Since the publication of the “Report on the Excavations at Grime's Graves, Weeting, Norfolk,” the following additional information has been received.

Dr. Knud Andersen has identified the following bones:—Pit I., Layer 4, Natterer's Bat, Whiskered Bat. Pit II., Layer 6, Natterer's Bat, Whiskered Bat, Common Shrew (Sorex araneus). The last-named had not previously been noted at the Graves.

Mr. Henry Dewey, F.G.S., examined some pellets found in a pocket in the sand, 2 ft. from the west buttress of No. 6 Gallery and 2 ft. above the floor in Pit II. Many similar nodules were found during the excavations. He says:—“They consist of a mixture of chalk and hydrated-oxide of iron, which have probably arisen as the result of weathering of iron pyrites nodules. When boiled in dilute hydrochloric acid a solution of ferric-chloride results, pointing to the presence of iron in the pellets. The substance gives a brownish-red streak, and could of course be used as red ochre.”

At the present time, when the old classification of Prehistoric implements is being considerably modified, and superficial “floors,” “stations,” and surface finds are no longer collectively referred to the Neolithic period, it will be of interest to record a site which has never been described, and which I shall hope to show in the present paper contains a number of forms which correspond with those of cave sites and which, moreover, have not hitherto been found on a Neolithic one. At the end of this paper some reasons are given in support of the above conclusions.

I have known Nettlebed for about 15 years, and for more than half that time the Common was a waste. Now a large portion of it, over which presumably the “floor” extended, is levelled for a recreation-ground. It will always be a matter of regret to me that it was only in 1913 I happened to examine the pit, as no doubt a large number of implements are permanently buried beneath the recreation-ground. The large sand-pit is some 300 yards in length. On the talus of this I picked up in 1913 a number of fresh-looking flakes with such sharp edges that I thought at first they were recent.

During 1911 Mr. Reginald A. Smith, F.S.A., mentioned to me that some long flakes which fitted together had been presented to the British Museum by Captain R. A. Vansittart, and were described as being from North Cray gravel-pit. Prior to this I had visited the pit on one or two occasions and noted the section exposed, but without finding any implements or flakes; however, on receipt of this information another visit was made and the workmen questioned.

It appeared that the flakes mentioned had been found at the junction of the gravel with the alluvium by my informant, some nine or ten years ago, when the gravel on the east bank of the Cray was being worked (indicated in Fig. 1), but nothing had been found since.

Nevertheless, the pit was kept under observation and, after some dozens of visits, I obtained from the man, on June 10th, 1912, the implement (Fig. 2) and a few flakes; on another occasion the “worked-angle” flake (Fig. 4), and since then a few simple flakes—in all, one implement, two cores, one hammer-stone, one worked-angle flake, two flakes showing signs of use, and eighteen simple flakes.

The implements which Mr. G. W. Smith has been good enough to exhibit at my suggestion are a selection from no less than one hundred and seventy in his collection from a small and shallow pit on high ground overlooking the Thames, near Tilehurst Station, 3 miles north-west of the centre of Reading. It is perhaps unfamiliar ground to members of this Society, but has been well studied in the past, and the following list, together with other papers quoted in the text, will put the reader in possession of the principal facts at present ascertained as to the geology and flint-finds of the neighbourhood:—

Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., LIV., 600 (sketch-map of the high gravels near Reading, Tilehurst and Goring Heath being marked alike).

Q.J.G.S., XLIX., 311, from which the accompanying section of the Thames Valley is derived (Fig. 8).

Q.J.G.S., XLVIII., 40, where the Tilehurst plateau-gravel is described as glacial.

Proc. Geol. Assoc., XV., 157 and 308.

Proc. Geol. Assoc., VIII., 348 (heights given, above the river and Ordnance datum, of flint-finds).

Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Archæological Journal, II., 16 (Treacher).

Trans. Berks Archæol. and Archit. Soc., 1881–2 (Stevens).

A series of implements were collected during the summer and autumn of 1914 from an area of some twenty square miles lying between the Cray Valley and Kingsdown in North Kent. The specimens were not distributed uniformly over this area, but confined more or less to a few localities where they occurred in considerable numbers. It is, moreover, significant that these localities are on high land commanding extensive views of the surrounding country, and especially of the river valleys. The sites were presumably chosen for this and another reason—the local abundance of green-coated flint, a material which was largely employed in the manufacture of implements.

The sites had been inhabited by a succession of peoples who left their implements behind them. Among these the commonest are assignable to the Neolithic period, but Palæolithic implements are by no means rare. There are, moreover, localities where only Palæolithic forms are found, and these all of one pattern, namely, the pointed ovate. Many possess the familiar reversed S twist, and all are deeply patinated, either pure white, pinkish-yellow, or cream.

