Archaeological work preceding a housing development revealed mid-Devensian (MIS 3) deposits preserved in a geological fault, a graben feature, on an interfluve plateau. Rare evidence for Early Upper Palaeolithic open-air occupation was characterised by a scant lithic signature of the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) leaf-point techno-complex of the North European plain. The lithics included a complete leaf-point, another broken example with traces of impact damage, and knapping debitage indicating leaf-point maintenance. The site also preserved good evidence for an open-air hyaena den with abundant faunal remains. Discrete bone clusters were present, some of which probably represent meat caches for hyaena cubs in the burrows and scrapes of a maternity den. It is suggested that the hominins targeted the den site to forage the stored food. Their occupation is associated with a group of spirally-fractured wild horse bones thought to be the result of marrow extraction by humans, and these have been dated to 44,290–42,440 calibrated years before present (44.3–42.5 kyr cal bp), comparable to the date range of continental LRJ sites. The early date of the LRJ techno-complex corresponds with that of the oldest Neanderthals in northern Europe, but possibly overlaps with the recently reported early dates for anatomically modern humans. However, it is concluded that the oldest Early Upper Palaeolithic technology in northern Europe was the product of final Neanderthals.

After more than a century of work in the field a wealth of archaeological material has been recovered for analysis and interpretation by the prehistorian in his continuous attempt to understand the cultural traditions and relationships of his own ancestors. A varied array of analytical methods have grown to aid him in his task of defining ancient cultural groups. In many cases these methods have grown without their underlying principles being perfectly understood or clearly stated: they were used first and understood later. A typical example of this process has been the changing implications of the ‘Three Age System’. Curiously the position often taken today seems to suggest that no principles underlie the study of prehistory, since when these are defined they are never used and those used are rarely defined. This position is contrary to the observations of Social Anthropology and Ethnology and the pioneer work of the late Professor Childe. Wherever human actions or their fossil results, the artefact, can be studied they show distinctly non-random action conditioned by the peculiarly human attributes, namely foresight and transmitted culture. In other words they obey certain limiting principles. The present position in the study of prehistory is similar in many ways to the position of the emergent Natural Sciences in the 17th and 18th centuries; data has been amassed, but the principles remain dimly perceived or are even denied existence.

More than twenty years have elapsed since Stuart Piggott suggested the possibility of a connection between the primary Neolithic cultures of Britain and the early phases of the Funnel necked Beaker (TRB) Culture of northern Europe (Piggott 1956). What appeared at that time to many scholars, not least in Denmark, to be a very far fetched idea, must today in the light of the many new Danish excavations be considered seriously. Piggott pointed to three categories of finds which could possibly be advanced as indicators of contact: Pottery, causewayed camps and ‘unchambered’ earthen long barrows. In all three areas decisive new results have been obtained, and although this paper deals with the earthen long barrows, both the pottery and the causewayed camps will be briefly commented upon.

C. J. Becker's division of the Danish early Neolithic pottery into four major classes, the A, B, non-megalithic and megalithic C types of pottery, is still useable for the general categorization of site inventories (Becker 1948). The neat derivative system that he built, with A originating somewhere in eastern Europe, followed by B, and terminating with two contemporary C-groups, is however no longer warranted, and especially not with reference to the radiocarbon dates. Nor can the clear-cut typological division of the pottery into the four groups be maintained, since many types of pots and ornamentation occur in more than one group. For instance the B type beaker, with lines of twisted cord beneath the rim, is an integral part of the inventory of non-megalithic C sites, and also occurs in connection with megalithic C pottery.

Within the past few years the multiplication in the Egyptian Nile Valley and adjoining desert of stone industries with Levalloisian technical characters or affinities, has suggested to me that a review of the evidence about them—geological, chronological and typological—might be of some momentary value pending the resumption in a post-war world of field-work in palaeolithic studies.

