Editor's note: Throughout the 1960's Jeffrey Radley was engaged in research on the Mesolithic sites of the southern Pennine area. A report on his excavations at Deepcar was published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society for 1964 (Radley and Mellars 1964) and accounts of further fieldwork undertaken in collaboration with F. Hepworth and G. Marshall appeared in various issues of the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal and the Derbyshire Archaeological Journal (Radley and Marshall 1963, 1965; Radley 1967, 1968). Shortly before his death in 1970 he was preparing a general article summarizing the present state of knowledge concerning the ‘Narrow Blade’ microlithic industries of the Pennines, and incorporating reports on the excavation of three previously unrecorded sites which fall clearly into this Narrow Blade group. One of the chief aims of this article was to draw attention to the typological diversity which can be observed within the later Mesolithic industries of northern Britain, and to contrast these assemblages with the ‘Broad Blade’ industries as represented at the sites of Deepcar and elsewhere.

In his important study of early wheeled vehicles from the Caucasus region, S. Piggott briefly considered two terracotta models of wagons with arched tilts from the Near East (Piggott 1968, 273). Following Speiser (1934), he argued that the actual wagons represented by these models had been introduced into the Near East from the Caucasus by the later 3rd millennium B.C. The present article aims at a more comprehensive review of the Near-Eastern evidence. It will be almost exclusively concerned with terracotta models of both four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts, because these constitute practically all the documentation we have of vehicles with tilts. This material undoubtedly will be incomplete, since there must be more examples among the many models that have not been published, or published only inadequately. A full description will be possible only in the one case where we have personally examined the model (wagon A1).

Thermoluminescence analysis can reveal when archaeological lithics especially siliceous stones such as flint, chert and the like have been subjected to heat treatment prior to chipping. This determination can serve as the first step in the dating of these stones, as well as stones exposed otherwise to heating, utilizing the same principles as for the thermoluminescent dating of pottery. The oldest known example of heat treatment verified by this method comes from the Solutrian industry of south-western France (ca. 15000 bc).

Circumpolar culture theory has been a persistent unifying theme in northern anthropology, playing a formative role in the development of general anthropological theory and stimulating numerous archaeological and ethnological studies of high latitude regions. One of the most important contributions to this field was Gutorm Gjessing's Circumpolar Stone Age (1944). Today this work is known as a timely synthesis in which ethnological and archaeological data were marshalled in support of an hypothesis of northern diffusion through the Arctic and Taiga zones from Scandinavia to northeastern North America. The principal elements in this proposed diffusion chain included toggling harpoons, large skin boats, oil lamps, ulu-type knives, ground slate tools, the curved-back adze or gouge, and cord-marked pottery. Later additions to this circumpolar adaptive complex included parallels in social structure, religion, and mythology (Gjessing 1953; Nordland 1968).

The petrological examination of stone implements from Leicestershire commenced in 1947, when Mr W. A. Seaby of Birmingham Museum, assisted by Mr F. W. Cottrill of Leicester Museum, started to record the implements from the county. The work of thin-sectioning was undertaken by Professor F. W. Shotton of Birmingham University. In 1955, Mr J. Bartlett, then Deputy Director of Sheffield Museum, began a similar study in Derbyshire, and he also called on Professor Shotton for the petrological identifications. Within a few years, all the stone implements in Leicester, Sheffield, Derby and Buxton Museums had been sectioned, as well as those in Mr J. P. Heathcote's private museum at Birchover and a number of smaller private collections. By 1958, about 200 implements had been sectioned, 170 from Derbyshire and 30 from Leicestershire, and Professor Shotton had handed over the petrological work on the Derbyshire implements to his colleague, Dr G. R. Coope. During the last few years, while mainly concerned with Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire (Cummins and Moore, 1973), we (the authors) have also examined a number of implements from Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Then, at the Implement Petrology Meeting at Birmingham in May 1972, we were invited to complete this work and prepare it for publication. Professor Shotton and Dr Coope very generously handed over their Derbyshire sections and the Leicestershire sections were kindly loaned by Leicester Museum.

An attempt is made to classify and list in detail the known disc-barrows in and around Wessex—about 170 in all, 155 being of normal type, 13 of ‘Dorset’ type, and two of exceptional character. Of these, 93 are in Wiltshire, 57 being within ten km of Stonehenge, and 36 within five km of that monument, which evidently acted as a magnet in attracting major barrow cemeteries to its vicinity.

