In 1965 the investigations described in the first paper of the series were resumed in Epirus. The excavation of the rock shelter of Asprochaliko was continued, and further geological observations made it possible to establish a continental sequence extending from the Last Interglacial to the present day.

The geological succession and its associated artifacts was worked out in the Louros valley (fig. 1) and confirmed in other parts of Epirus. It consists of the following three main formations:

3. Valley-floor Alluvium (pl. 1, upper). 2. Red Beds. 1. Tufa.

There are also extensive sheets of unconsolidated scree on the valley sides, as Hey has noted. These overlie the Red Beds, but as their relationship to the Valley-floor Alluvium is not known, and as the extent of contemporary scree formation (if any) is not yet clear, they cannot at this stage be placed in the succession.

Obsidian was not necessarily the earliest object of trade, but it certainly seems to be the first for which material evidence remains. It has been reported from nearly every Early Neolithic settlement in the Near East, although many of these sites are distant from the natural sources.

In our first paper (Cann and Renfrew 1964), we outlined a method for the characterization, by trace-element analysis, of obsidian artifacts from archaeological contexts. This allowed the determination of the natural sources from which the material derived. In that paper, however, only the west Mediterranean region was considered in sufficient detail to give definitive results. The obsidian trade in the Aegean has subsequently been studied in detail also (Renfrew, Cann and Dixon 1965).

In the present paper, the obsidian trade in the Near East is examined. This topic is particularly important since obsidian seems to be the most promising approach towards understanding the extent to which the different Early Neolithic cultural and ecological regions were in contact. It should help to suggest how the early spread in the knowledge and use of animal and plant domesticates took place in the Near East.

The destruction of barrows and other monuments of antiquity has become an everyday occurrence. In earlier centuries many things survived, as in Ireland in more recent times, by reason of public superstition or veneration, in which the invocation of the fairies and the little people has played a lively part. It is astonishing how much survived the ages of ignorance. There is irony in the situation. For the main onslaught of destruction, it must be confessed, begins in the self-styled age of culture and enlightenment—from the 17th century to the present day—and of this the greatest slaughter is clearly attributable to our own 20th century.

The Lanhill Long Barrow, once included among the most important antiquities in Wiltshire, has suffered a typical spoliation. When John Aubrey first described and drew the tomb in the mid-17th century, it must have been nearly complete, save for a certain amount of natural weathering. He wrote that the tenant farmer of his day ‘thought to have digged down this hill for the earth to lay on other land’; but he recorded only three small areas of disturbance marked ‘a’ on his original sketch.

An unusual ⊏-shaped earthwork has been known for several generations (Nat. Grid. Ref. TA 099658) just over one mile to the south of the Wold village of Rudston, in the Western angle of two roads. It has often been interpreted as three contiguous long-barrows. Canon Greenwell described the site in 1877 as ‘two long mounds, almost parallel, their northern end gradually losing themselves in the surface-level, but connected together at the southern end by another long mound’. In 1958 when Messrs C. and E. Grantham of Driffield excavated a section across the western ditch, they appreciated that the western and eastern banks continued for a much greater distance than Greenwell had implied, travelling at least ½-mile downhill towards the village.

Aerial reconnaissance in 1961 by Dr J. K. St. Joseph established the existence of two long parallel ditches, extending intermittently for 1½ miles beyond the earthwork. The feature as a whole was recognizable therefore as a cursus, the earthwork being the squared southern end.

The writer spent three months, during late 1963 and early 1964, journeying through the New Guinea Highlands in an attempt to trace sites where stone axes have been made in the recent past. In the Simbai (Tsembaga) and Kaironk areas steel has effectively replaced stone only within the last ten years, though some steel had been traded in a decade or so earlier (Rappaport, n.d.; Bulmer, personal communication). In the other Highlands area discussed in this paper, stone working axes had probably dropped out of use by the early 1940's. Of the ten quarry sites then examined, three had been visited before by earlier workers, two were reported to the writer by an anthropologist, C. Criper, working in the Upper Chimbu, and the others were found by walking about the country pursuing local information.

The barrow is No. 6b in L. V. Grinsell's list for the parish of West Overton (V.C.H. Wilts., 1, Part I, 1957). It stood some 400 feet to the north of the most northerly member of the conspicuous group of bowl and bell barrows that straddles the A.4 road on Overton, or Sevenbarrow, Hill, 4½ miles west of Marlborough (SU 11966835). Its position is marked on the OS. 6-inch map (SU 16NW), but not on the 1-inch (Sheet 157). The height above sea-level is about 580 feet.

The subsoil is Upper Chalk, its surface broken by irregular depressions and long parallel troughs filled with a soft buff material, evidently the result of weathering under periglacial conditions. The topsoil is a rendsina about 6 inches thick.