Even without the perhaps beneficial interruption to them of the past six years, it was already, I think, becoming apparent before the war that the periodic stock-taking of world prehistory of rather a drastic kind was again due. It may make a clearance of several current doctrines and give others a rest. Among the latter I should myself like to number the overworked conception of culture-contact to account for modifications and new introductions within a given stone industry. Culture-contact may, I concede, have occasionally occurred in rare geographical passage-areas—Palestine is perhaps one of them, the Iberian peninsula another. But I doubt in general if, on the simple level of the Old Stone Age, we are justified in readily assuming that the industrial culture of one group was perceptibly affected by another until late in palaeolithic prehistory.

The third phase of the Shaugh Moor Project comprised survey and excavation work on the Saddlesborough Main reave and Wotter Common (fig. 1). Following the decision of the china clay companies not to develop the area immediately around Saddlesborough (Area Y), Watts, Blake and Bearne & Co Ltd and English China Clays Ltd embarked upon a joint tipping programme which will eventually destroy the terminal reave east of Saddlesborough and most of the monuments on Wotter Common (fig. 2).

The area to the north of Saddlesborough was surveyed in 1976 and limited excavation was undertaken early in 1977 (Site 10, Wainwright et al 1979). An enclosure, 1 km to the north-east of Site 10, was totally excavated in 1977 and 1978 (Site 15, Wainwright and Smith 1980). In 1979 and 1980 the area threatened by the quarry extensions was surveyed and a programme of limited excavation was undertaken on the Saddlesborough Main reave and Wotter Common (Site 208).

The Shaugh Moor project is concerned with an area of moorland in south Dartmoor north-east and north respectively of the villages of Shaugh Prior and Wotter (fig. 1). The physical threat to the evidence for settlement and land-use caused by the operations of the China Clay industry involved the Central Excavation Unit of the Department of the Environment from 1976 in a programme of survey, excavation and environmental studies related to the settlements, land boundaries, burial mounds and ceremonial structures that are to be found on this piece of moorland. The background to the project and its preliminary research strategy have been outlined in Paper I (Wainwright et al. 1979) and this publication describes the investigation of a stone-walled enclosure surrounding houses and other structures that was totally excavated in 1977 and 1978. Subsequent papers will describe the related archaeological and scientific investigations into the past environment and land-use of this block of moorland and its adjacent region.

This paper aims to offer a new analysis of the social dimensions of seafaring in the 2nd millennium BC and a consideration of the role of seafaring in (re)creating the social order at the time through its economic, sociopolitical and ritual significance. It revisits the sewn-plank boats from Ferriby, Kilnsea, Dover, Calidcot, Testwood Lakes, Goldcliff and Brigg, and aspects of the way in which seafarers signified themselves and their world through their imagined relationship with the environment are illuminated. The study argues that in the Early Bronze Age, sewn-plank boats were used for directional, long-distance journeys, aimed at the ‘cosmological acquisition’ of exotic goods, and the contexts of these boats link the overseas journeys to the ancestors. In the Middle and Late Bronze Age, sewn-plank boats were used for down-the-line exchange, and fragments of sewn-plank boats were included in structured deposits, within or near river crossings, reflecting the idioms of transformation and regeneration which are well established for this period. Through the reconstruction of the boats' crews, it is suggested that the development of a retinue was a prerequisite for the successful completion of the long-distance journeys, and the social identities that were cultivated during these voyages are recognised as a potentially important element in the rise of elite groups in the Early Bronze Age.

This paper takes Neolithic pits as a starting point from which to investigate the broader issues of settlement and deposition in Britain at that time. It suggests that while sites made up primarily, and often only, of pits have recently been incorporated much more readily into accounts of the period, they are still not well understood. It is only by investigating the character of occupation across the landscape as a whole, and the nature of deposits in a variety of different contexts, that we will be able to understand pits, settlement, or deposition fully. On the basis of a study of this kind, it is suggested that pits were sited in specific locations which might be considered suitable for ‘settlement’; it is also demonstrated that deposition varied considerably between contexts and over time. By including large numbers of sites known only through ‘grey’ reports and Historic Environment Records, the study draws on an important body of work which has been under-used in the past. The paper focuses primarily on East Anglia, a region well-known for its pit sites but not well-known for its monuments; in doing so, it aims to counterbalance the weight of previous narratives which have tended to focus on other parts of Britain.

