In 1920 a research laboratory was established by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at the British Museum under the direction of Dr Alexander Scott, F.R.s., to carry out a particular task, namely, the restoration of museum objects which had suffered as a result of an enforced evacuation underground during the last war. Several years were required to complete the work, which involved the development of safe methods of arresting the decay of materials as diverse as paper, vellum, leather, wood, bone and ivory, stone, fur and feathers and metals.

The cult which is the subject of this paper centres round that magnificent snow-white gastropod shell called Chank by Europeans, sangu by the Tamil divers who fish it in the Gulf of Mannar,. and sankha by the people of Aryan speech in the north of India. To zoologists it is known as Xancus pyrum (L.), a name which replaces the former ones of Turbinella pyrmm and T. rapa. It is strangely local in distribution ; its main habitat is the sands between and around the rock-strewn pearl-banks of the Gulf of Mannar; here it thrives best, is most abundant, and grows to the largest size and most symmetric shape (FIG. I). Another centre where the same form is found is the northwest coast of Kathiawar but here its numbers are relatively few. A somewhat stunted variety or sub-species exists in Palk Bay and Strait and along the Coromandel Coast, with another in the Cape Comorin region, while one, sufficiently distinct to be given specific rank, occurs in the Andaman Islands. Nowhere outside of India is the chank found; neither in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, nor in Malayan and Australian waters does any closely related species occur.

If we mark upon a map the sites of those caves and rock-shelters which contain examples of palaeolithic paintings and drawings we find that in the Franco–Cantabrian region (which comprises southwest France and northwest Spain) they fall naturally into three well-defined groups, the particular district in which each group is situated being decided accidentally, or rather geologically, by the occurrence within it of a number of limestone caverns no great distance from each other. And when we make a more detailed study of these groups we find that there is in each group one cave wherein the art of the district is at its best—a cave that we may consider the art-centre of its district. The three cave-groups in question are to be found respectively in the Dordogne district, of which the outstanding cave is Font de Gaume; in the northern Pyrenees district, wherein most of the best art can be found at Niaux ; and in the Cantabrian district of northwest Spain, where the cave of Altamira is pre-eminent by reason of its wonderful painted ceiling.

The faunal environment of man, as is well known, has profoundly affected his mental as well as his physical life. The Altamira and other animal-drawings made by Palaeolithic man, whether regarded as disinterested efforts at pure art or as magical symbols intended to ensure success in the chase, are sufficient evidence of the extent to which the cave bear, the bison, the mammoth, and other great beasts figured in the minds of their human contemporaries. Professor Othenio Abel considers that Mousterian man associated certain cult-conceptions with the bears he had killed, and kindred ideas are still found in remote parts of the world. Finds of actual bear remains in more or less clear association with human remains or artifacts are of course numerous. Confining ourselves to Great Britain, bones attributed to Ursus spelaeus were ‘ very common ’ at Paviland cave, Glamorgan, which yielded also artifacts covering the period from Mousterian to the end of Aurignacian times. Cat’s Hole, Long Hole, and Hoyle’s Mouth, all in South Wales ; Kent’s cavern in Devonshire ; King Arthur’s cave in the Wye valley ; Aveline’s Hole, Gough’s cave, and Wookey Hole in the Mendips ; Ffynnon Beuno cave in the vale of Clwyd ; the Victoria cave in Yorkshire ; Creswell Crags and Langwith cave in Derbyshire ; are other sites which have yielded both remains of bear and human artifacts of various periods.

The incised slabs of the rectangular cist in the cairn at Kivik rank with the Hagia Triada sarcophagus in being among the most important discoveries so far made of evidence bearing on the funeral rites of the Bronze Age in Europe, and it seems certain that pending further discoveries these two monuments form the foundation on which our study of Bronze Age funeral customs must be built.

Before discussing the Kivik cairn itself it is well to glance at the archaeological setting of Kivik and the surrounding country, for on this the correct interpretation of the Kivik slabs depends.