bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Birch as a Source of Raw Material during the Stone Age
Authors: Vogt Emil 
Published: February 2015

It is hardly necessary to point out that birch was one of the common trees of the younger stone age and that its wood was much used for technical purposes. This must have been even more the case in mesolithic times and during the upper palaeolithic period, when during a certain period this tree dominated the landscape to such an extent that we can even speak of a Birch period.The use of birch wood soon made men acquainted with its own special properties. If at present we are first able to demonstrate a knowledge of these for the neolithic and later stages, it is not to be doubted that this merely represented a continuation of a mesolithic accomplishment. There are two properties of birch which are particularly well exhibited by the pile-dwelling finds. The bark can be detached from the tree in thin layers, is extraordinarily easily worked and can be sewn like fine leather. But, secondly, it is possible to obtain a pitch from the bark, which after correct preparation makes a particularly useful glue. The pitch occurs especially in the bark and allows rolled up pieces of this to burn with a clear flame. These so-called birch-bark tapers, which even in modern times played an important part in illumination, are found not uncommonly in the Swiss pile-dwellings.
A Late Bronze Age Hoard from Blackrock in Sussex and its Significance
Authors: Piggott C. M. 
Published: February 2015

The hoard of bronzes from Blackrock near Brighton, was first published in 1916, and later received treatment by Curwen in his Archaeology of Sussex. The obviously foreign elements in the hoard have not been clearly recognised in the past, and in view of their significance it is desirable that a more detailed description of the finds should be put on record, and that some attempt should be made to fit them into the existing pattern of the Late Bronze Age of the British Isles.The following objects (all of bronze) were found in the hoard:I. Three ‘Sussex Loops.’II. Two plain armlets.III. Eight unlooped palstaves.IV. Rapier blade with three rivet holes.V. Dirk handle.VI. Decorated spiral finger-ring.Unfortunately the exact locality and conditions of finding cannot be determined with certainty, but there is good reason to believe that the discovery was made at Blackrock, about two miles to the east of Brighton. There is little doubt that all these objects were found together, and that they comprised the whole hoard.Of these objects, the Sussex loops can be fairly closely dated in the British Bronze Age, and the bronze dirk handle and decorated spiral finger-ring are imports from Schleswig-Holstein or North Germany. The origin of the other objects is less certain, but it is immediately clear that a study of this hoard may be of value in cross-dating between our own Bronze Age and that of the Northern Countries.First we will discuss the ‘Sussex Loops’ and their chronological position in the British Isles.
Gallo-British Colonies the Aisled Round-House Culture in the North
Authors: Scott Lindsay 
Published: February 2015

In a former paper, ‘The Problem of the Brochs,’ the writer sought to review the culture which appeared in the Western and Northern Islands and on the Northern Mainland in the 1st century B.C. and to clear away some preconceptions which seemed to hinder a realistic understanding of it. It was there suggested that a clue to the real nature of the culture might be found in a study of the ‘wheelhouse,’ a building which had not accumulated round itself those more romantic conceptions of 19th century archaeology, which made of every house a castle and of every mound a tomb; but was accepted for what it was, a dwelling of a working population. In the present paper this clue is followed with the aim of answering some of the questions which the former paper merely posed. A firm point of departure is sought in a farmstead excavated by the writer in Uist, and thence the inquiry is followed through the abundant, if unequally valuable, reports of earlier excavators to a survey of the culture as a whole.The survey will be seen to owe much to the earlier one published by Professor Childe in his ‘Prehistory of Scotland’ in 1935, where, for the first time, elements in the material culture were distinguished which were plainly of South-west British origin and the result of immigration thence. To Dr Alex. Curle it owes a debt which will be apparent without reference to footnotes. It is due to Dr Curle's wide ranging excavations in the wheelhouses, the wags, the brochs and the hut circles of the culture, and to his earthfast judgment in regard to them, that we know more of the Iron Age dwellings in the North, and of the life lived in them, than we know of the habitations of any other part of Britain.
Studies in the Palaeolithic Succession in England, No. III: Palaeoliths from St. Neots, Huntingdonshire
Authors: Paterson T. T. , Tebbutt C. F. 
Published: February 2015

