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.

The aim of the Prehistoric Society in undertaking excavations was to uncover systematically a complete settlement and to discover as much as possible about it as a social and economic organism. Little Woodbury had much to recommend it. The existence of a good air-photograph meant that no efforts need be wasted on unproductive work, besides promising interesting results for the interpretation of air-photographs. Being typical of a whole group, its elucidation might be expected to throw light upon a number of similar sites. Further, experience has shown that incontestable results are to be won most readily where the habitation is not too dense and where occupation has been confined to one period. The air-photograph seemed to promise the former, while the test excavations carried out by Mr C. W. Phillips, F.S.A., in March 1938, suggested that the settlement was substantially of the Iron Age A culture.

The circumstances of the discovery of the trepanned skull described in this paper may be briefly summarised here: the full report of the excavations during which it was discovered will appear in a forthcoming volume of Archaeologia. In the summer of 1938 I carried out excavations on behalf of H.M. Office of Works on a group of round barrows on Crichel Down, Dorset, some 5 miles north of the town of Blandford. One of these barrows (no. 14 of the forthcoming report), a very low and inconspicuous mound about 20 feet in diameter, was found to cover a grave cut in the chalk containing a crouched human burial. The skeleton lay on its left side with the head bent slightly forward, the legs flexed so that the heels were nearly touching the pelvis, the left arm extended and the right arm flexed so that the hand rested on the shoulder. At the foot of the grave lay a beaker of Type B1 on its side, the base resting against the right tibia of the skeleton. (Fig. 1).

The whole burial was entirely typical of Beaker Period inhumations, and it was not until the skull was removed from the grave that it was found that it bore a large opening in the left parietal, and that into that opening the piece of bone which had been removed (by a careful process of grooving and ultimate excision) had been replaced before the individual had been laid in the grave. We were clearly in the presence of an exceedingly fine example of trepanning, and two points were immediately apparent, namely that the individual had not survived the operation, there being no evidence of healing on the edge of the opening, and that the replaced roundel of bone must have been strapped or bandaged into place before burial. As the skull was lifted, the roundel remained behind on the floor of the grave, and in the original deposition of the body something must have been done to secure it in position.

The studies of Leon Coutil and Marcel Baudouin on the gallery grave of Vaux-Louvets at Vaudancourt and Kendrick's general survey in his Axe Age, first drew the attention of modern archaeologists to the problems associated with the nature and origin of portholes in megalithic tombs in Europe. Recently interest has again been stimulated in this subject. In Britain, Hemp has excavated Bryn yr Hen Bobl in Anglesey with its curious pair of holes in the southern transverse orthostat of the chamber, Fleure has begun to excavate the Bridestones in Cheshire, and the newly discovered chamber in the north flank of the Lanhill long barrow in Wiltshire was described as having a porthole entrance; and abroad Dr Leisner has given us an excellent study of the Iberian portholes. It has therefore been thought worth while to survey afresh the problem of the European portholes, and more especially to bring together the information known about the British portholes and to relate this to the general problem of the origin and spread of portholes in Europe.

From the published accounts it was clear that the most perfect examples of portholes in the British Isles were those in the Rodmarton and Avening long barrows in Gloucestershire (fig. 1), but none of these portholes had actually been seen in their entirety by present day archaeologists. Rodmarton was excavated in 1863 by the Rev. S. Lysons, but the excavations were partially filled in and by the present day nothing of the two portholes was visible and we had only the inadequate drawings in the published accounts to rely on.