The surveys of the megalithic tombs of France made by Bertrand (1864; 1875), the Sous-Commission des Monuments mégalithiques, Adrien de Mortillet (1901), and Joseph Déchelette enabled maps to be made which showed the essential features of the distribution in space of the thousands of prehistoric collective tombs in France. Déchelette listed a total of 4457 dolmens and allées couvertes: fresh regional surveys and fieldwork in the fifty years that have elapsed since the publication of the first volume of his Manuel d'archéologie préhistorique, celtique et gallo-romaine in 1908 have increased this figure to between five and a half and six thousand tombs. This quantitative increase, however, has in no way altered the qualitative picture of the distribution in space of the megalithic tombs in France, implicit in Bertrand's original essay, and explicit in the analyses of Déchelette and Adrien de Mortillet.

Bertrand had emphasized that the ‘dolmens’ of France occurred mainly west of a line from Marseilles to Brussels; Adrien de Mortillet's map stressed the main axis of distribution, namely from Brittany to the Gulf of Lions, and the very large numbers of megalithic tombs that exist in the six departments of the Ardèche, Lozère, Aveyron, Gard, Hérault and Lot.

It is the purpose of this article to analyze and discuss the flint industries characterized by the production of trapezes from blades that as a rule were broad and regular, industries which appeared in many parts of the continent during the closing phase of the local mesolithic. After a word on classification (fig. 1) the evidence for the occurrence of these industries will be summarized on a geographical basis (fig. 2). Finally, some discussion will be offered as to their significance, above all in relation to the spread of neolithic culture.

Before the end of the 1st century B.C. the Celtic coinages in south-east Britain had begun to employ representational types in place of or in addition to traditional and barely intelligible patterns. By the time the coins ceased nearly a century later, a great many of these representational types had been issued. The purpose of this paper is to try to show from enlarged reproductions to what extent these coins provide a visual illustration of life and customs in this country immediately before the Roman Conquest.

In a period of intense archaeological effort, such as the present, it is odd that this has not already been attempted. The reason lies partly in the intractability of coin material, but perhaps more in the fear of reading false meanings into coin types with such an obvious debt to Greece and Rome. This caution is reasonable, but can be carried too far. There are remarkably few British coins which are unchanged copies of Roman originals. The Celtic engravers rapidly and to a surprising degree absorbed the ideas and art forms of the classical world, but used them more often than not to depict Celtic or partly Celtic themes. Opinions may vary on where the dividing line comes, but it may be said with confidence that in a great majority of these coins, side by side with strong Greco-Roman influences, there remains an element of representation which is indubitably Celtic. Our task is to identify it.

At the Third Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, held in Livingstone in 1955, there was a symposium on the early Pebble Cultures of Africa. It became apparent from the discussion that followed that there was considerable divergence of opinion among prehistorians as to the criteria that distinguished artificial from natural fracture. Specimens that were acceptable as artifacts to some were not acceptable to others and it became clear that considerably more research was necessary into the way in which nature can fracture stone by percussion and in particular into the natural fracture of pebbles. It is especially important to know whether nature can simulate Kafuan- and Oldowan-type pebble tools. This is because the great majority of Kafuan tools from the type areas are abraded, often considerably, although Lowe mentions that Kafuan tools occur unrolled in the 175-foot terrace in the Kafu river as also in the 270-foot terrace in the Kagera Valley.

It has been possible recently to correlate some well known Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age finds from the Ancholme Valley, north Lincolnshire, with the stratigraphy of the valley and with the pollen statistical zone scheme. A digest of the material of archaeological interest is presented here together with an account of the investigation of the site of the dugout canoe at Short Ferry, Fiskerton, near Lincoln.

Close ny chollagh lies on the southern coast of the Isle of Man (fig. 1), about one mile south-west of Castletown, and is one of the group of Manx fortified coastal sites. It is not on a promontory, having land adjacent to it on two of its four sides, but the deep gully to the south combines with an artificial ditch along the rest of the landward side to make it a position of some strength.

When it was chosen for excavation in 1953 it was thought that the Manx promontory forts belonged to the Viking Age, and Close ny chollagh did indeed have a mediaeval level in which the principal building was a long-house of Scandinavian type. There was also, however, an Iron Age level, separated by a sterile layer from the later one, clearly demonstrating for the first time an Iron Age origin for one of the Manx promontory forts. It is to this Iron Age phase in the history of the fort that the present report is devoted.

The Early Iron Age of Wessex has been the study of many distinguished archaeologists, and any fresh investigation is bound to be in large part either a synthesis or a development of the results of earlier workers. Among the latter must be included not only such notable scholars as General Pitt-Rivers, the Cunningtons, Professor Hawkes, Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Mr Radford, but a multitude of professional archaeologists and amateurs, whose accumulated labours help to give solidity to the picture. The present writer owes a profound debt to all of these; he would also like to acknowledge personal help especially from Mr Raymond Farrar, Mr J. Stevens Cox, Mr A. L. F. Rivet, Mr J. B. Calkin, and from the Curators of the Museums at Dorchester, Farnham (Dorset), Salisbury, Devizes and Taunton.