Palaeolithic artifacts were recorded from a terrace on the Great Ouse, near St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, in 1927, the chief source being a group of pits dug in what was formerly part of Paxton Park, on the left bank of the river in the parish of Little Paxton. Mr Tebbutt has since recovered many more artifacts from this site. Taken together, the material constitutes a working industry, which will be described in this paper.A twelve-foot section, fig. 1, shows a basal layer (1) of boulders and large pebbles resting upon undisturbed Oxford Clay. One boulder of limestone measured two feet in length, and many other erratics showed the derivation of this layer from drift deposits of a preceding glacial stage. Bones and teeth of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros antiquitatis, Rangifer tarandus, and Equus caballus were found here. This basal bed is not a solifluxion level in place, though it may represent a solifluxion layer which has been re-washed and sorted. Certainly the Oxford Clay has not been caught up into it, and the elements are uniformly water-laid, passing up, without break, into nine feet of compact, well-bedded, fluviatile gravels.
A Cemetery of the Ronaldsway Culture at Ballateare, Jurby, Isle of Man
Authors: Bersu G. 
Published: February 2015

The excavation of a Viking mound in the north of the Isle of Man during October and November, 1946, led to the discovery of older remains beneath and around the mound. The site was in the yard of the disused farmstead of Ballateare (formerly called Killane) in the parish of Jurby.It lies on a slight rise some 50 feet above sea level half a mile distant from the sea, which is now eroding this region of the west coast at an estimated rate of one yard per year. To the south the ground slopes down to the Killane river which runs a quarter of a mile away in a broad marshy valley. To the north and east the ground is flat, and from the site there is a wide view over the sea, the distant mountains to the south, and the plain to the north. In this district the light sandy soils alternating with more clayey soil are good for agriculture. The sub-soil in the farmyard is a fine yellow diluvial sand with some bands of coarser gravel. The ground around the mound had been much disturbed by agricultural activities, and for a long time the yard had been used for storing potatoes in clamps: only superstition had preserved the mound undisturbed.
Report on Excavations carried out in the Cave known as ‘Bosumpra’ at Abetifi, Kwahu, Gold Coast Colony
Authors: Shaw C. T. 
Published: February 2015

The cave of Bosumpra is one of a long line of numerous caves and rock-shelters in Voltaian sandstone, facing east at about 1,800 ft. O.D., on the eastward slope of the hill on which the Christian quarters of Abetifi stand. The cave takes its name from the spirit formerly believed to be resident there. It can be reached by following downhill for about a quarter of a mile the bush-path which leaves the eastern side of the road from Abetifi old town to the Government Rest House, less than ¼ mile from the Rest House: the cave lies some hundred yards to the north of the point, where this path descends the rocky line, on which the caves are situated, and comes out of bush into farming land.The cave was formed by the dissolving action of water which seeps out of the rock at this level during the wet season, although during the dry season it is quite dry. In the centre of the cave the distance from the back wall to the drip-line is 27 ft.; at this point the rock overhang is 12 ft. above the present level of the floor of the cave. On either side of the centre portion of the cave, the rock overhang gradually curves back to the vertical cliff wall on either side, thus gradually diminishing the depth of the cave. The total width of the cave from north to south is about 60 ft. The floor of the cave is lowest in the centre, where there is comfortable room to stand upright in the front portion; it rises gently towards the north, but more steeply towards the southern end, so that there is barely room to get between the floor and the roof (Pl. 1).
Excavation of Fifteen Barrows in the New Forest 1941–2
Authors: Piggott C. M. 
Published: February 2015

