It will be useful first of all to recall some dates: 1848—the Communist Manifesto; 1859—Contribution to a Criticism of Political Economy, in the introduction to which Marx made his clearest definition of the materialist conception of history. It was also the year of Origin of Species and the authentication of Boucher de Perthes’ handaxes. ‘Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economical forms of society as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species’ . This quotation is from the first volume of Capital published in 1867, which Marx had wished to dedicate to Darwin; Darwin declined the honour. We know from the chapter ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man’ in Engels's Dialectics of Nature, written in the 1870s but published posthumously 40 years later, that Engels had been thinking about prehistoric man, although he evidently had not got very far beyond Marx's description of labour in Capital.

One difficulty with the interpretation of strip lynchets has been caused by our traditional viewpoint: we have stood in the valley and looked up at them. In Asia terraces do start at the foot of hills and are constructed upwards. Perhaps unconsciously we have believed that strip lynchets were created in the same way. The uniqueness of these terraces may lie in their construction from the top of the escarpment downwards. Many difficulties are resolved when we stand and look at the terraces from above. Then we observe a flight of steps and perhaps it was down these that agriculture passed from downland to lowland.

It is generally believed that in Britain there were two independent agricultural origins, that primitive farmers first cultivated the light soils of the chalk downlands and western hills, and only later, after a heavy plough had been introduced from abroad by invading peoples, were the heavy soils of the lowlands tilled. Rarely is it believed that lowland agriculture in Britain developed from downland agriculture, that agriculture had undergone continuous development and that one type had merged into the other.

In a recent paper a theory was put forward to account for the end of Mohenjo-daro and of other, smaller, Indus Civilization cities in Sind and along the Mekran Coast.

There are several kinds of fossil sea-urchin that are the subject of folklore, the commonest in the south of England being casts in flint, derived from the Chalk, of the heart-urchin Micraster, and of the helmet-urchin Echinocorys. Both of these, but more commonly the latter, are known to the country people as shepherd's crowns or fairy loaves (PL. xxib). Formerly at least, the Essex labourer believed that so long as one of these fossil sea-urchins was kept in the house, his family would never go short of bread (Johnson 1908, 149). At a number of localities in southern England fossil echinoids are traditionally placed on dairy shelves to keep milk from going sour. This practice is clearly linked with the ancient idea that these fossils are thunderstones.

The earliest known case of fossil echinoids being used in a ceremonial burial is in the Early Bronze Age tumulus on the Dunstable Downs, where nearly IOO shepherd’s crowns, mainly Micraster, had been arranged to encircle the bodies of a woman and child (Worthington Smith 1894, frontispiece, 337-8). H. S. Toms collected evidence that up to the middle of the last century fossil sea-urchins were called thunderstones throughout Sussex, whereas they are now simply regarded as ‘lucky’ (PL. XXIIb), and if seen in the soil and not brought home, at least one should spit on the shepherd’s crown and throw it over the left shoulder. Even the idea of luck being attached to sea-urchins found on the fields has disappeared latterly from many villages. As there were still scattered traces of the thunderstone belief in Sussex in 1930, it is probable that more than a century ago the thunderstone aspect was dominant there. This idea survived longer in West Sussex than in East Sussex, and oral tradition can be traced back to 1860.

During the process of archaeological excavation, both in thiscountry and abroad, many thousands of animal bones are discovered in the course of a single year. Much of this material is buried again without examination by those best qualified to do this; and that which is retained is all too often devoid of the data of association which make it valuable to the animal historian, the zoologist and other researchers.

In October 1915 there was discovered near the small village of Guiry, 50 km. north-west of Paris, an example of the typical Paris Basin Gallery Grave or Allée Couverte. It came to be known as the Allée Couverte du Bois Couturier, and is a relatively small example of this type of tomb which predominates in the departments of Seine-et-Oise and Oise, and extends eastwards into neighbouring departments. The grave-goods belong mainly, though not exclusively, to the Seine-Oise-Marne culture as first defined by Bosch-Gimpera and Serra Rafols [I]. Daniel regarded the Paris Galleries as dating probably from about 1700-1400 B.C.; Bailloud, on the basis of certain radiocarbon dates available since Daniel's study, considers the SOM culture (which is of course not necessarily completely coeval with the Paris Galleries) to have begun around 2400-2300 B.c., and to have ended around 1700-1600 B.C. [2].

The chambered long barrow known as Wayland's Smithy lies a little south of the crest of the Berkshire Downs, about a mile west of the Uffington White Horse, within an oval plantation of beech trees. The excavation here described was carried out during II weeks in 1962 and 1963 under the direction of Professor Stuart Piggott and the writer. The barrow has now been restored to its appearance in antiquity, so far as the surviving features allow.

Before excavation, the site appeared as a long low mound, much flattened by cultivation and erosion, with a length of about 200ft. and a maximum height of about 4ft. above the surrounding surface. At the south end were the ruined remains of a cruciform burial-chamber constructed of large sarsen slabs, in front of which was a line of four large fallen stones, evidently parts of a massive fayade similar to that of the West Kennet long barrow. To the east, a row of four smaller sarsens, still upright, marked the line of the kerb of slabs which had once delimited the mound. A sketch made by John Aubrey in the mid-17th century shows that apart from the presence then of additional visible kerb-stones the appearance of the site has altered little in the last 300 years.