contents of the three different kinds of burials, that the cremation, fossa and some of the earliest type of chamber tombs must all have been used contemporaneously. This group of tombs when excavated also yielded the series of stilted fibulas and the fibula ‘a serpegiante’ (fig. 2).
Borodino, Seima and their Contemporaries: Key Sites for the Bronze Age Chronology of Eastern Europe
Authors: Gimbutas Marija
Published: February 2015

The hoard from Borodino, north-west of the Black Sea, and the cemetery of Seima in central Russia are the best known names in the literature dealing with the Bronze Age of eastern Europe. On the alleged dates of Borodino and Seima the whole structure of the Bronze Age chronology of Russia and even Siberia is built.

Tallgren in his Pontide Préscythique (1926) and in his earlier publications dated the Borodino and Seima finds to the period from 1300–1100 B.C. This date was used by many other archæologists. Tallgren based his views on analogies between Borodino and Koban axes (Tallgren 1926, 140) which actually do not exist. Koban axes are different; they belong to the Koban culture of the early Iron Age in the central Caucasus around the end of the second millennium B.C. The Borodino hoard is definitely earlier than the Koban culture. Another indication of a more or less absolute date of the Borodino hoard is the similarity of the ornamental motifs executed on the Borodino pin with those on the gold buttons from Shaft-Graves Nos. IV and V of Mycenæ. This relationship was already indicated by Spitsyn (1916).
Note on a Micoquian Tool from a Raised Beach in Morbihan
Authors: Breuil Henri
Published: February 2015

During the years between 1932–40 I went many times to Carnac (Morbihan) to visit megaliths in that neighbourhood and copy the decorations on them. I was astonished to note, amongst the chipped stone tools in the museum there, a very small yellowish flint bifaced implement picked up by Zachary Le Rouzic on the island of Téviec, noted for the excavations and magnificent Mesolithic discoveries of M. and Mme. St.-Just Péquart. This, of course, was not a tool from their Mesolithic site, but was a stray find from the island, where it was found by Le Rouzic in the gravelly section near the neck of land joining the Quiberon peninsula. Téviec consists of two islands divided by a narrow channel of sea. The section is opposite to the mainland, on the bigger island forming the edge of this channel. It shows threé beds of sea-worn pebbles of medium and small size; the upper two beds are separated by red sand. In the uppermost bed, the pebbles have taken a vertical position, similar to those in the upper part (the so-called head) of the lower raised beaches of the English Channel. This phenomenon is due to the cryoturbation during a glacial period. The upper bed is pre-Würmian, though not necessarily very much so, for it suffered through cryoturbation during the Würmian stage. The angles of the stone implement are sharp, i.e. it had not been rolled—and it came therefore from the red sandy bed, that is from a late stage in the Riss-Würm, when the sea slightly retreated between two periods of slight rises in sea-level. This implement thus has some importance owing to its geological position. I visited the site with Zachary Le Rouzic on the ioth October, 1936, but I found no sign of worked stone tools in any of these levels, which are very slightly above the modern sea-level.
A Microlithic Industry from the Cambridgeshire Fenland and other Industries of Sauveterrian Affinities from Britain
Authors: Clark J. G. D.
Published: February 2015

One of Professor Childe's leading characteristics as a prehistorian has been the range and depth of his interests and sympathies. In the present contribution it is desired to acknowledge the interest he has shown in the mesolithic background to the neolithic colonization of Europe and his uncommon awareness of the relevance of Quaternary Research to the problems of prehistory.

The opportunity will be taken to reconsider, in the light of a more abundant material and of recent advances in knowledge, the microlithic industry of Late Boreal age, first brought to light in the Cambridgeshire fens during the excavations carried out on behalf of the Fenland Research Committee during 1932 and 1934 at Plantation and Peacock's Farms, Shippea Hill. The object of these excavations was primarily stratigraphical and only a comparatively small quantity of mesolithic material was obtained at the time. Since then the opportunity has been taken at favourable seasons to collect on the surface of the sand ridges, and that on Peacock's Farm has yielded a sufficient quantity to give a reliable indication of the cultural affinities of the industry. Further, the researches of our French colleagues have thrown fresh light on the whole question of Post-Azilian microlithic industries and the new discoveries have led to changes of nomenclature directly relevant to the classification of the Peacock's Farm industry. Again, the zoning of British Postglacial deposits by means of pollen-analysis undertaken by Dr Godwin and his colleagues has made it possible to fix the chronological context of the Peacock's Farm assemblage and this in turn has made feasible a new approach to the history of the microlithic industries of Britain. Thanks to Dr Godwin's kind co-operation, it is now possible to publish a re-drawn pollen-diagram, illustrating the stratigraphy of the Lower Peat bed at Peacock's Farm and showing the relationship of the mesolithic occupation both to the forest-history zones and to the neolithic occupation of the sand-ridge on which prehistoric man settled from time to time.
Fire as Palaeolithic Tool and Weapon
Authors: Oakley Kenneth
Published: February 2015