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.

Near the conclusion of the Third Report, which summarized the work on 710 specimens, the authors stated that it was ‘likely to be the last major report of the South-Western Sub-Committee’, and so it seemed at the time. During the 10 years that have elapsed since then, another 490 specimens have been examined, from the following counties and museums or collections:

This report therefore extends the list of specimens examined by this Committee from 710 to 1200, and it is believed that this really is the last major report of this body.

This discovery was made as a result of rescue excavation in advance of road improvements by the Dorset County Council in the autumn of 1962. The site (NGR SY/99789918) now lies in the north verge of the A31 trunk road, 500 feet towards Wimborne Minster from the new Lake junction to Corfe Mullen, but in 1962 it was still included in field No. 7924, belonging to Lake Farm. Here the land, which forms part of the flood-plain of the Stour, is crossed by a spur of slightly more elevated ground extending north from Willetts Lane. There is a gentle slope westwards from the site towards the Chillwater Stream, which flows north to the Stour after descending from higher ground. The lowlying terrain to the west of this low spur used to be marshland until its reclamation, accounting for the name ‘lake’ given to the locality. The subsoil of the valley-bottom is composed variously of gravel, shingly stones and brown alluvial loam. The original vegetational cover would have been woodland of deciduous type, extending from the floor of the valley up the slope to the south and thinning out to scrub and heath on the gravel plateau 150 feet above the Stour. Today, pasture dominates the scene, with oak prominent only in hedgerow or isolated clumps.

The pit to be described below lay just over half a mile to the north-east of the site of one similar in shape and contents that was discovered in a quarry in Corfe Mullen parish some twenty-five years ago.

Based on recent evidence from both archaeological and natural sciences, in this paper we would like to sketch a historical geography of Europe and the Mediterranean around the year 1600 bc and then discuss the changes observed during the 16th century bc in relation to a possible correspondence with the Thera eruption. Our point of departure will be the sequence of events that took place during the months and years just before, during, and immediately after the Thera eruption. The available archaeological evidence permits us to explore the response of the local and regional communities, the logistics that were mobilised, and the political decisions adopted in light of these events. From this local and regional scenario we will move on to discuss the changes occurring in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East during the 16th century bc. At least four different socio-economic and political scenarios can be sketched, showing that the responses of Bronze Age societies were highly variable. At that point, we can ask how different political structures existing at the time reacted or were affected by the ecological and/or social dynamics. Basically, our itinerary concludes that the Thera eruption did not cause a severe climatic or environmental change, but touched the ideological realm particularly of those socio-political entities which were more dependent on complex ideological superstructures in order to legitimate extreme economic exploitation.

Hillforts have always been central to interpretations of Iron Age society and Ian Armit's paper in this journal (2007) re-introduces the question of whether or not they represent ‘endemic warfare’. This response will critique claims for warfare in the Early and Middle Iron Age of Wessex and present an alternative view of hillforts and how they may have been used. It is argued that within dispersed small scale agricultural societies the communal building, maintenance, and use of hillforts can act to structure the sociality of people whose interests are in creating a harmonious existence. Within this view, hillforts act as metaphors for the managing of emotional relationships within groups of people as they go about their daily lives.

The writer spent three months, during late 1963 and early 1964, journeying through the New Guinea Highlands in an attempt to trace sites where stone axes have been made in the recent past. In the Simbai (Tsembaga) and Kaironk areas steel has effectively replaced stone only within the last ten years, though some steel had been traded in a decade or so earlier (Rappaport, n.d.; Bulmer, personal communication). In the other Highlands area discussed in this paper, stone working axes had probably dropped out of use by the early 1940's. Of the ten quarry sites then examined, three had been visited before by earlier workers, two were reported to the writer by an anthropologist, C. Criper, working in the Upper Chimbu, and the others were found by walking about the country pursuing local information.

