The Somerset Levels are a submerged landscape. The valleys between the Mendip and the Polden Hills extend to 90 feet (27 metres) below Ordnance Datum, and they are filled to approximately the height of present sea-level by a soft blue-grey clay deposited in brackish water. Radiocarbon dating of material from Burnham-on-Sea shows that the marine transgression had been almost completed by 4300 B.C. (Q 134), and a date from Tealham Moor places the final transition to fresh-water conditions about 3500 B.C. (Q 120) (Godwin and Willis, 1959). As fresh water accumulated upon the almost level surface of the recent clay, reed-swamp dominated by Phragmites communis and Cladium mariscus occupied the whole region, building up coarse, loose-textured peat to a thickness of 1 or 2 metres. In the normal course of hydrarch succession (possibly enhanced by a climatic turn towards dryness), the reed swamps were invaded by fen-woods of alder and birch. These were extremely widespread at a time given by the first tentative radiocarbon dates as within the third millennium B.C.

About 2000 B.C. there now began to develop within these fen woodlands an entirely different vegetation type, primarily composed of Sphagnum moss, cottongrass (Eriophorum spp.), ling (Calluna vulgaris), associated ericoid plants, and deer-grass (Trichophorum caespitosum). These communities quickly built up a complex of large raised bogs such as are now familiar around the Solway and the Central Irish plain, and of which Flander's Moss is a good Scottish example. These are gently domed structures rising a few metres above the level of the immediately surrounding land and relying almost entirely upon precipitation for their water supply.

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.

The alteration of black or dark-coloured flint artifacts to produce a white surface is familiar to archaeologists. This patination is attributed to weathering, and was first explained by Judd in 1887. Judd suggested that flint is composed of a felted aggregate of euhedral quartz needles with colloidal (opaline) silica occupying the interstices between the crystalline grains. He postulated that carbonate-bearing ground-water leached the more soluble amorphous silica, leaving minute interstitial cavities in the altered margin of the flint. The multitudes of surfaces thus produced reflect and refract light falling upon or passing through the flint, and the resulting scattering causes the white appearance of the altered portion. Judd cited the white aspect of powdered black obsidian as an example of such scattering effects.

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.

Archaeologists have for some time been employing geoelectric resistivity methods to locate buried remains in order to avoid wasteful trial-and-error excavations. The results have been successful in some cases, but unexpectedly disappointing in others. The purpose of this paper is to indicate some of the peculiar difficulties which arise when applying the usual techniques suitable for deep surveys to the location of resistance anomalies buried at relatively shallow depths below the surface. The difficulties which have been experienced depend mainly on the fact that, for small electrical resistance discontinuities at shallow depths, factors arise which are negligible with deep surveys. In other words, when the dimensions and depth of an anomaly (such as a cist in a Bronze-age tumulus or the buried foundations of a Roman Wall) are comparable with the distance between the electrodes, then the usual theoretical assumptions underlying deep surveys need to be re-examined.

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.

This paper is devoted to a study of the horned-cairns of the North-east of Ireland and their associated artifacts. The term ‘horned-cairn’ is used to describe those segmented gallery-graves set in a long cairn and entered from a semi-circular forecourt delimited by an orthostatic facade. It is realized that this term is not altogether satisfactory, but it has the virtue of brevity and its usage is now well established. Some contemporary Irish prehistorians, notably Professor Ruaidhrí de Valéra, have suggested the term ‘court-cairn’ for all the manifestations in Ireland of the segmented gallery-grave having elaborate structural forecourts. This would include cairns in the West of Ireland with completely enclosed courts (described as court-cairns in this paper) as well as horned-cairns proper. The confusion which might arise from the use of such terms as ‘full court-cairn’, ‘half court-cairn’, ‘forecourt-cairn’ and the like have decided the present writer to retain in this paper the simple terms ‘horned-cairn’ and ‘court-cairn’.

This study is divided into two main sections. The first is descriptive, being concerned with horned-cairns and associated artifacts and the second attempts to place the Carlingford Culture as a whole in its context in prehistory. In view of the paucity of detailed information about court-cairns, particularly the almost complete lack of excavation, no detailed study is made of these. At the time of going to press it is understood that a paper by Professor de Valéra on the court-cairns of the west is about to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.

