bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
New Neolithic Sites in Dorset and Bedfordshire, with a Note on the Distribution of Neolithic Storage-Pits in Britain
Authors: Field N. H. , Matthews C. L. , Smith I. F. , Ewbank Jane M. 
Published: February 2015

This discovery was made as a result of rescue excavation in advance of road improvements by the Dorset County Council in the autumn of 1962. The site (NGR SY/99789918) now lies in the north verge of the A31 trunk road, 500 feet towards Wimborne Minster from the new Lake junction to Corfe Mullen, but in 1962 it was still included in field No. 7924, belonging to Lake Farm. Here the land, which forms part of the flood-plain of the Stour, is crossed by a spur of slightly more elevated ground extending north from Willetts Lane. There is a gentle slope westwards from the site towards the Chillwater Stream, which flows north to the Stour after descending from higher ground. The lowlying terrain to the west of this low spur used to be marshland until its reclamation, accounting for the name ‘lake’ given to the locality. The subsoil of the valley-bottom is composed variously of gravel, shingly stones and brown alluvial loam. The original vegetational cover would have been woodland of deciduous type, extending from the floor of the valley up the slope to the south and thinning out to scrub and heath on the gravel plateau 150 feet above the Stour. Today, pasture dominates the scene, with oak prominent only in hedgerow or isolated clumps.The pit to be described below lay just over half a mile to the north-east of the site of one similar in shape and contents that was discovered in a quarry in Corfe Mullen parish some twenty-five years ago.
Preliminary Report on Stone Age Reconnaissance in north-eastern Iran
Authors: McBurney C. B. M. 
Published: February 2015

The following is a preliminary report on the results achieved during approximately six weeks' archaeological fieldwork in north-eastern Iran in July and August 1963. The primary objective was to explore the area for traces of the local Upper Pleistocene cultural sequence, and in particular to establish if possible the date and character of the local Upper Palaeolithic. In the event no traces of Upper Palaeolithic were obtained. However, a start was made towards defining the problem by the discovery of two well-stratified deposits, the one yielding a Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) industry with distinctive regional affinities, and the other an early Post-glacial Mesolithic industry. Reliable samples were obtained for defining the statistical properties of both, together with carbon samples, traces of vertebrate fauna, and some other climatic data.Representative collections were lodged with the Musée Iran Bastan at Teheran; and the expedition's share is to be offered in part to the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge and in part to the British Museum. The expedition was financed mainly by a grant from the British Academy, supplemented by further grants from the Crowther-Beynon Fund and the British Museum.
A Decorated Iron Age Bridle-bit in the London Museum: its place in Art and Archaeology
Authors: Barber James , Megaw J. V. S. 
Published: February 2015

That the London Museum possesses one fine Iron Age bridle-bit has been known since the publication in the 1939 Proceedings of that from Walthamstow, Essex. It is the purpose of this paper to draw attention to another in the same collection.The second bit was found in 1897 in the Thames at Old Windsor, Berkshire, and was acquired by Mr William H. Lloyd, Jnr., of St. Margaret's. In 1908, with the rest of his collection, it passed to Richmond Public Library, and in 1949 the Lloyd Collection was transferred by Richmond Borough Council on permanent loan to the London Museum.The bit (pl. XXIV, 1), cast in bronze throughout, consists of a central figure-of-eight link with a pronounced central moulding, flanked by two side-links and two side-rings. The side-rings are cast solid in one piece with the link-heads. Each side-ring has two emplacements for ornamental studs, now missing, one on either side of the link-head: each stud was originally secured by small bronze pins, one of which (pl. XXIV, 2) remains. The holes for the pins perforate the thickness of the left-hand ring (pl. XXV, 2): in the right-hand ring, however, the holes stop halfway through. Each link-head also has a stud-emplacement, now empty. On the right-hand link, the stud was fixed by a pin, now lost, similar to those used in the side-rings: the left-hand one was attached by a square-headed bronze pin, still present. The right-hand link-head is further enriched with a curvilinear motif executed partly in cast relief, partly incised, while the other has incised enrichment only.The bit is 10.6 inches (270 millimetres) long, the distance between the rings being 4.8 inches (122 millimetres). The side-links are 2.6 inches (68 millimetres) long, and 0.9 inch (24 millimetres) in greatest width. The centre-link is 2.4 inches (62 millimetres) long, the diameter of its central moulding 0.8 inch (21 millimetres). The side-rings are not true circles, their greatest and least diameters being 3.1 inches (80 millimetres) and 2.9 inches (73 millimetres) respectively: the rings measure 0.3 inch (8 millimetres) in section.
Traditions of Metal-Working in the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Britain: Part I
Authors: Britton Dennis 
Published: February 2015