A number of recent discoveries have focused attention on questions relating to when and for what primary purposes fire was first used.

The claim made in 1947 by Professor Raymond Dart (1952) that Australopithecus was a fire-user has been re-examined, but without confirmation. Briefly the relevant evidence is as follows.

In 1925 Professor Dart received pieces of bone breccia which had been collected by Mr W. I. Eitzman at limeworks in the Makapansgat Valley near Potgietersrust in the Central Transvaal. As some of the fragments of bone had a charred appearance Professor Dart suspected that the breccia was a cave deposit containing hearths of early man. He submitted some of the blackened fragments for analysis to Dr J. Moir of the Government Chemical Laboratory, and to Dr F. W. Fox of the South African Institute for Medical Research. They found that when the material was dissolved in acid there was a residue of black particles which could be transformed into carbon dioxide. This was proof that the blackness of the bone fragments was due to free carbon, and in the circumstances it was naturally held to indicate that the bones were charred (Dart, 1925).
The Micro-burin in the Spanish Levant
Authors: Pericot Luis
Published: February 2015

Since the studies of Vignard brought the micro-burin, the presence of which Siret had already noted at El Garcel, into fashion as an Upper Palaeolithic tool of unknown purpose, there has been much discussion of this tiny and enigmatic object.

I confess that I paid little attention to it when I visited the collection of M. Vignard in Paris 25 years ago. He showed me his micro-burins from the Sebilian and, after hearing my account of the finds at Parpalló, predicted that I should find examples among the flints from that site, which I was then in process of classifying. And, in fact, a few months later I found the first example, a very fine and characteristic one, in the third Magdalenian level. Other examples followed from similar levels, and later, when we were classifying the flint from the Solutrean levels, we discovered to our surprise that they were also present there. Since then they have continued to appear on other sites, so that it seems worth while to summarize here the data which we now possess about them.

Let us look at the situation in the deposits which I have studied.

In the cave of Parpalló they are found in appreciable numbers at two points in the typological evolution. From a depth of 5.25 m. upwards, that is during the phases which I have named Upper Solutrean and final Solutreo-gravettian, they are relatively abundant (about 50 examples).
Coarse Beakers with ‘Short-Wave Moulding’
Authors: Becker C. J.
Published: February 2015

Coarse ‘dwelling-place’ pottery is usually of little interest in the study of Neolithic cultures, for which reason it rarely receives the same attention as forms of ware that is of better workmanship, technically and artistically. Still, within the category ‘coarse pottery’ there may be details of no little significance to comparative archaeology. As an example, I propose in the following to discuss briefly a single type of vessel within European Corded-Ware or Battle-Axe cultures, starting out from some finds in Denmark where the type has not previously attracted attention.

A few years ago an examination was made of a Stone Age settlement at Selbjerg, on the islet of Øland in the Limfiord, Northern Jutland; traces were observed of several Neolithic settlements in conjunction with a regular culture deposit and shell mound. One important discovery was pottery of the South Scandinavian Pitted-Ware Culture. Higher up in the deposit were fragments of pottery which were determinable as of Late Single Grave Culture. At least eight vessels were represented, including a beaker of flower-pot type and one or two large, coarse vessels. It has been possible to reconstruct the form of the best preserved specimen (fig. 1). It had measured about 35 cm. in height and presumably had a flat base (some bottom sherds may perhaps be parts of this vessel, but they have been omitted from the drawing). As the sole form of decoration it has an applied clay moulding just below the rim. Both rim and moulding are formed into waves by finger pressure.