This paper is in a sense a by-product of a detailed study of ‘Dark Age’ metalwork and grew out of the realization that any interpretation of post-Roman history depends on an understanding of the archaeology of Roman and Iron Age Britain. For too long, the post-Roman world has been regarded as separate from the preceding periods, and has been seen mainly through aesthetic spectacles. Recent studies of the pottery of the period have to some extent corrected the perspective hitherto largely based on subjective and even nationalistic examinations of the better known art and metalwork. To make a new and comparable survey of the metalwork seemed worthwhile, and in doing this attention was focused on the ordinary, and common, pieces of metalwork which have been overshadowed by the more magnificent and highly decorated pieces. It became evident that in many ways the Roman occupation was not all important but was merely a minor factor in the development of material culture, and that this was particularly true of the Military Province of Britain. The specialist nature of so much of Romano-British archaeology has tended to obscure the continuity of Iron Age culture. It was felt that the selection of one or more pieces of metalwork might illustrate this as well as providing a background for the achievements in metalwork and design in the ‘Dark Ages’.

The penannular brooch was chosen as the ‘type-fossil’ for this study because it was the typical and characteristic dress ornament of the Celtic post-Roman world, was equally common in Romano-British contexts and seemed to be native to these islands. A complete run through from Iron Age to Early Christian times has thus been obtained, and it is hoped that deductions drawn from a study of the penannular brooches may be paralleled and applied to other metalwork of the period and so allow general conclusions to be drawn. A more personal reason for selecting the penannular brooch was a desire to investigate the reasons for such a bewildering variety of contradictory opinions on the origin and development of the type.

Ardleigh lies midway between Colchester on the River Colne, and Manningtree on the estuary of the Stour, the distance from each place being about four miles. Vinces Farm covers an area roughly half a mile to a mile south of Ardleigh church on the road to Great Bromley. The farm lies on a plateau, 110 feet above sea level, and has no particular geographical feature other than its flatness. The soil is a medium loam over gravel and requires no artificial drainage. Grid Ref. TL/056284.

The land has been under arable cultivation for centuries, but not until 1955 was a deep-digging plough introduced, ploughing to a depth of a foot or more. In September of that year the plough brought up sherds of Roman pottery in the Long Eleven Acres field (O.S. 716) and with these, sherds of Bronze Age ware.

The main object of this article is to describe the material from three microlithic sites in south-west England, and to interpret them in the light of present information. Two of the sites are in Somerset, at Shapwick and Middlezoy on the Burtle Beds in the vicinity of Bridgwater, and the third is in Cornwall at Dozmare Pool on Bodmin Moor (fig. 1). Thanks are due to the authorities of the following museums for their kind cooperation: The County Museum, Taunton; The Torquay Natural History Museum; The Plymouth Museum; The Exeter Museum; The County Museum, Truro; and the British Museum.

The site at Hurst Fen in the parish of Mildenhall, Suffolk, was first brought within the cognizance of prehistorians by Lady Grace Briscoe, F.S.A., whose investigations, published in 1954, were sufficient to make it a type site of the East Anglian group of the British primary Neolithic settlement. Thanks are due to Lady Briscoe for most generously encouraging more extensive excavations and to the Crowther-Benyon Fund administered by the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge for providing the necessary funds. The assistance is also gratefully acknowledged of undergraduate and other members of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge and of a number of friends without whose combined labours the fine and repeated scraping of some 20,000 square feet of sub-soil could hardly have been accomplished. Mr E. S. Higgs, Assistant in Research in the Department, undertook much of the supervisory work during the last two seasons, as well as contributing an arduous metrical analysis of the flints and most notably of the scrapers from this and other sites. Mr I. H. Longworth has contributed the description of the pottery and in so doing has devised means for demonstrating its character quantitatively as well as qualitatively, a task too infrequently attempted in this field. To the Curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and his assistant staff a deep debt is owed for a number of essential services, both in connection with the field-work, but principally in the treatment of the finds, notably in the reconstruction and photography of the pottery. Finally, thanks are returned to all those who offered advice about the archaeological material or who contributed the expert identifications incorporated in the following report.