The normal disc-barrow is of the ‘Wessex culture’ of the Early Bronze Age. The rite is nearly always cremation, but a very few possible instances of primary inhumation need further investigation. The grave-goods are usually necklaces of beads (amber, shale, faience, in four instances all together), in three instances with amber space-plates; bronze awls (pointed at one end and flat at the other which probably went into a handle); and small two-edged bronze knives. Occasionally the cremation is in an urn or with an ‘Aldbourne’ or other cup. The frequency of beads, and the absence of warrior equipment such as ‘Wessex’ bronze daggers, has until now led to the conclusion that they were the places of interment of females.

Since 1953 seven disc-barrows have been scientifically excavated but final reports are still awaited. The primary cremation from one of the mounds of the oval twin barrow Milton Lilbourne I was probably female. The primary cremation from the central mound of Collingbourne Kingston 18 could not be sexed; but two cremations from a large pit beneath the eccentric mound of the same barrow were identified as probably and possibly adult male. Cremations from the other sites could not be sexed. These meagre results suggest that the central or other primary mounds of disc-barrows were for females but the eccentric mounds may have been for either sex. The sexing of more cremations is urgently needed.

The aim of this paper is to explain the principles of the storage of grain in underground pits and to present an interim summary of the results so far obtained from a long-term series of grain storage experiments and their implications. At the outset it must be made clear that the trends indicated by the results are, in fact, trends and that the implications presented are to be considered accordingly. A major problem that besets any experimental research programme, especially in the field of agriculture, is the need for consistent and long-term replication of specific experiments in order to gain sound and reliable data. However, it is equally important that interim results should be published both to present the problems suggested by those results and to avoid the possible duplication of work by ‘ad hoc’ exercises. The basic point so far appreciated is the great need to focus much more attention on the careful acquisition of the raw archaeological data from excavations in such a way that valid comparisons between feature types can be made and that subsequent experimental work can have a statistically proven basis.

An excellent survey of the documentary and archaeological evidence for pits in the Iron Age has already been published (Bowen and Wood 1968). This paper also includes a report of an exploratory experiment storing corn in underground pits.

One aspect of prehistoric crop agriculture which has received little attention is the purity of the crops when ready for either storage or consumption. For two reasons, this topic deserves consideration. First, the number of weed seeds and other impurities in a fully-processed crop is an indication of the efficiency of the prevailing technology for grain cleaning. There are several reasons why it would have been desirable to remove as many weeds as possible from a crop. Many for example are poisonous and should be removed from a crop before it is eaten. The sowing of a pure seed is also one way of controlling the growth of weeds, and thus maintaining economic crop yields. One pound of herbage seed for example, containing 1 per cent by weight of the seeds of mouse-eared chick-weed (Cerastium arvense L.) could result in as many as 43,360 plants of chick-weed per acre and cause severe reduction in the yield of the main crop (Gill and Vear 1958). Barley yields in one experiment were reduced from 21½ to 7½ bushels per acre through the growth of bind-weed (Leonard and Martin 1967). Since the artefactual evidence for prehistoric grain cleaning is meagre, the composition of the crops themselves must be our chief source of evidence. A second reason why the composition of prehistoric crops when ready for storage or consumption deserves study is that it affords a way of knowing whether crops consisted of one or several cultigens at a given period.

An excavation at the Iron Age Promontory Fort at Embury Beacon is described. Most of the work was concentrated on the inner rampart, its entrance and the small remaining portion of the interior, where structures revealed by post holes were associated with Glastonbury style pottery. The outer rampart was also sectioned and areas within the wide intervallum space investigated.

The morphology of a group of settlement sites in North West Wales is used to demonstrate an application of Numerical Taxonomy. Using average link cluster analysis 83 out of a total of 285 known sites are grouped into seven morphological classes which provide a basis for further analysis and interpretation.

After the successful construction of the Overton Down Experimental Earthwork (Jewell 1963), the Experimental Earthworks Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science went ahead with plans to build a second earthwork. It was agreed to site this on acidic sands in lowland Britain, thus providing a contrast to the alkaline environment of Overton Down. The site chosen was the Morden Bog National Nature Reserve, Wareham, Dorset. This report is an account of the construction of the earthwork and of the results of the first four sections.