In better condition is a vessel (pl. III, a) recently excavated at Ravnholt, in the parish of Gesten, South Jutland. The upper part could be pieced together completely and the bottom was in such a state of preservation that it could be reconstructed; only a few sherds of the intermediate wall could not be fitted in. In all probability the vessel was about 40 cm. in height with a diameter of 35 cm. across the rim. It is relatively thin walled, the material is coarse and gravelly; both inside and out the surface presents a curious striation, as if the wet clay prior to kilning had been smoothed off with a whisk of straw or something else that was rough. On its outer side the edge of the rim is drawn out into small waves (pl. III, c), and about 2 cm. below it is a wavy moulding formed by finger pressure from one side. Otherwise the vessel is quite plain.
The Earliest Village Materials of Syro-Cilicia
Authors: Braidwood Robert J.
Published: February 2015

In 1937, in a series in honour of Sir John Myres, Professor Childe wrote an essay entitled ‘Neolithic Black Ware in Greece and on the Danube’. Childe made two major points. He clarified his position that the major direction of diffusion in the spread of the village-farming community was from south-western Asia towards Europe. Secondly, he considered the then available south-west Asiatic evidence—mainly ceramic—which seemed antecedent to similar elements in Greece and subsequently on the Danube.

In this essay in Professor Childe's honour, I propose to bring his second consideration up to date, informally, and with main emphasis on the south-west Asiatic end. Weinberg has recently covered the ground from the Greek point of view with much greater perception than I could do.

It is a bit unfortunate, in relation to Childe's first point, that this essay cannot be postponed for a year or two. During the 1954–5 field season of the Iraq-Jarmo project, we secured a series of fifty-two radioactive carbon samples. Included are specimens from the Halaf levels of Arpachiyah and Tell Halaf itself and from the basal levels of Hassuna, Mersin, and Byblos, as well as further samples from Jarmo and from several of our test excavations. Professor Zeuner has samples in hand from early Jericho, Dr Milojčić has some from Otzaki-Magula, and there may well be other pertinent samples of which I am unaware. It does seem that presently, within the range of reliability of the radioactive carbon dating process, we shall know where we stand chronologically in somewhat more precise terms. Present indications are that the whole dating system, prehistoric, as well as early historic, customarily given for south-western Asia will be depressed. In the chronological study cited, Weinberg finds this tendency will make the equations with Greece all the more reasonable.

Childe's essay implies that the early dark-faced burnished ceramic of south-western Asia must be a manifestation of a discrete assemblage, but at the time he wrote, it was impossible to speak of anything but pottery. In hisGrundzüge … Kleinasiensin 1945, Kurt Bittel could do little more than suggest the antecedent rôle of the early Syro-Cilician dark-faced burnished ware to the general burnished sequence of Anatolia. Veronica Seton Williams gave further definition to the pottery and its distribution, as against Christian's rather amorphous ‘Saktschegözü- Stufe’, in her brief catalogue and map of the occurrences of the burnished ware. In 1952, my wife and I prepared a study in which we attempted to delineate what seemed to us to be the separate and distinct ‘essential’ assemblages of the earliest village range in south-western Asia.
Prehistoric Social Groups in North Norway
Authors: Gjessing Gutorm
Published: February 2015

‘They have accused the archaeologist of tatting endless taxonomic rosettes of the I same old ball of “material culture” and maintained that his findings are next to useless for the purpose of history and culture study. It seems that the archaeologists are becoming as Tolstoy once said of modern historians, like deaf men answering questions which no one has asked them. In their broader implications these accusations are all too true’ (Taylor, 1948, p. 95). Certainly this not too kind, ironical remark was explicitly aimed at archaeologists in the United States; yet it may, perhaps, be suspected that even some of their European colleagues feel somewhat uneasy on being confronted by such an unflattering mirror. One has, undoubtedly, the feeling that relatively few archaeologists in the West have ever really scrutinized critically what they and their field of study are ultimately aiming at, apart from the somewhat loose and undefined aim of ‘reconstructing the past’. Now, this ‘past’ obviously does not consist of ‘taxonomic rosettes’ for their own sake, nor of economic techniques only. There can be little doubt of the validity of V. Gordon Childe's remark that the cultures established by archaeology represent societies, and in other of his writings, most explicitly in his intriguing book, Social Evolution (Childe, 1951), he has laid down the foundations of a ‘socio-archaeology’.
‘Thuringian’ Amphorae
Authors: Sulimirski T.
Published: February 2015

Many branches of learning are concerned with the establishment of the earliest seats of the Indo-Europeans and with their ancient culture. An early book by Professor V. G. Childe was devoted to this theme, and these problems still hold an important position in his later works.