The excavations to be described were carried out in the autumn and winter of 1941–42, and a total of fifteen barrows was examined. Of these, ten were on Beaulieu Heath, to the south of the Brockenhurst–Hatchet Gate road, and the remaining five near Stoney Cross to the north-west of the New Forest. All the barrows were about to be destroyed in the course of building operations, and it was due to the urgency of the situation that none of the barrows could be more fully excavated. The time of year, and, in the case of Beaulieu Heath, the lowness of the site, made the undertaking in wet weather at least, an extremely difficult one. It is therefore with full knowledge of its incompleteness that I must present this report.Six men were employed at both sites, with Mr Rogers as foreman. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his very willing co-operation. Other helpers included Messrs Richard Atkinson, Philip Suggett, L. V. Grinsell and Aubrey Parke, Miss Jocelyn Morris and Miss B. de Cardi, and Mr and Mrs Maxwell-Hyslop. I am most grateful to all of them, and more especially to Miss Jocelyn Morris and Mr Atkinson, to whose skill and patience is largely due the recovery of rhe remains of the mortuary-house in Barrow II. Mr B. H. St. J. O'Neil visited both sites several times. Thanks are also due to Dr F. E. Zeuner for his remarks on the soil specimens, to my husband for a note on the Barrow II mortuary-house and to Sir Cyril Fox for his pottery report.
Excavations at the Cave of Shukbah, Palestine, 1928
Authors: Garrod D. A. E. , Bate Dorothea M. A. 
Published: February 2015

The village of Shukbah lies at 1,058 ft. above sea-level among the Judaean hills, approximately 17½ miles north-west of Jerusalem and 10½ miles NE. of Ramleh. About half-a-mile to the south of the village a broad winding valley, the Wady-en-Natuf, dry for the greater part of the year, runs westward through the hills towards the coastal plain, and in it is situated the cave to be described.The cave of Shukbah was first noticed by the late Père Alexis Mallon S.J., Director of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, in the course of a journey from Jemmala to Lydda in September 1924. Père Mallon was not able at that time to make any soundings, but he picked up a number of flint implements, and noted the presence of masses of breccia containing flints and bones. At the beginning of 1928, when I arrived in Palestine for the first time, he generously suggested that the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem should undertake the excavation of the site, which he rightly considered to be promising. Thanks to the generosity of the late Sir Robert Mond the British School was enabled to do this, and in April 1928 I went to Shukbah with two collaborators, Mr George Woodbury, afterwards Research Associate at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, and the late Mrs Edna Thuner Woodbury, who share with me the responsibility for this piece of work. Excavation was carried on from the beginning of April until the middle of June, when we left with the intention of returning in the following year. At the beginning of 1929, however, the British School was asked by the Director of Antiquities in Palestine to undertake at once the excavation of a group of caves in the Wady el-Mughara, Mount Carmel, then threatened with destruction by quarrying. This work was carried out in collaboration with the American School of Prehistoric Research, and the two schools planned to return to Shukbah after it should be completed. In the event, however, the Wady el-Mughara turned out to be an extraordinarily important site, and excavations were carried on there until 1934, while the study of the material and its preparation for publication lasted until 1937. As there is no prospect at present of continuing the work at Shukbah, it has been decided to publish without further delay the results of the excavations of 1928.
First Report of the Sub-Committee of the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes
Authors: Keiller Alexander , Piggott Stuart , Wallis F. S. 
Published: February 2015

For many years past on both formal and informal occasions, archaeologists and others, including Mr W. F. Grimes (1932 and 1935) and Dr F. J. North (1938), have been stressing the importance of a scientific examination of the numerous stone axes in public and private collections. It has been urged that an exact determination of the rock material and its original provenance, together with a knowledge of the locality at which the tool was found, would lead to far wider and more exact information concerning early trade routes and other factors of economic and social importance in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times.A major hindrance to the realisation of these anticipations lay with owners who required the petrologist to identify the rocks by macroscopical characters alone. It was of little avail for the geologist to point out that grinding, polishing and patination had often obliterated the few surface features available and that even if fracturing of the specimen were allowed, no real progress could be made until a thin section of the axe was obtained. Pressed for an identification even on the above unsatisfactory grounds, geologists have at times given answers which are really little better than reasoned guesses, and the archaeologists have based some equally speculative deductions upon them.
The Deverel-Rimbury Settlement on Thorny Down, Winterbourne Gunner, S. Wilts
Authors: Stone J. F. S. 
Published: February 2015