The author has already published a full account of the investigation of a mesolithic chipping-floor (Warren V) on the Lower Greensand of East Hampshire in the parish of Oakhanger, near Selborne (fig. 1). The present report is concerned with another (Warren VII), discovered early in 1957 only a few yards to the north-west (fig. 2) and excavated later that year and in 1958.

The interest of the new site is partly that it supplements and enlarges certain details of the material equipment recovered from Site V, but mainly in the evidence it has provided on chronology through the application of pollen-analysis and radio-carbon analysis.

To begin with excavation was carried out in transects 3 feet by 1 foot, but when it became apparent that artifacts were occurring at three levels (fig. 3) the size of the transect was increased to 3 feet by 3 feet. The earliest level (Phase I) occurred at a depth of c. 24 inches; Phase II, which corresponded with the lined surface noted by Dr Dimbleby in his pollen enquiry (see p. 256) at c. 8 to 10 inches; and Phase III in the top 3 inches of humus.

On the open downland, at the crest of the central chalk ridge of the Isle of Wight, and overlooking the village of Arreton, there are to-day two round barrows, the larger, some 9 feet high, known locally as Michael Morey's Hump, and the smaller, nameless and less than half as high, the subject of the present report. The barrow lies 20 feet to the south-west on the bank of the artificial cliff created by the Down End Chalk Quarry (see fig. 1). The barrow, endangered by the quarry, was examined in August and September 1956 on behalf of the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, the Ministry of Works. The working party was composed of undergraduates from Cambridge and Durham Universities and volunteers from London and the Isle of Wight. Through the generosity of the landowner, Mr A. Brown, the objects found have been placed in Carisbrooke Castle Museum.

The moorland south of Penmaenmawr in Caernarvonshire, extending from the great outcrop of Penmaenmawr-Graig Lwyd rock, well-known for its group of stone-axe factories, as far south as Foel Lwyd and Tal-y-fan, and averaging 1,200–1,400 feet in height above O.D., bears a rich concentration of prehistoric monuments. The best known of these is probably the stone circle known as the Druids' Circle, but nearby are many other circles and cairns (fig. 1) which will be referred to in this text by the serial numbers used in the Caernarvonshire Inventory of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. In the present paper an account will be given of the excavation of the Druids' Circle (no. 277) and also of a tiny ring of five large stones (no. 275) to the north-east and of a small embanked circle (no. 278) to the south-west. Apart from other circles (nos. 271a and 279) and cairns (nos. 271b and c, 273 and 274) there is a large mound of stones with an encircling ditch and bank (no. 425), approximating in form to the Wessex bell-barrows. To the south of these, on the summit of Moelfre, is another small cairn (no. 419), and in the featureless moor-land south of Moelfre, known as Bryniau Bugeilydd, is a large cairn cemetery including at least two examples (nos. 418 and 429a) of flat barrows with stone kerbs and central cists, suggesting a Highland Zone version of the Wessex disc-barrow.

Bohonagh, Co. Cork. A recumbent-stone circle and a dolmen standing within 18 metres of each other on a hillslope at Bohonagh, near Rosscarbery, Co. Cork, were excavated by Mr E. M. Fahy of Cork Public Museum in September 1959. During the course of the work a posthole plan of a hut was discovered within 11 metres of the stone circle. None of the sites produced readily datable evidence but the monuments belong to an extensive spread of stone circles, megalithic tombs, standing stones and stone alignments which occurs throughout West Cork and the adjoining parts of Co. Kerry.

The excavation revealed that the circle originally consisted of 13 orthostats and one recumbent slab. Three of the stones had fallen and five had been robbed. Almost in the centre of the circle, which was 9 metres in diameter, a deposit of cremated human bone was discovered in a shallow, unmarked pit. The interior of the circle had been levelled by its builders and there was distinct evidence of deliberate gravelling over the area.

In common with the other stone circles of West Cork the portal stones, on the eastern side of the monument, were the tallest of the group while the recumbent, on the opposite side of the circle was the smallest.