I have no intention of embarking here on a detailed study of the various questions involved in this theme. My main concern is a particular type of vessel, the so-called ‘Thuringian amphora’, characteristic of several groups of the Battle-Axe culture, a culture which is usually considered to be an archaeological equivalent of the early Aryans. I hope that the few comments submitted in this article will, to some extent, contribute to the settlement of the disagreements concerning the cradle of the Indo-Europeans and bring nearer their proper solution.
Research on the Hungarian Bronze Age since 1936 and the Bronze-Age Settlement at Békés-Várdomb
Authors: Banner J.
Published: February 2015

The state of current knowledge on the Bronze Age in Hungary, was summed up twenty years ago by Dr Francis Tompa, who had by then written several shorter studies on the subject, and had excavated a number of cemeteries and settlements. His summary defined the modern approach to the Bronze Age in Hungary though his conclusions have since been modified in detail by later explorers. How fruitful his work proved to be was shown by the interest of critics abroad and by the fact that research at home took a sudden upward swing.

A few years later Dr Paul Patay published a study in which he came to somewhat different conclusions on the chronology of the Early Bronze Age; he also gave a detailed account of the various cultures that must have shaped the course of the Bronze Age in Hungary and in this he was substantially in agreement with Dr Francis Tompa.

Dr Amelia Mozsolics dealt with chronological problems of the Bronze Age in Hungary, but had not yet reached satisfactory newer conclusions. Her paper was published only in Hungarian. She presented a useful summary of the history of her subject, and at the same time sharply criticized the views held by foreign and Hungarian experts on the Bronze Age.
The Technique of the Boyne Carvings
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: February 2015

The prudent contributor to a Festschrift will select some subject about which he thinks he knows as much as the professor who is to receive it. That is peculiarly difficult here because of the vast range of Professor Childe's knowledge, both in time and space, far exceeding the present contributor's. This Note is offered as a grateful tribute from one of the many who have been intellectually enriched by his writings and encouraged by his devotion to scholarship. It is little more than an amplification and criticism of the Abbé Breuil's classic Presidential Address to the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, delivered in 1934; but on the strength of observations made in August and September, 1955, I have come to different conclusions.

The Abbé Breuil detected five successive techniques, all of them found on the stones of the Boyne Tombs:

(1) Incised thin lines (pl. XIX, B).

(2) Picked grooves left rough (pl. XVIII).

(3, a) Picked grooves afterwards rubbed smooth; in this and the preceding group ‘it is invariably the line (groove) itself on which the pattern depends, which gives and is the design’.

(3, b) Picked areas which ‘only define the limits of the pattern, the surface, left in relief by the cutting down of the background, constituting the actual design’ (pl. xx, B).

(4) Rectilinear patterns where also the pattern is residual, consisting of raised ribs, forming triangles or lozenges, left standing by picking away the surrounding surface (pl. xx, A).
Contributions to a Study of the Belgae
Authors: Radford C. A. Ralegh
Published: February 2015

The Belgae have, in the last generation, played an increasingly important part in the archaeology of Britain in the pre-Roman Iron Age. In general the term has been confined to the two groups of invaders, who practised cremation and whose cemeteries have been traced over a wide area in the south-east and south of England. Beyond this area Belgic influence, in various forms, has been postulated in a number of districts. The Belgic origin of the invaders who practised cremation is not in doubt and it would be superfluous at this stage to argue the case once more. The nature of the Belgic influences traced beyond the area of the cremation cemeteries is more debatable, but the present essay is not intended to enter into that question. It is concerned with an earlier period and earlier invasions, which also have a right to be termed Belgic. The ultimate origin of the Continental Belgae will not be discussed, nor do the invasions considered necessarily cover all those settlements to which the term Belgic should be applied. As will be seen the traditional Irish accounts appear to demand a Belgic settlement in Britain at a date earlier than the oldest groups now identified. This is a question that can hardly be discussed to full advantage until a far wider conspectus of archaeological material is available both on the Continent and in these islands. In the meantime the question of a Belgic invasion of Britain in the Late Bronze Age is one that must remain open.
Excavations at the Mugharet Kebara, Mount Carmel, 1931: The Aurignacian Industries
Authors: Garrod Dorothy A. E.
Published: February 2015

The cave known as the Mugharet Kebara opens at the western foot of Mount Carmel, 13 km. to the south of the Wady el-Mughara, and 1½ km. south of the railway station of Zikhron Yaaqov. It faces north-west on the 60 m. contour line, at 2½ km. from the sea, from which it is separated by a strip of marshy land and a wider belt of sand dunes.