A preliminary report on the discovery and partial excavation during 1936 of the Late Bronze Age farmstead or settlement site on Thorny Down, Winterbourne Gunner, in South Wiltshire has already been published. Sufficient material was there recorded to prove beyond question the approximate date of the site. This was assigned to phase B of the Late Bronze Age (c. 750 B.C.), the culture being that of the Deverel–Rimbury immigrants which for convenience was described as the Cranborne Chase culture, since it was so closely connected with the sites excavated by Pitt Rivers. Further, it was emphasized that this more westerly culture was distinguishable from such sites of similar date in Sussex as New Barn Down and Plumpton Plain in that the highly ornamented globular vessel appeared to be more characteristic of the culture than are the widely diffused barrel- and bucket-shaped vessels. Such local differentiation of ceramic forms during the Late Bronze Age is a well known feature of the period, and Mr C. F. C. Hawkes in his analysis of the Plumpton Plain pottery has called attention to the fact that the Late Bronze Age immigration was not a single event, but a multiple process, in which the Deverel-Rimbury family of urns need be no more than a component.The available evidence which is rapidly accumulating clearly points to the introduction at this period of a developed and highly organized agricultural system, one feature of which was the small enclosure or compound, a type of earthwork constructed as required either for human or for animal occupation.
A Belgic Cremation Site at Stone, Kent
Authors: Cotton M. A. , Richardson K. M. 
Published: February 2015

The Belgic Cremation site at Stone, Kent, was discovered during the week of January 31st to February 4th, 1939, by workmen engaged in quarrying operations in the Cotton Lane Pit, about one mile west of the village of Stone on the south bank of the Thames between Dartford and Greenhithe. The area is being worked by the Associated Portland Cement Company, who had the finds carefully collected and reported them to Mr S. Priest, F.G.S., Curator of the Dartford Public Museum. The writers are most indebted to Mr Priest for drawing their attention to the site at once, and for all the information he has supplied. The Committee of the Associated Portland Cement Company, through their Manager, Mr Double, most kindly arranged for us to visit the Pit, and lent us all the material for investigation. We should like to acknowledge here our thanks to them for their interest and co-operation and for rescuing this valuable evidence from the fate it so nearly suffered in the jaws of the mechanical excavator.Cotton Lane Pit lies on the slope of the Boyne Hill (100 ft.) Terrace on the south bank of the Thames at about 85 O.D. (fig. 1). In this field the Terrace gravels slope away over an outcrop of Thanet sands which in places overlies the chalk. The pottery was found in a pocket of dirty ballast overlying clay loam on top of the chalk.
Studies on the Palaeolithic Succession in England No. II. The Upper Brecklandian Acheul (Elveden)
Authors: Paterson T. T. , Fagg B. E. B. 
Published: February 2015

The excavations here under review were undertaken on behalf of the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. We have to express our deep gratitude to the Earl of Iveagh, on whose estate the brickyard lies, for his kind permission to excavate and his generosity in providing the whole time services of two workmen during the seven weeks of the excavations. Mr Dow, the Estate Manager, was always a source of help and his interest was constantly a stimulation to effort throughout the work.The Elveden brickyard began production in the late nineties primarily to supply material for the new Elveden Hall which was finished in 1900. So successful was the brickyard that it continued to be worked until the war of 1914–1918, when it finally fell into disuse. It was in the first three years of production 1897–1900, that the greatest number of specimens was found. The vast majority of specimens saved were bifaces of very obvious and attractive shape, for each of which there were probably discarded at least a hundred flakes, as well as cores.The present condition of the brickyard bears full evidence of twenty-five years' neglect. Large silver birches and smaller trees and shrubs have grown in the pit and a large section of the cliff face has been overgrown with ferns and infested with rabbits. Much of the cliff surface has collapsed and there are spoil heaps in one or two places. The condition of the pit has in fact inhibited easy excavation except in the small areas which were actually dug.
Excavations at Brundon, Suffolk (1935–37)
Authors: Moir J. Reid , Hopwood A. Tindell 
Published: February 2015

