It is hardly necessary to point out the archaeological importance of the Christchurch region. As Mr Crawford showed in 1912, here was the great port of prehistoric Wessex, with the Avon and the Stour joining to flow into the sea by Hengistbury Head and providing natural waterways to Salisbury Plain and Cranborne Chase respectively. The results of Mr Bushe-Fox's excavations at Hengistbury in 1912, the contents of the well-known Druitt Collection, and above all the admirable work of preservation and publication carried out by Mr J. B. Calkin show that throughout the prehistoric periods the valley gravels above the Stour and the plateau gravels and sands now occupied by the town of Bournemouth constituted an area of optimum settlement. Most remarkable however is the presence of a long barrow, the subject of this report, on the gravel terrace above the Stour in Holdenhurst parish, and only 35 feet O.D.

During the last few years the importance of the flake cultures of the lower Palaeolithic has been recognised by prehistorians, and great advances have been made towards the correlation of these industries with the various biface cultures, and in the working out of their stratigraphical sequence.

The position of the Clactonian has been firmly established, and the long neglected Levalloisian industry is now assuming its proper place of importance. Much confusion has been caused in the past by the misleading nomenclature of these two industries. The Clactonian was often called Abbevillian (Chellian), or Acheulian, and the evolved Clactonian, Mousterian. The Levalloisian was believed to be a part of the Acheulian, and was also frequently miscalled Mousterian. These two flake cultures, sometimes dovetailing with, and sometimes running parallel to the biface industries, culminate in the Mousterian, when they join, via the Tayacian, with the Acheulian biface technique to form a polymorphic culture; the local variations of this usually combine at least two of the techniques. These variations are in a great respect governed by the quality and size of the blocks of material available for making artifacts.

The cairn at Mount Stewart has attracted wide attention as the alleged find-site of one of the very small group of Irish beakers. Since the ‘beaker’ and another bowl-shaped food-vessel from the cairn have now been rediscovered in the Belfast Municipal Museum—and the last relic of the cairn recently removed—we feel the time has come for a review of the available data.

Denton's pit, Southcote, is situated about one mile to the west of Reading, immediately to the south of the Great West Road. The map references are as follows:—

6 inch. Berkshire 37 N.W. Lat. 51° 26′ 40″ N. Long. 1° 0′ 0″ w.

1 inch. 5th Edition, Sheet 113. Square 1,070–1,075 E. 1,295–1,300 N.

Geological. Sheet 268. (1 inch).

Setting aside the cosmological and meteorological speculations on the reconstruction of the climate of the south-eastern Mediterranean countries in the Pleistocene epoch, the bases of which are somewhat inadequate, there remains only geological evidence for the interpretation of that epoch. This evidence includes the information yielded by sediments: in the first place, those terrestrial types of soils which are the strongest indicators of climate influences and in the second place, the fauna and flora, in so far as types with enhanced power of climatological reaction are in any way recognisable. In 1932, I discussed the significance of the soils and will dwell on this subject at the end of this paper. My present task is mainly concerned with an attempt to submit the Pleistocene livingworld—within the limits of our present knowledge—to a critical investigation and to reconcile the results with our previous conclusions.

Parc Le Breos House stands in the south and centre of the Gower peninsula in West Glamorgan, about a mile north-west of Parkmill and a mile north of Penmaen, two small villages on the main road from Swansea westwards to Port Eynon and Rhossili. In the extensive woods surrounding the house is a small valley leading from Llethrid in the north to Parkmill in the south, and variously known as Parc le Breos Cwm, Parc Cwm, Green Cwm, and Happy Valley. A rough track leads up this valley from Parkmill to Green Cwm cottage, and, immediately to the west of this track and a little over half-a-mile north-west of Parkmill is the chambered barrow which forms the subject of this paper. Iron railings run round the greater part of the barrow, and inside these railings the barrow is covered with a heavy growth of trees. The sides of the Cwm are heavily wooded but the valley bottom is free from trees and the barrow thus stands out very clearly. It lies about a mile and a half from the sea at Oxwich Bay, and a little over fifty feet above sea-level. It is in the parish of Penmaen and is marked as ‘Tumulus’ on the current 6 inch (Glam. 22 S.W.) and 1 inch (100 G 11) maps; it is number IOI on the recently published Map of South Wales showing the distribution of Long Barrows and Megaliths, and number 122 in Mr Grimes's recent paper in these Proceedings.

The discovery of a prolific palaeolithic site near Cambridge, led to an examination of its relationship to other sites in England, and it seemed that the time was approaching for a general survey of the palaeolithic succession in this country concerned with open stations of a period prior to that already dealt with by Dr Garrod and Dr Grahame Clark. To this end it is intended to devote a series of papers, to be published consecutively in this journal, descriptive of various industries in the light of the latest evidence, both geological and prehistoric.

The first paper, hereunder, is given over to a description and analysis of the palaeolithic site mentioned, for, as will be demonstrated, it has been found essential to the main thesis on succession. The sequence in East Anglia will be chosen for initial study, partly because it is a region with which the author is best acquainted, and also because it has been found to form a distinct cultural province, more nearly related, indeed, to Belgium and Germany than to southern England and France. The contacts between these provinces are many and it will be the whole purpose of one of this series of articles to show these connections by cultural and geological correlations. Therefore, references to comparable industries will be left out of the discussion of the finds following the description, and will be treated fully in an appropriate chapter at a later date.

For many years, Professor P. G. H. Boswell has studied the Pleistocene deposits of East Anglia and, from time to time, published most illuminating reviews summarising the progress of work and discussing the possible relations to the corresponding deposits of other districts (especially 1931, 1932, 1936). In his Presidential Address to the Prehistoric Society last year, he paid particular attention to a problem which has often been attacked but not yet solved satisfactorily, namely the correlation of East Anglia with the Continent; and he suggested, as a possible way out of the difficulties, the correlation of the Hunstanton Boulder Clay with Würm 2, the Upper Chalky Drift with Würm 1, the Great Chalky Boulder Clay with Riss, the North Sea Drift with Mindel, and the later Crag deposits containing a cold fauna, with Günz. He admitted, however, that such a correlation would ‘bring other difficulties in its train.’

Mr Piggott's survey of British neolithic pottery in 1932 revealed the dense concentration of Windmill Hill pottery in and near the Yorkshire Wolds, while in a later note Mr Sheppard drew attention to further neolithic fragments in the Mortimer collection, and published one of the Hanging Grimston bowls, newly reconstructed from fragments. But much of the Yorkshire pottery could not be traced; its existence was merely inferred from Greenwell's and Mortimer's descriptions. Recently, however, through the kindness of the authorities of the British Museum and the Mortimer Museum at Hull the writer has been able to go through the entire reserves of both the Greenwell and the Mortimer Collections, with the result that almost all the missing pottery has been traced, bowls only known from fragments have been completed, stratigraphical details have been recovered, and a large number of entirely new sites has come to light. In view of this mass of new material the time seemed ripe to attempt a complete account of the neolithic pottery of Yorkshire, including both the old and the new material, and to see what light its distribution, associations and affinities throw both on the complex interrelationships of the neolithic folk throughout the country, and on the prehistory of its own area.

Of the two main divisions of neolithic pottery, by far the greatest quantity is of the ‘A’ type; the pure ‘B’ is nowhere represented, but some half dozen sites, whose significance is discussed later, have produced sherds which show indirect ‘B’ influence.