The first sounding on this site was made in 1927 by Dr M. Stekelis, who was unable to continue owing to lack of funds. In 1930, unaware that Dr Stekelis had already tested the cave, I went over from the Wady el-Mughara with Dr Theodore McCown and spent one day in digging a trial trench (Garrod 1932), which revealed the presence of a Natufian layer with an underlying level containing an industry then unfamiliar, but since described under the name Kebaran (Turville-Petre, 1932). At the bottom of the trench we found a number of typical Aurignacian implements. In the summer of 1931 Francis Turville-Petre and Mrs C. A. Baynes undertook a three months' season at Kebara on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and the American School of Prehistoric Research. During this time they camped with us at the Wady el-Mughara, so the two expeditions were in close touch and able to compare results throughout the campaign. The work at Kebara revealed a very rich Lower Natufian horizon (Layer B) with a thin underlying level (Layer C) containing the new Kebaran industry. This culture, which has proved to be fairly widespread in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, is Neuville's Upper Palaeolithic VI (Neuville, 1951). Turville-Petre published the material from Layers B and C in the year following the excavation (Turville-Petre, 1932), but the Aurignacian industries of Layers D and E which were dug to contact with an underlying Levalloiso-Mousterian, have for various reasons never been studied or described in print.
Excavation of a Neolithic Barrow on Whiteleaf Hill, Bucks
Authors: Childe V. G. , Smith Isobel
Published: February 2015

Sir Lindsay Scott carried out excavations on the barrow on Whiteleaf Hill, near Princes Risborough, Bucks., with meticulous care from 1934 till the outbreak of war in 1939 interrupted operations. After the war he had no opportunity to resume excavations beyond making a 2 ft. section across the ditch on the west, and he was not able to complete the work he had planned or to prepare the material for publication before his untimely death in 1952. He gave four short and explicitly provisional reports in P.P.S. 1935, p. 132; 1936, p. 312; 1937, p. 440, and in the Records of Bucks. 1941–6, p. 298, but insisted that ‘this description must be taken as entirely provisional.’ His papers comprised a master plan contoured at 6 inch intervals, and showing the grid over the excavated area, small detailed plans of individual features—post holes, pits, and the ‘peristalith trench’—and a series of sections taken across the whole excavated area at 2 ft. intervals on both X and Y axes, but no complete plan of the excavated area nor any detailed description of the observations made in the course of the excavation. The relics are, however, all numbered with three co-ordinates, so that the position of each can be exactly located on the plans and sections, and these, especially the Neolithic pottery, are of such exceptional importance that it is an obvious duty to attempt a provisional account of the results achieved, without waiting for the completion of the excavation.
The Agriculture of the British Early Iron Age as exemplified at Figheldean Down, Wiltshire
Authors: Applebaum Shimon
Published: February 2015

The pioneer study of seed and plant-finds from prehistoric and Roman sites in this country was made by Helbaek and Jessen in 1944, and it was with the assistance of their findings that the present paper was originally written. Subsequently Helbaek carried the same research further, publishing his results in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society for 1952. These new results have considerably modified our notions of the cereal crops grown in both the prehistoric and Roman periods in Britain, partly owing to the examination of hitherto unanalysed finds and partly to the accumulation of experience in identification, which made it possible to correct previous errors. Thus, it has now been established that Triticum vulgare (Breadwheat) and Triticum compactum (Clubwheat) are much rarer among prehistoric finds than previously thought; and many specimens previously identified as Emmer were found by Helbaek to be Spelt. These modifications have necessitated a reconsideration of the bases of the present paper, but seem to the writer to confirm its main thesis.
Soil Science and Archaeology with Illustrations from some British Bronze Age Monuments
Authors: Cornwall I. W.
Published: February 2015

Archaeologists of earlier generations were often interested exclusively in the artifacts of early man. We have now learned that the geological context in which they are found and the natural objects associated with them are often as important as the artifacts themselves for the reconstruction of the way of life of ancient peoples. The soil itself, in which archaeological objects occur, can, in certain cases, tell us something about the way in which it has been formed and therefore about the environment and habits of the people concerned.