Excavation by Charles McBurney and John Clegg during the early 1960s revealed a sequence with a Mousterian occupation, of which the principal finds were two bout coupé handaxes, stratified close to the base of a Middle Devensian hyaena-den accumulation. The human occupation should belong within the period 64–38 ka with comparative and stratigraphic evidence favouring a date within the earlier part of this range before 50 ka. The hyaena-den occupation probably extends from at least 40 ka (if not 60 ka) until c. 24 ka.

For several years prior to 1935, the Ipswich Museum, through the kindness of Mr P. H. Jordan, had been enriched by gifts of fossil mammalian bones and teeth found in a gravel pit at Brundon, near Sudbury, Suffolk. From my occasional visits to this excavation, it was clear that a very rich bone bed existed there, and discoveries from time to time, of flint implements in the gravel, led me to conclude that excavations conducted at this site would yield good results. This was confirmed by the geological features of the section, which appeared to show a stratified gravel resting upon, and overlaid by, glacial deposits, thus affording an opportunity of examining that by no means common phenomenon—a true inter-glacial bed.

The definition and classification of ‘henges’ and ‘hengiform’ sites are reconsidered. A new classification is proposed based on the nature of the perimeter, the number of entrances, and a range of features within or concentric to the perimeter. It is suggested that there is no valid distinction between sites termed ‘henge’ or ‘hengiform’. The site, distribution and chronology of these sites are also considered. Some of the associated features have close parallels in earlier neolithic sites.

Excavations were undertaken in advance of construction work at Newbury Sewage Treatment Works on the outskirts of Thatcham in Berkshire, close to the sites of previous excavations undertaken by Wymer and by Peake and Crawford. Worked flint of Mesolithic date was recovered from a sandy layer overlying river gravel in two distinct concentrations suggesting two distinct episodes. Use wear analysis of the flint suggests that the sites were used as home bases at which a wide range of activities took place, with an emphasis on the processing of plant foods. A 14C date of 9100±80 BP was obtained from a sample of hazel-nut shells from within one of the concentrations. Analysis of the soil and sedimentary sequence as well as the pollen indicates constantly changing localised environments in the early Holocene in the Thatcham area, with sporadic occupation by Mesolithic communities on the drier areas at the edge of the floodplain.

Whilst research has shown many faults with the Movius scheme of a Middle Pleistocene group of Chopper/Chopping tool industries in South-East Asia, it remains a fact that pebble tool industries are still the dominant characteristic of the South-East Asian record. Exploration has now revealed hundreds of Late Pleistocene and Holocene sites in Mainland South-East Asia and these are archaeologically very different from cave sites in Europe. Further problems exist with the current nomenclature of later industries, such as the Hoabinhian and the Neolithic, for there is a large amount of overlap between such assemblages. Should such factors as economy, site location, etc. be used to assist clarification of such problems?

This paper outlines some of these issues and reveals that the pebble tool tradition as it is widely known in South-East Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). A possible reason for the change from flake to pebble tool industrial types and in the visibility of sites is the environmental changes and rise in sea level which submerged over half the available land area in the region during the Late Pleistocene. An existing broad spectrum system of exploitation was likely to have been intensified as a result of this.

The material here described was found in the Hadhramaut by Elinor Gardner and myself between November 1937 and March 1938. My personal investigation of the Palaeolithic Age was limited by pre-Islamic excavations, and I am therefore indebted to her for the gathering of most of the specimens in situ in terrace gravels, and to her detailed study of their positions.

The collection consists mainly of groups from four fairly widely separated localities; the physiography of these has already been outlined in a comprehensive paper published in the Geographical Journal. Whenever appropriate to the purpose of this account, which is to place for the first time on illustrated record all we observed about the palaeoliths, I have reused in this different context illustrations of Quaternary environment which appeared in that Journal. With thanks I acknowledge the permission of the Royal Geographical Society to do so.