This paper is concerned with the earliest use in Britain of copper and bronze, from the first artifacts of copper in the later Neolithic until the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age, as marked by palstaves and haft-flanged axes. It does not attempt to deal with all the material, but instead certain classes of evidence have been chosen to illustrate some of the main styles of workmanship. These groups have been considered both from the point of view of their archaeology, and of the technology they imply.Such an approach requires on the one hand that the artifacts are sorted into types, their associations in graves and hoards studied, their distributions plotted, and finally a consideration of the evidence for their affinities and chronology. On the other hand there are questions also of interest that need a different standpoint. Of what metals or alloys are the objects made? Can their sources be located? How did the smiths set about their work? Over what regions was production carried out? If we are to understand as much as we might of the life of prehistoric times, then surely we should look at material culture from as many view-points as possible—in this case, the manner and setting of its production as well as its classification.
The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Industries of the English East Midlands
Authors: Posnansky Merrick 
Published: February 2015

The first palaeoliths to be described from this country were found in the south of England, particularly from the Thames Valley and East Anglia. In 1880 Boyd Dawkins wrote that tools of Drift Man were ‘conspicuous by their absence from the gravels north-west of a line passing through the Midland counties from Bristol to the Wash’. In 1897 John Evans (Evans 1897, 580), in the light of the Saltley find from the Birmingham district, questioned the view then current that their absence was due to glacial conditions prevailing north of the Severn—Wash ‘imaginary’ line, and held out hope for future finds in that northern area.Though hand axes had earlier been described from Chester (Stone 1908, 25) and Bridlington (Evans 1897, 572) it was not until the 1920's that Sir John Evans's hopes began to be realized. Randall Davies brought attention to a hand axe found in railway ballast gravel from Skellingthorpe in Lincolnshire in 1920.In the West Midlands numerous isolated finds were described from 1920 onwards by Burkitt (1920), Jack, Smith, Shotton and Clifford, the last two authors having in recent years (Shotton 1934 and 1953, Clifford 1954) provided a fairly comprehensive account and bibliography of the Lower and Middle palaeolithic finds from the West Midlands. In the East Midlands the story of discovery has been slower and very little of the material found has been published. In 1922 R. A. Smith published two flake implements from Leicestershire, though these cannot now be accepted (Posnansky 1955, 31).
Report on the Excavation of a Bell Barrow in the Parish of Edmondsham, Dorset, England, 1959
Authors: Proudfoot Edwina V. W. 
Published: February 2015

The barrow, the excavation of which is described below, is one of the two situated close to the Cranborne-Wimborne road, some 150 yards north of the Avenue Lodge entrance to St Giles' Park, in the parish of Edmondsham, Dorset.—Nat. Grid. Ref. SU 04611155 and SU 04631160, and map (fig. 1, no. 3).The attention of the Ministry of Works was drawn early in 1959 to the denudation by ploughing of Barrow 2. Permission to excavate was given by Lord Shaftesbury, the owner, and by Mr Lawes, the tenant farmer. Excavation on behalf of the Ministry of Works was planned and carried out by the writer, with the assistance of two workmen and some volunteers, during July and August 1959.The Edmondsham barrows are situated at the foot of the long, gentle slope down from St Giles' Crossroads, at the edge of the Park, on a slight rise in the chalk. The land in this area is fairly heavily wooded, and is not typical downland, although the sub-soil is chalk. The junction of the chalk and the clay-with-flints lies only half a mile to the east of the barrow under discussion, at the village of Edmondsham.
A Note upon Native Copper: its Occurrence and Properties
Authors: Coghlan H. H. , Willows R. 
Published: February 2015