This paper is a small selection from our ‘case-book’ in the Department of Environmental Archaeology of the London University Institute of Archaeology, designed to illustrate some of our methods and giving results from a number of Bronze Age monuments which have been studied during the last few years.

This particular material was chosen because the problems presented by the individual sites are linked, in many cases, by a constantly recurring question as to how the climate of the British Bronze Age differed from that of the present day. The amount of soil evidence now accumulating does point, on the whole, to a Bronze-Age climate characteristically different.
The Gold Ornament from Mold, Flintshire North Wales
Authors: Powell T. G. E.
Published: February 2015

The ornamental piece of sheet-gold found near Mold, in the county of Flint, North Wales (fig. 1), is one of the largest and heaviest pieces of prehistoric gold-work so far discovered in Europe, and it has been one of the principal treasures in the collection of prehistoric antiquities in the British Museum for more than a century.

Although the object has been frequently illustrated, no detailed study has been made of it since the original publication of its finding which appeared inArchaeologiain 1836.

In the present study an endeavour is made to restate the circumstances of the discovery, to offer a detailed description of the object itself, and to put forward certain views as to its age and use.

The gold ornament was discovered in 1833 during the destruction of a mound of stones and earth situated in a field named Bryn yr Ellyllon which lay about half a mile E.S.E. of the parish church of Mold, Flintshire. There are three early accounts of the discovery, but none of them are at first hand. They have been brought together by Canon Ellis Davies, and the fullest and most objective of these accounts is the second reproduced by him. In this, which was by the then Vicar of Mold, Rev. C. B. Clough, a fairly clear idea is obtained of the circumstances of the discovery, but it must be emphasized that the actual opening of the grave was not witnessed by him or by any of the other writers. The following reconstruction of, and commentary on, the discovery is, however, mainly based on the Vicar's account.
The Early Iron Age Site at Micklemoor Hill West Harling, Norfolk, and its Pottery
Authors: Clark J. G. D. , Fell C. I. , Burkitt M. C.
Published: February 2015

The Iron Age settlement on Micklemoor Hill, West Harling, (Nat. Grid 62/975857) was discovered by Mr H. Apling while prospecting for Bronze Age cooking-places on the course of the river above Thetford during 1932. The site is a prominent hill of glacial gravel approximately 300 yards long and 150 yards wide, rising some 20 feet above the level of the surrounding marsh and rough grazing pasture and bounded to the north at a distance of between 200 and 600 feet by the river Thet. Its most prominent feature at the present day is a mound covering a brick-lined ice-house of 19th century construction and surrounded by a group of conifers. The prehistoric features discovered by Apling comprised two enclosures, an ‘Eastern Camp’ (our Site II), consisting of a low broad bank with external ditch and well defined opening on the west, and a larger ‘Western Camp’ (our Site III) of which only slight traces of a ditch were visible.

The excavations carried out by Apling in 1932 were mainly directed to the eastern enclosure: in addition to a number of trial holes he dug two-foot trenches across the site from two directions. No pottery was found in the interior, but the ditch which he located outside the bank yielded pottery, bones and flints. Accordingly a length of some 20 yards of the ditch-filling was removed on the eastern side and from this a really substantial quantity of material was obtained.
The Earliest Culture History of the Northern Part of the European USSR: A Review Article
Authors: Gimbutas Marija
Published: February 2015

Two contributions of unusual value for our knowledge of the comb- and pit-marked pottery culture of North-eastern Europe have recently appeared in vols. 20 and 29 of the series Materialy i Issledovaniia po Arkheologii SSSR (Materials and Investigations on Archaeology of the USSR), published in Moscow in 1951 and 1952 by Akademiia Nauk SSSR. The English titles of the two volumes are:

(1) The Neolithic and Early Metal Age Sites in the Northern Part of the European USSR (1951, 173 pp., 82 illustrations), edited by M. E. Foss, which includes studies on ‘The Pile-dwelling Site on the Modlona River and other Sites in the Charozer Region of the Vologda District’ by A. J. Briusov, ‘The Neolithic and Early Metal Age Sites on the Northern Coast of Lake Onega’ by N. N. Gurina and ‘The Neolithic Sites on the Northern Coasts of the Kola Peninsula’ by N. N. Gurina.

