bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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.
‘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).
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.
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.
The Earliest Bronze Swords in Britain and their Origins on the Continent of Europe
Authors: Cowen J. D. 
Published: February 2015

Notable advances have taken place on the continent of recent years in the study of bronze types of the Late Bronze Age, and of their distribution both in time and space. In Britain, too, progress has been made. We have some while since distinguished a Late Bronze Age II (roughly equivalent to Hallstatt B) from a Late Bronze Age I (roughly Hallstatt A), and latterly even begun—though still dimly—to envisage a Late Bronze Age III, which would be the counterpart with us of a true Hallstatt period (Reinecke's Hallstatt C and D, or Montelius VI).In regard to swords we recognize the intrusive Carp's-Tongue variety, characteristic of the opening of our Late Bronze Age II, and certain native weapons that are contemporary with it. We have also long been familiar with the later Hallstatt bronze swords of Gündlingen type. But the series as a whole has not yet been studied, and its origins are vague and ill-documented. It is the object of this paper to offer a reasoned starting-point for the sequence of development in Britain, so that we may be the better equipped to determine which of our sword-types can properly be assigned to our own Late Bronze Age I, and even, possibly, to throw some light on the chronology of the period.
Notes on the Bronze Age in the East Midlands
Authors: Powell T. G. E. 
Published: February 2015

The English Midlands (fig. 1) as a natural region, and for the purposes of environmental archaeology, form a more restricted area than that to which the term is usually applied in modern geography. Fox (1943, 68) has written of ‘… the great triangle of forest lands which form the Midlands …’ and reference to the maps in the same work shows this triangle as roughly lying between the Dee estuary at Chester, the confluence of the Severn and the Avon at Tewkesbury, and a point in the vicinity of the watershed between the Trent and the rivers of the Wash. For convenience of reference it is suggested that the approximate eastern point should be represented by the site of Belvoir Castle for here the plain has narrowed between the southern tip of the Pennines, and the uplands of Leicestershire, to the effective basin of the Trent. This river in its course below Nottingham flows through ancient forest lands, but it is no longer Midland country.The most uniform frontier of the Midlands, as here defined, is that provided to the south and east by the great sweep of the Jurassic uplands from the Cotswolds to Lincoln Edge. To the west, the Severn and the hill country of the Welsh borderlands form a zone which provides natural communications north and south and into the Welsh massif, but which, as it were, turns its back to the east. The northern confines of the Midlands are altogether less definite, but may be said to creep round the edges of the southern Pennines from the south bank of the Mersey to the middle course of the Trent.
Textiles and Weaving Appliances in Prehistoric Britain
Authors: Henshall Audrey S. 
Published: February 2015

This paper is an attempt to bring together the rather scanty evidence for prehistoric textiles in the British Isles, whether in the form of surviving fragments, impressions on bronze corrosion, or implements associated with spinning and weaving. While the material cannot compare with the rich series from Scandinavia or Switzerland, it has, nevertheless, considerable points of interest in its own right.Surviving woven textiles are first discussed, with such evidence of spinning and weaving techniques as can be deduced from the fragments. The archaeological material representing weaving appliances (e.g. spindle whorls, loom-weights, weaving combs, etc.) is then reviewed, with a special note on the curious technique of tablet-weaving, and finally there is a consideration of the evidence for basketry and allied fabrics. The material discussed is listed with references in a series of tabular appendices at the end of the paper.