Since the publication in 1951 of an article upon native copper considerable progress has been made concerning the occurrence and use of the metal in prehistoric Europe. In 1955 an important paper appeared by Professor Nestor dealing with the prehistory of the metal in Roumania and in 1957 Professor Pittioni published an outstanding survey and technical discussion upon the subject.As archaeological research continues we may expect to learn more about the extent to which native copper was used by early man. It is generally agreed that some utilization of the native metal goes back even to Neolithic times, and that the first phase was that of cold hammered native copper, very shortly to be followed by its more extensive working in an annealed condition. The question of what quantity of native copper would have been available to prehistoric man, and was in fact used by him in different countries has hardly been touched upon as yet. No doubt in certain regions the quantity of native metal was very appreciable. For instance, Professor Nestor considers that in Roumania, and certain neighbouring countries, important deposits of copper minerals and notable quantities of native copper existed, and still exist. From Professor Nestor's discussion it appears that there was quite an intensive utilization of the local deposits of native copper in Roumania, not only as a ‘forged’ native copper phase, but leading on to the melting and casting of the metal culminating with the remarkable shaft-hole axe hammers and axe adzes so well known to archaeologists.
Spectral Analysis of Metal Articles from Archaeological Monuments of the Caucasus
Authors: Selimkhanov I. R. 
Published: February 2015

For a long time the study of the history of ancient metallurgy and mining in the Caucasus could not be conducted satisfactorily in the USSR due to the lack of adequate scientific analysis of metallic complexes from archaeological sites.In his work devoted to the history of metallurgy in the Caucasus a well-known archaeologist A. A. Yessen justly remarks that for solving a number of problems connected with those questions the then existing data on chemical analysis was insufficient, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Because of this indeed it later became apparent that a number of questions investigated by A. A. Yessen were not always correctly elucidated. Even so, it should be certainly mentioned here that his monograph provided a rich historical material and already indicated the direction to be followed by further investigation of the history of ancient metallurgy and mining in the Caucasus, always assuming that sufficient chemical investigation was carried out.Systematic investigation of metallic objects from the monuments in the Caucasus began in 1933. It was at this time that work on chemical analysis began to develop at Leningrad in the Institute of Historic Technology at the then existing Academy of Material Culture named after N. J. Marr. The purpose of this research, carried out under the guidance of A. A. Yessen and V. V. Danilevsky, was to find out the history of the use of tin.
The Palaeolithic Industry of Kota Tampan, Perak, Malaya
Authors: Walker D. , Sieveking Ann de G. 
Published: February 2015

The Perak River rises on the Siamese border and flows southward to meet the sea near Teluk Anson in Perak. At Chenderoh, 70 miles north of the estuary, the valley has been dammed since 1930 and a large lake formed upstream. The Kota Tampan estate lies in the main valley about 4 miles north of the northern end of Chenderoh Lake (fig. 4 inset).At Kota Tampan (fig. 1) the Perak River is incised in the bottom of a valley between two and three miles wide, the floor of which lies between the 200- and 250-foot contours. The surfaces of the narrow modern flood terraces lie just below the 200-foot contour. Small hills of granite, rising to about 330 feet m.s.l., project above the general level of the valley floor which is also cut by steep-sided ravines running out into the modern river. These ravines are usually dry, or slightly swampy, except at the mouths where the artificial raising of the water-level by the Chenderoh dam has flooded them. The residual parts of the valley floor form long, almost flat-topped, ridges between the ravines and the hills, covered by a skin of soil washed from the neighbouring higher land.
Origin and Development of Series II Culture of India
Authors: Khatri A. P. 
Published: February 2015