The object of this paper is to describe and illustrate a series of heavily mineralised bone implements of a primitive type which (in the case of the Red Crag) have been found associated with numerous humanly-fashioned flints during diggings conducted in the detritusbed below the base of the Red and Coralline “Crags” of Suffolk.

The author is fully aware of his heterodoxy in claiming that bone was utilised in implement-making at such a remote period as that to which any pre-Crag remains must be referred, but having conducted a number of experiments in which mineralised and unmineralised bones were subjected to the effects of fortuitous blows and pressure, and after having fractured numerous modern shank bones of the bullock by striking and cutting them with flints and other stones held in the hand with a view of thus shaping them to the forms of the sub-Crag examples, he is compelled to regard these latter specimens as undoubted works of man.

The series of implements which the writer is describing is the result of seven years' research by Major Moore, of Walton, at the mouth of the river Deben on the Felixstowe side of Bawdsey Ferry.

Major Moore was the first to discover that in the heaped-up shingles which are continually shifting at this spot, many rolled and abraded flints showing human workmanship are included. As in the case of the Larne coast finds in Ireland, most of the flints have a white or creamy-white lustrous surface, though in some examples they are ochreous or even black.

The large majority consist of flakes and spalls, and are the refuse of a prehistoric flint factory, but among them are undoubted tools. To what culture they belong is the riddle, which we can only hope to solve by a better acquaintance with them.

Coming down out of the Chiltern Hills, the River Mimram runs in a comparatively narrow gorge in a S.E. direction, until it joins the Lea near Hertford. The last-named river pursues a parallel course to the westward, as a consequent stream, but on leaving the Chilterns it runs, still S.E., across a wide subsequent valley. The latter stretches, in a gentle curve, from Hertford on the E. to Rickmansworth, south of which place it debouches on the Thames valley. Down the huge subsequent valley ice must have pushed its way from the Bishop's Stortford and Hitchin gaps, reinforced by minor supplies from the Chilterns. There is boulder clay at Hertford and further west at Hatfield, within the valley. On reaching the southern side of the latter, in Hatfield Park, the Lea is suddenly deflected eastward. The way is barred by the high ground on that bank, capped by tertiary outliers. At Hertford it takes another and sharper turn, due south, to join the Thames at London.

The sub-Crag detritus-bed, sometimes called the nodule bed, or the Suffolk bone bed, was first brought to the notice of geologists by the late Prof. Henslow, who, in 1843, discovered that the Crag contained many nodules rich in lime phosphates, of great agricultural and commercial value—mostly known as “Coprolites,” though not of coprolitic origin, unless the spirally-formed bodies are the coprolitic rejectamenta of sharks or other animals having a spiral intestine.

The detrital bed is principally made up of the following constituents:—(1) Phosphatic nodules (the so-called Coprolites). (2) Sandstone nodules or box-stones. (3) Rocks of various ages earlier than the Crag. (4) Large chalk flints, many unrolled. (5) Rolled and waterworn bones, usually much mineralised. (6) Cetacean beaks, and other bones. (7) Bones and teeth of land mammalia. (8) Wood and other items, chiefly of uncertain age.

The above groups are of very different periods, and I propose treating each one separately, their origin and mode of occurrence as far as is known, or suggested.

In 1906 I described a “Cissbury type” station at Ringland, Norfolk, the implements lying abundantly on the surface of two fields and covering an area of about 440 yards in length by 90 yards in width. The fields are at the foot of a steep tree-clad ridge known as Cobb's Hills, and slope gently to the river Wensum which is but a few yards distant from the lower part of the fields and is here about 34 feet above O.D. Some of the implements were described and figured in our “Proceedings,” and the site has yielded about 900 implements and several thousand flakes.

In a gravel pit not far from Mannington, Norfolk, a number of cinerary urns have been from time to time exposed. The pit, perhaps better described as a sand pit, is on the summit of a mound or low hill, which does not appear to have been artificially raised, and the fact that some urns have been found in an adjoining field, also a low hill, renders it less likely that the natural contour of the ground has been disturbed. The urns lie a very short distance beneath the present surface, not more than from six or eight inches up to a foot, as a rule, and so they are generally much broken by ploughing, etc. But they are not so much disturbed but that their contents remain in situ.

The urns vary in the excellence of their workmanship, but none is very fully burnt. The accompanying photograph (Plate XXXV.) represents an exceptionally perfect one, and also some fragments of others showing the decoration. But the immediate purpose of this communication is to call attention to one in the bottom of which there was an oval hole. This had been mended by pouring molten lead into it; apparently the urn was stood upon sand and the molten lead poured into the inside, the excess running out into a feather edge. An examination of this specimen shows quite conclusively that the lead was used deliberately to mend the hole, and was not derived from some article of lead melted in the urn and accidentally running into the hole.