The present paper is a study of the ‘C’ cultures, i.e. cultures of the latest phase of the Early Iron Age which are not simply survivals of ‘B’ cultures, in Wessex. For the present purpose I take Wessex to be the area covered by Sheet 11 of the Ordnance Survey ¼ inch map, excluding the area of undoubted Belgic occupation in the East (which I shall attempt to define later), and in addition a westward extension to the River Exe. In other words, it is a study, primarily (Part I) of the ‘Durotrigian’ culture of Dorset and its borders, and also (Part II) of whatever Belgic penetration can be demonstrated in the surrounding area.

The investigation of trade relations as they continued onward from the middle of the second millennium B.C. is at present one of the most fruitful methods of establishing the chronological sequence of the Bronze Age in northern Eurasia. In a recent article (Gimbutas, 1956) I attempted to correlate the Seima and Borodino dates with those of the Near East on the one hand, and of China on the other, basing my argument on analogies among widely-distributed artifacts of close affinity. Stratigraphical evidence is of no less importance than the presence of traded objects and deserves special attention. By now numerous stratified sites lying east and west of the Middle Urals have been discovered. In 1956 Raushenbakh's study appeared, a monograph, which, by a thorough description of Neolithic and Bronze Age sites east of the Middle Urals, with special emphasis upon the Gorbunovo peat-bog site, demonstrated clearly the importance of Middle Ural finds for defining the chronology of the forested region of northern Eurasia.

Since World War II continuous excavations at the confluence of the Kama and Chusovaia Rivers have been directed and described chiefly by O. N. Bader and have revealed stratified and unstratified Sub-Neolithic and Bronze Age habitation sites and cemeteries, all encompassed within a small area.

In the autumn of 1949 when ploughing was taking place on a south-eastern spur of Steyning Round Hill (Map Ref. 51/166099), fig. 1, two schoolboys D. Atkinson and M. J. Manetta found the remains of nine Late Bronze Age urns with cremated bones just under the surface of the plough soil. They lay in a circular area roughly 30 feet in diameter covered with large flints. Most of these urns were wisely left in situ until the Steyning Grammar School Archaeological Society under the direction of the Headmaster, Mr J. Scragg, and Mr W. Gardiner, assisted by Messrs N. E. S. Norris, G. Mason, and the writer, members of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society, undertook a methodical exploration. Our grateful thanks should be recorded to the farmer, Capt J. T. Mackley, who permitted the excavation and to all who helped in the work and dealt with the finds, as well as to Mr D. C. Tutt for kindly drawing the plan and pottery.

The Apennine Culture of the Middle and Late Bronze Age of Italy extended in space from the Po Valley to the Gulf of Taranto, and from the Gargano to Lipari, and in time from at least 1500 to 1000 B.C. It is represented in the museums by its pottery, and little else. Yet this is sufficient for an examination of it to reveal important regional and chronological variations, which form the subject of the present paper.

The pottery of the Apennine Culture consists of two distinct classes, both invariably hand-made. The first is a coarse, unburnished ware indistinguishable from the corresponding classes of pottery in preceding and succeeding periods. Decoration is common, consisting of cordons, plain or impressed, indentations of the rim and, rarely, applied knobs or bosses which merge imperceptibly into the form of the very common simple lug handles. Shapes include heavy jars of various sizes, from great pithoi for water, oil or grain storage, with lugs only, to smaller mug- or cup-like ones, often with single vertical strap handles. Smallest of all are miniature vessels, as little as an inch high, which may be votive (the Grotta Pertosa produced several hundred examples) or simply children's toys. The second, commoner, and much more important ware is a fine, medium, darkfaced, burnished one, and in this all the more characteristic forms were made. A bold decoration of bands, dotted, hatched, excised or void, is frequent though by no means universal.

‘He lifted a large boulder and discovered five hundred Armorican coins. For countless years a large boulder had lain undisturbed in the corner of a field belonging to Miss Amy. … Time and again it had been scraped and chipped by ploughs, but nobody had ever thought of moving it. But on Tuesday morning it fouled the plough once too often and seventeen-year old Peter Langlois decided that it was time to remove it’. This passage, quoted from the Evening Post of 25th January last, records one of the most important discoveries ever made in the island; it was made on 22nd January 1957, at Le Catillon de Haut, in the parish of Grouville.

Jersey has the distinction of being the home of a very active learned society with a Museum that forms a true centre of archaeological research; it is well known to its citizens and has a reputation reaching far beyond its borders. My friends Father Burdo, Major Rybot, the learned numismatist, and Mr Emile Guiton, the Curator, were so kind as to invite me to examine this latest discovery, of which I made a preliminary inventory in February. Its interest is very great.… But before proceeding to an examination of the hoard I should like to place it in its proper perspective and to give a short summary of earlier discoveries, in so far as these are known. Mrs Jacquetta Hawkes has already listed these finds in her Archaeology of the Channel Islands. Here I shall confine myself to the numismatic details that characterize them.

As last year, the following notes have been gathered from many sources and thanks are due to all those who supplied them, and also to those who sent in ‘nil returns’. Prof. M. O'Kelly, the Council for British Archaeology and Ministry of Works, Mr E. M. Jope, Mr J. G. Scott and Dr H. Savory were again especially helpful in their particular regions.