The origin and the development of the Series II tools is one of those problems of Indian prehistoric archaeology which has evaded solution so far. This culture is comprised of scrapers of all sorts—side, hollow, endpoints, borers and burins (very rare) generally made on jasper, agate, chert and sometimes chalcedony also. The position of this culture in relation to other prehistoric cultures remains confused since its stratigraphical position has still to be worked out. And it awaits dating like other lithic industries because one has yet to find out the tools in association with fossils in situ in the horizons which are likely to yield them.In the following pages, is presented the data, collected from the Narmada and its tributary valleys, which tends to throw light on this culture and an attempt is made to ‘fix’ this culture in the stratigraphy and to date it with the help of fossils, which were found along with it in plenty in this area. These observations were made by the writer when he was conducting the fieldwork in the Hoshangabad-Narsinghpur region of the Narmada river in Central India, in search of Fossil Man, under the auspices of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India. This Narmada data, apart from ‘fixing’ it in its proper context, illustrates also its relationship with the Handaxe-cleaver complex on one hand and the Microlithic industry on the other.
The Stone Age of Australia
Authors: Mulvaney D. J. 
Published: February 2015

Fieldwork in Australian prehistory began in the opening year of Australia's history; the first excavation was directed by the Colonial Governor. In an official despatch dated 15 May 1788, less than five months after the landing at Sydney Cove, Governor Arthur Phillip recorded the results of his excavation.‘The ground having been raised in several places, as is common in England, where poor people are buried, I had one of these graves opened, and from the ashes had no doubt but that they burn their dead. From the appearance of the ashes, the body must be laid at length only a few inches below the surface, and is, with the wood ashes made by burning the body, covered lightly over with mould, fern and a few stones.’Elsewhere, he remarked, that‘… we frequently saw the figures of men, shields, and fish roughly cut on the rocks ….’Phillip's early despatches were ‘compiled’ for publication by J. Stockdale. The influence of 18th-century English Antiquarianism is evident in the ‘rude’ remains in Stockdale's revised version, and his comment that ‘Phillip caused some of these barrows to be opened.’Despite this auspicious excursion into aboriginal prehistory, Australia remains the dark continent of prehistory even after the passage of 170 years: it will be many years before the publication of a Pelican Archaeology of Australia becomes a practicable possibility. This contribution is intended as a preliminary sketch of present problems and a résumé of existing evidence. If it were restricted to a study of archaeological stratigraphy, it would be little more than a brief note; as its scope is broader, limitations of time and space impose a selective approach to the literature.
Some Pleistocene Faunas of the Mediterranean Coastal Areas
Authors: Higgs E. S. 
Published: February 2015

The object of this paper is to compare the fauna from sites on the Mediterranean coast having a similar physiography at the present day and which may have responded to climatic change in a similar way during the Pleistocene.Carbon 14 dating has shown a relatively short time span for the Late Pleistocene, and it is no longer possible to think of the correlation of cave deposits on a geological time scale. A thousand years or less is of some importance. It is possible and indeed probable that faunas and cave sediments may have been at the same point of time quite different in caves on the shore of the Mediterranean from, say, inland caves at 1,000 or 2,000 feet above sea level, such as those of the Judean Desert.
The Origins and Development of the Primary Series in the Collared Urn Tradition in England and Wales
Authors: Longworth I. H. 
Published: February 2015

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the development of the Collared vessel from the Peterborough ceramic tradition and assess the contributions made by other non-Peterborough traditions; to define a series of vessels within the Collared Urn tradition which carry demonstrably early traits of only limited duration; and to suggest the limiting conditions within which this controlled typological analysis may be expected to apply. Since divergence of opinion exists in the literature as to terminology, the terms used in this paper can be briefly summarized.For the sake of clarity it seems important to distinguish between descriptive terms, defining pottery traditions and functional, defining the uses to which vessels were put. In the past, the vessels which will be discussed below have been described variously as ‘Collared’, ‘Overhanging-rim’ and ‘Crowned’. In the following text the term ‘Collared’ has been retained for the whole tradition, and no distinction has been made between ‘Collared’ and ‘Overhanging-rim’.
Observations on the Technique of Production of Szeletian Flint Implements
Authors: Vértes L. 
Published: February 2015