(2) The Earliest History of the Northern Part of the European USSR (1952. 280 pp., 121 illustrations), by M. E. Foss, edited by A. J. Briusov.

The former publication, which includes a detailed report by Briusov on the sites in the Vologda region, dated by stratigraphic evidence and pollen analysis, and the well presented studies by Gurina on the culture in the Lake Onega region and on the Kola Peninsula in the extreme north, is both a prelude and a supplement to the latter which embraces the entire northern part of the USSR.
Bronze Swords in Northern Europe: a reconsideration of Sprockhoff's Griffzungenschwerter
Authors: Cowen J. D.
Published: February 2015

It is just over twenty years since Professor Ernst Sprockhoff published his classic study of bronze swords in Northern Europe, and a review of the situation as it presents itself today, surveyed from a point well outside the limits of the Nordic area, may not be out of place.

The ground covered in this fine work had already in part been traversed by Sophus Müller and Gustav Kossinna; but in the process it had become a field of battle where the bitterest partisan spirit had all too recently been displayed, and might all too easily have been re-aroused. It is not the least part of our debt to Sprockhoff that he refused to treat his material on controversial lines, and confined himself to a presentation so objective that it immediately became possible, for the first time for many years, once more to discuss the subject in a sane and cool manner. Thus, adding much that was new and solely his own, he set down in plain, precise terms the whole of the evidence relating to the history, development, and chronology of the flange-hilted bronze swords of the North.

Of this structure the main fabric, without any doubt, stands firm. The central theme, based on a large number of closed finds, and supported by an intimate knowledge of the material, need fear no criticism. Yet some aspects at least of the relations between the Nordic world and other parts of Europe call for re-examination, and the work of the past two decades enables some adjustments to be made. In fairness to Sprockhoff it should be stated quite clearly, at the outset, that the most important of these adjustments have been either made possible, or actually anticipated, by his own work in related fields since 1931.
The La Tène Art Style in British Early Iron Age Pottery
Authors: Grimes W. F.
Published: February 2015

It is a commonplace that of all the mobile art-forms of prehistoric times pottery is the least mobile and the most domestic. It would be wrong to assert categorically that never before the Roman period or the years immediately preceding it was pottery the subject of trade and transport; but the traffic was at least on a limited scale. Unlike objects of metal, therefore, which may wander far from their place of origin in the course of trade or other movement, pottery closely reflects in its distribution the relationship between culture and geography.

Pot-making, too, is a comparatively lowly, if an expressive, craft. In a wealthy community, or in a community with varying levels of wealth, pottery takes second place to metal or (where it exists) glass: usually, therefore, pottery is the borrower both of form and of ornament. And while with an inventive people the result may in due course be something new and significant in itself, in less fortunate circumstances—as for instance under the mass-production methods of Roman times—the potter's debt becomes a lifeless imitation of, or a negative development from, the forms and motifs of the superior materials.
Report on the Re-investigation of the Westley (Bury St. Edmunds) Skull Site
Authors: Baden-Powell D. F. W. , Oakley K. P. , Cornwall I. W. , Hoskins C. R.
Published: February 2015

Fossil human remains which can be attributed to the Lower Palaeolithic period are so rare that it is important to investigate thoroughly all finds for which such claims have been made. Almost all the human skulls discovered in Pleistocene deposits in Britain have proved to belong to Homo sapiens. Where the deposits are older than Upper Palaeolithic it is more than likely that such remains are not contemporaneous but represent later intrusive burials. However, the confirmation of the Lower Palaeolithic (Acheulian) age of the Swanscombe skull which, in so far as it is preserved, is not distinguishable from Homo sapiens, has revived interest in other human remains of modern type which have been reported from early deposits but laid aside as being of doubtful antiquity. Unfortunately some of these finds are now lost (e.g. Foxhall jaw). Outstanding among those which have survived are the Galley Hill skeleton and the Bury St. Edmunds skull. By application of the fluorine-dating method the former has been shown to be a comparatively recent intrusive burial (Oakley and Montagu, 1949).