For several years prior to 1935, the Ipswich Museum, through the kindness of Mr P. H. Jordan, had been enriched by gifts of fossil mammalian bones and teeth found in a gravel pit at Brundon, near Sudbury, Suffolk. From my occasional visits to this excavation, it was clear that a very rich bone bed existed there, and discoveries from time to time, of flint implements in the gravel, led me to conclude that excavations conducted at this site would yield good results. This was confirmed by the geological features of the section, which appeared to show a stratified gravel resting upon, and overlaid by, glacial deposits, thus affording an opportunity of examining that by no means common phenomenon—a true inter-glacial bed.I communicated with my friend Professor P. G. H. Boswell, F.R.S., who, after an examination of the section, agreed with me that it would repay detailed research. Work was begun by means of a grant from the British Association, which appointed the following as a committee to undertake the research: Professor W. B. R. King, O.B.E. (chairman), Mr Guy Maynard (Secretary), Mr D. F. W. Baden-Powell, Professor P. G. H. Boswell, O.B.E., F.R.S., Mr J. Reid Moir, F.R.S., Mr K. P. Oakley, Mr C. D. Ovey, Dr J. D. Solomon, and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, F.R.S.
The Passage Graves of Ireland
Authors: Powell T. G. E. 
Published: February 2015

Megalithic monuments take an important place amongst the relics of early civilization in Ireland, and within recent years efforts have been made to collect the much-needed information about their distribution and typology. Pride of place in this work must be given to Estyn Evans and others who have made important discoveries in the northern highlands, and have published a distribution map of the Segmented Gallery Graves (Horned Cairns) which they found in that area. The present paper endeavours to give a brief account of some recent work on Irish Passage Graves and to summarise the information available about this type of Irish chambered tombs, which includes such famous sites as New Grange and Dowth.It is clear from the accompanying distribution map (fig. 1) that the primary settlement area of the Passage Grave builders was on the east coast, and here four foci as well as a number of scattered sites can be distinguished. These foci and the inland tombs derived from them may for convenience be called the Dublin, Boyne, Armagh, and North Antrim groups. A list of the tombs, together with map and bibliographical references, will be found in the Appendix to this paper (p. 247).
Early Iron Age Site at Southcote, Reading
Authors: Piggott C. M. , Seaby W. A. 
Published: February 2015

Denton's pit, Southcote, is situated about one mile to the west of Reading, immediately to the south of the Great West Road. The map references are as follows:—6 inch. Berkshire 37 N.W. Lat. 51° 26′ 40″ N. Long. 1° 0′ 0″ w.1 inch. 5th Edition, Sheet 113. Square 1,070–1,075 E. 1,295–1,300 N.Geological. Sheet 268. (1 inch).
Studies on the Palaeolithic Succession in England No. I: The Barnham Sequence
Authors: Paterson T. T. 
Published: February 2015

The discovery of a prolific palaeolithic site near Cambridge, led to an examination of its relationship to other sites in England, and it seemed that the time was approaching for a general survey of the palaeolithic succession in this country concerned with open stations of a period prior to that already dealt with by Dr Garrod and Dr Grahame Clark. To this end it is intended to devote a series of papers, to be published consecutively in this journal, descriptive of various industries in the light of the latest evidence, both geological and prehistoric.The first paper, hereunder, is given over to a description and analysis of the palaeolithic site mentioned, for, as will be demonstrated, it has been found essential to the main thesis on succession. The sequence in East Anglia will be chosen for initial study, partly because it is a region with which the author is best acquainted, and also because it has been found to form a distinct cultural province, more nearly related, indeed, to Belgium and Germany than to southern England and France. The contacts between these provinces are many and it will be the whole purpose of one of this series of articles to show these connections by cultural and geological correlations. Therefore, references to comparable industries will be left out of the discussion of the finds following the description, and will be treated fully in an appropriate chapter at a later date.