It is widely accepted by specialists in the Old Stone Age that the Szeletian culture in Hungary developed directly from the local Mousterian. Apart from the chronological evidence, this theory is based on a few bifacially worked Mousterian implements. It is not without interest to investigate this supposed process of evolution also from the point of view of the technique of implement-making. The problem is to decide whether the retouch of the Early Szeletian implements found in the Bükk Mountains in Hungary could have evolved from the Mousterian retouch, which comes down to the question of their mutual relationship considered from the point of view of process of manufacture. We approached this problem along two lines: (1) we conducted laboratory experiments to clear up certain technological problems of stone implement flaking; and (2) we measured the angle between the retouch and the flat bulbar face of the implements from finds of various Palaeolithic cultures in Hungary.In the course of our experiments we constructed a device that precisely measured the force and the direction of the blow applied in flaking. This proved that a blow striking a tabular flint with parallel faces or a thick glass plate vertically, produces a conic crack with included angle of about 100° to 110°. With flint-like materials, used in the making of Old Stone Age implements, this cone can be considered as more or less constant. Our experiments confirmed Leakey's observation according to which the cone produced when striking the edge of a piece of flint is incomplete, i.e., part of it may be supposed to continue beyond the flake. We set ourselves the task of establishing the relationship between the angle of the fracture of the real cone resulting from the blow administered and the angle of the direction of the blow.
Bronze Age Chariots from Europe
Authors: Anati Emmanuel 
Published: February 2015

The Oriental origin of the wheeled vehicle has long been recognized. It seems to have originated in Sumer, in the Uruk period, in the first half of the fourth millennium B.C.A rich collection of material, including isolated wheels and other remains of wheeled vehicles, models and pictures representing vehicles, show that wagons and carts had spread to Italy, Eastern and Central Europe, and the south Scandinavian countries by the middle of the second millennium B.C. Although the presence of wheeled vehicles has been claimed in Spain as early as the ‘copper age’ the first datable evidence for them is given there by the Solana de Cabanas stele and other west Spanish stelae that probably belong to the end of the second and the first millennium B.C.
Crig-a-mennis: a Bronze Age Barrow at Liskey, Perranzabuloe, Cornwall
Authors: Christie Patricia M. 
Published: February 2015

The mound traditionally known as ‘Crig-a-mennis’ was excavated in September and October, 1957 on behalf of the Ministry of Works. Although a scheduled site, it was threatened with destruction owing to the clearing of mine dumps from the field where it was situated.The site lies just off the main Perranporth-Truro road (fig. 1, map 3) on the south-east slope of Liskey Hill, about one mile south-east of the modern resort of Perranporth in the parish of Perranzabuloe (O.S. National Grid: 757528) and was originally one of a group of barrows in the area, few traces of which now remain.In the course of four weeks of excavation the mound was stripped and nothing of it now remains. The finds were placed, after restoration by the writer, in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall in Truro by kind permission of Lord Vyvyan on whose land the barrow stood.The site revealed a composite bell-barrow surrounded by an irregular causewayed ditch. A central stone-heap covering a fire and an oval pit was overlain by a turf and soil mound, stone reveted on the north and west, with a narrow berm between revetment and ditch. A trench-ramp cut into the natural rock on the east led into the ditch from outside and up towards the central area. Two finely decorated Ribbon-handled Urns were found inverted on the periphery of the turf stack and contemporary with it, one containing charcoal, the other burnt flints, biconical terracotta beads of Wessex type and a small terracotta cone. A miniature cup, five flint flakes and a flint core, and the possible remains of a wooden tool were also found, while a number of pits and charcoal patches suggest an elaborate ritual. Only one main phase of barrow construction was discernible—though this was capable of some sub-division—and the finds date the whole to c. 1400 B.C. or slightly later. Subsequent activity on the site, probably during the Iron Age, is attested by quern fragments, a slate ‘comb’ and an iron object.