The human skull fragment found near Bury St. Edmunds in 1882 has been preserved in the Moyse's Hall Museum at Bury, and is especially worthy of re-investigation as it Was claimed to be in a fossilized condition, and to have been found in a deposit which contained remains of mammoth and Acheulian implements. A Committee under Section H of the British Association was appointed in 1949 to re-investigate this discovery, and to try to find out (1) the geological age of the deposit from which the skull had been reported and (2) whether the skull was contemporaneous with this deposit. The work and conclusions of this Committee are described in the present report.
Beitzsch and Knossos
Authors: Hencken Hugh
Published: February 2015

The recent discovery at Knossos of a bronze bell helmet (pl. 1; also de Jong and Hood, 1952, and Hood, 1952) of Late Minoan 11, usually dated 1450–1400 B.C., focuses attention on the series of similar helmets that have long been known from Europe. The helmet from Knossos is topped with a knob within which is a tube that penetrates the inside of the helmet. This must have been for a plume. The knob is held in place by seven small rivets. There are also a pair of cheek pieces of a more elaborately curved profile than the plainer ones from Ialysos of Late Helladic III (Lorimer, 1950, 211, pl. XIII), Weissig in Saxony of Bronze Age III b (Kleemann, 1941–2) or the pair belonging to the Pass Lueg helmet from Austria of Hallstatt A or B (Merhart, 1941, 30, fig. 8, 3). Around the rim of the Knossos helmet and around the cheek pieces are rows of small evenly-spaced holes. Inspection of the Ialysos cheek piece shows that it had a similar row of holes, though the examples from Weissig and Pass Lueg did not. Evidently these rows of holes were to attach a padded lining as well as to fasten the cheek pieces to the helmet and to the chin strap. No neck guard was found, though such were in use in the Aegean on boar tusk and other kinds of helmets of this shape (Lorimer, 1950, figs. 16, 22). I am greatly obliged to Mr Sinclair Hood of the British School in Athens for so generously giving me photographs and full information on this important find.
Triskeles, Palmettes and Horse-Brooches
Authors: Fox Cyril
Published: February 2015

This paper deals with an unusual example of the triskele and the significance of the pattern in general; and with the intrusion of scrolls and palmettes which transformed it. One of the later patterns thus evolved, decorates a horse-brooch; and the paper ends with a discussion of the function of these newly-identified objects.
A New Centre of Stone Axe Dispersal on the Welsh Border
Authors: Shotton F. W. , Chitty L. F. , Seaby W. A.
Published: February 2015

The Council for British Archaeology put as one of its objectives the examination of stone axes by petrological methods, with a view to their more exact identification and their placing into groups of common origin. Of the various regional sub-committees set in being only the South-west Museums Group, which initiated this type of research, has published any results of its findings, its final report being published in this volume of the Proceedings, pp. 99–158 (1, 2). The West Midlands Sub-Committee (C.B.A. Group 8) has gone a long way towards its objective in the counties of Shropshire, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick and the southern half of Staffordshire, and it should not be long before a complete account of its results can be published. The most important outcome of the work, however, has been the recognition of a rock type which, as the material for axe-hammers, is characteristically West Midland in its concentrated distribution and the conclusion that the factory for these implements lay just south of Corndon Hill in Montgomeryshire, just across the Shropshire border. As this discovery has already been announced by one of us (4) to Section H of the British Association in 1950, it would seem to be advisable to publish the evidence for this part of our work without waiting for the full account of the complete regional survey.
Less Familiar Aspects of Primitive Trade
Authors: Hutton J. H.
Published: February 2015

The point is sometimes made that in primitive trade psychological satisfaction is obtained rather by the exchange of gifts and enhancement of prestige than by any economic advantage to the traders. It is possible, I think, to lay too much stress on this aspect of primitive trade at the expense of the more prosaic motive of material economic gain, though I do not, of course, wish to belittle the non-economic factors involved and indeed propose to draw attention to some of them. Naturally I shall take instances from my own experience, and these are mostly in areas with regular land contacts where the non-economic aspects of trade are likely to be less prominent than they are in self-contained and self-sufficient island communities. At the same time the first case I wish to examine is one of the inter-island trade in the Nicobar Islands.