Most of the barrows on Overton Hill are known to have been dug into in the past. No. 6b had escaped the attentions of antiquarians, but it was evident before excavation that it had nevertheless suffered extensive disturbances.

An evaluation of the concept of ‘Lower Perigordian‘ is attempted in this paper. The conclusion of this work suggests that the Lower Perigordian is a fallacious concept, that it can no longer be accepted as the first stage of the French Upper Palaeolithic, and that the so-called Lower Perigordian stone industries may not even represent a unified stage in the development of stone-tool technology.

The terms ‘industry’ and ‘assemblage’ will be used in this paper in the sense defined by Braidwood (1946, 133–6). An industry is a collection of tools of one category of material (here stone or bone only) which appears in archaeological context, or in an untransported geological context. An assemblage is ‘… a variety of categories of artifacts and non-artifactual materials which appears in archaeological context.’ The non-artifactual aspect of an assemblage most notably provides information on geological context and physical relationships. Many of the collections of tools to be dealt with below can in no way be considered assemblages, but we still know something of their archaeological contexts, so they have not yet sunk to the level of Braidwood's ‘aggregations’. ‘Culture’ will be used in its anthropological sense to mean the whole of patterned, learned behaviour shared by a group of human beings, and the effects of this behaviour on material artifacts. If set off by quotation marks, ‘culture’ may refer also to the ‘material culture’ of other writers or be a convenient translation of the French word ‘civilization.’

The literature of the past seventy years relating to battle-axes and axehammers is limited, and relates mainly to the separate publication of individual finds. Sir John Evans, in his classic work, Ancient Stone Implements listed eighty-seven battle-axes from England, Scotland and Wales. R. A. Smith, in 1925, carried out a more detailed survey with emphasis on the associated finds, but drew conclusions about evolution and dating which are untenable according to present archaeological thinking. In 1960, Ashbee briefly delineated five types, making a distinction between ‘axe-hammers’, his Woodhenge and Parcelly Hay groups, and ‘battle-axes’, comprising more evolved implements with connections with the Wessex Culture. In this present survey it is hoped to make good the neglect this subject has suffered, by presenting a corpus of finds which is as complete as possible, together with some considerations on typology, associations, petrology—where details are available—distribution, origins and dating.

Discoveries of organic remains are rare on Late Stone Age sites in southern Africa. However, it is known from numerous historical records that in the case of the Wilton people the perishable elements of the material culture were in many cases the most important aspects of the tool-kit of Late Stone Age man.

The prehistoric settlements at Gwisho hot-springs, Lochinvar, Zambia, assume particular importance, for excellent circumstances of preservation have enabled us to make an exceptionally complete reconstruction of Late Stone Age economy and material culture in a savannah woodland and riverside environment. The object of this paper, in advance of a comprehensive study, is to describe some of the wooden implements found at the sites during recent excavations.

In the present study it is proposed to set out, in somewhat greater detail than has yet been attempted, the case for an independent and wholly indigenous development of the flange-hilted sword of bronze in extra-Aegean Europe. That these were not the first tanged or even flange-hilted swords to be made goes without saying. At a time which on any view must be earlier by a clear margin the Mycenaeans were enjoying the use of splendid rapiers of which the hilts were furnished with highly developed flanges. And in Anatolia swords with substantial tangs are known from towards the end of the 3rd millennium. The argument, accordingly, is for independent invention of the same device in more than one period and place—a concept which some prehistorians seem to find unpalatable to the point of disbelief, however simple and natural the device.

In the circumstances it is not altogether surprising that the subject has been long debated, and our main conclusion warmly contested, not so much in point of detail (on which in the ultimate the verdict must stand or fall) as on the broader ground of general resemblances, or even of preconceived ideas on probability. To analyse the ebb and flow of conflicting views is no part of the present purpose. It will suffice to observe that we have yet to see demonstrated a coherent chain of development by which the swords of central Europe can be derived from those of the Aegean, much less from Anatolia.

The Overton Down earthwork was constructed in 1960, the first of a series designed to study the changes which take place with time in a bank and ditch, and in selected materials buried within the bank. Full details of the construction of the earthwork are given by Jewell (1963); as this report will be referred to repeatedly, for simplicity it will in future be called the Basic Manual. The experiment was designed to be sectioned at intervals of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and, perhaps, 128 years, though, in the early stages particularly, observations would be made at more frequent intervals. This paper deals with the results of the two- and four-year sections, together with such other observations as were made. Even at this date it has not been possible to complete the analytical work on all the buried objects; deficiencies will be made up as far as possible in future reports.