This paper examines whether there really are fundamental differences between a Celtic model of social organisation and the observations made by J.D. Hill about PRIA social organisation in southern England. Hill's alternative model, which in his opinion seems to be fundamentally at odds with what can be learned from Celtic sources, is characterised by the importance of three main factors. These are the essentially ideological, east-facing orientation of Iron Age houses and enclosed settlements, the ideological boundedness of individual homesteads, and the household as the centre of production. Yet, an examination of the medieval Irish andWelsh literature reveals that these three fundamental characteristics also seem to define the societies described in the Celtic texts. However, while the household is the central independent social and economic unit, the medieval texts also put great emphasis on kinship, with kin-groups fulfilling important, complementary roles for the individual households. It is examined whether a kind of society that is not dominated by either households or kinship, but by both households and kinship, can successfully explain all the archaeological phenomena observable in PRIA Britain, including different ‘hillforts’ possibly fulfilling several different functions. The striking similarities that can be found between the kinds of societies proposed by Hill as inhabiting PRIA Britain and those described in the medieval Irish and Welsh sources force us to consider whether the Celtic should not better be returned to PRIA Britain, and whether the ‘different Iron Ages’ were not that different after all.

It is probably well known that the Japanese compelled Allied prisoners of war to work on the Bangkok-Moulmein railway, which was constructed during the war through the jungles of Siam and Burma. The author, who was captured in Java, arrived at the base camp of Nom-Pladuk on the 9th of February, 1943, and was sent at once to Taroewa, a village situated some 8 miles up-country. Being a member of the so-called ‘nail-shift,’ I started from this camp whenever opportunities presented themselves to study the entire region of the railway and the immediate surroundings as far north as the ‘Three Pagodas Pass’ on the Siam-Burma frontier, where the connection with the Burma section of the railway was accomplished. The total distance involved is somewhat over 140 miles, and the course of the river, the Mei Fingnoi, or Meklong, was always followed. Since all my discoveries were made along the first 75 miles of the railway, the remaining part need hardly be mentioned.

From the outset, I was constantly on the alert for prehistoric remains, this being possible since much ground was removed during the construction of the railway, but methodical investigations were naturally out of the question, while much of the material collected was subsequently lost again. All my scientific notes were taken from me by the Japanese.

A collapsed rockshelter site, WHS 784 X (Yutil al-Hasa), in the Wadi Hasa drainage in west-central Jordan was tested in 1984. Technological and typological analyses of the stone artifact assemblages suggest that it pertains to the latest phases of the Levantine Upper Paleolithic ‘Ahmarian Tradition’. Excellent faunal preservation allowed the identification of several ungulate species, as well as other taxa. These data and the topographic setting of the site indicated that WHS 784 X was probably a hunting camp used in part to monitor the (seasonal?) movements of herds of equids and gazelles. Dating at 19,000 uncal BP, the occupations fall at the Upper Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic transition as conventionally defined, and represent one of the first well-documented occurrences of an Ahmarian limited activity site. Work at WHS 784 X contributes to the rapidly improving state of Levantine Upper Paleolithic systematics and provides a fuller understanding of life at the end of the Upper Paleolithic in the southern Levant.

In 1973, excavations were carried out in a rockshelter called River Rockshelter in Laikipia District, Kenya (the results will be published in AZANIA). The archaeological deposit was c 80 cm thick and contained an abundant lithic material belonging to a Late Stone Age industry. The deposit was excavated in seven layers each 5–15 cm thick. The stratigraphy was as follows (fig. 1):

1. 0–10 cm, brown, loose fine-grained earth;

2. 10–35 cm, brown, hard, medium-grained soil with stone slabs;

3. 35–50 cm, greyish brown, hard gravel with small stone slabs;

4. 50 cm + grey, hard gravel.

Stratigraphical layers, radiocarbon dates and excavated layers from River Rockshelter. Vertical scale 1/10.

The results of a two-year field survey in Calabria are described. A number of specially designed ‘intensive’ field survey methods were devised and tested, and the results quantified.

Through typological and fabric analysis of the pottery material recovered on the survey, some indication of the changing patterns of settlement in the region are detectable, and these have a number of implications relating to the questions of internal settlement organization and exchange patterns of neolithic and later prehistoric societies in Southern Italy.

The number of Mesolithic structures known in Britain has significantly increased since 2000, providing new opportunities for economic and social interpretations of this period. We describe a further structure, represented by features from the Mesolithic site of Criet Dubh, Isle of Mull. We compare the inferred Criet Dubh structure to other Mesolithic structures from Britain, notably those described as ‘pit-houses’. We then consider the implications of the radiocarbon dates from such structures for the tempo of occupation and past settlement patterns. While the use of Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates has encouraged interpretations of prolonged occupation and sedentism, we propose alternative interpretations with patterns of intermittent occupation for Criet Dubh and the pit-houses, involving their re-use after extended periods of abandonment within a sparsely populated landscape. The ability to debate such interpretations reflects the transformation in Mesolithic research made possible by the discovery of such structures, the use of multiple radiocarbon determinations, the application of Bayesian analysis, and the exploration of associations between cultural and environmental change. These developments have made the Mesolithic a particularly innovative period of study.

The aim of this paper is to establish an absolute chronology for the prehistoric entities and sites of the Balearic islands. We begin with the human settlement of each island and continue with the temporalities of the most important entities and materials of the Pretalayotic period: the Beaker phenomenon, megalithic tombs, artificial burial caves, naviforms, and navetas. Then we define the chronological limits of the Talayotic period, giving special attention to its internal sequence and to the chronology of its distinctive monuments — the talayots, sanctuaries, and taulas. Finally we suggest the chronological limits of the material and sites ascribed to the Post-talayotic period. The approach adopted here is based on a detailed analysis of the radiocarbon dates corresponding to the main archaeological periods mentioned above. The information potential of each date has been evaluated critically in terms of the archaeological contexts from which samples were obtained.

The recorded occurrences of Lower Palæolithic implements in the English Midlands are extremely few, and the only specimen hitherto recorded from Warwickshire is a quartzite hand-axe found by the late Mr. Joseph Landon at Saltley, near Birmingham. The object of the present paper is to describe and discuss several artifacts which have been found recently in inter-gjacial gravels at Baginton, a village 2½ miles south of Coventry, and one from fluvioglacial gravels at Kenilworth, five miles south of the same city. In searching the deposits of the districts I have received invaluable assistance from certain members of the Coventry Natural History and Scientific Society—from Mr. J. H. Edwards in particular, and also from Messrs. W. Berry, H. Plumb, P. E. Wilks and J. Wright—and to them I would express my appreciation of their help in a search which, from its very nature, could but seldom be rewarded with success.

Following the Medway northward as it leaves the Weald at the opening of the funnel-shaped gorge in the Chalk, near Snodland, it takes a general N.E. course as far as Rochester, (Fig. 1.)

Less than half a mile below Rochester bridge it is turned eastward, perhaps by some hard beds in the chalk; then a S.E. course is followed for a mile, when turning again, opposite Chatham, it runs due N. for another two miles. Reaching the London Clay hills at Upnor it is again deflected, and finally, meandering in an easterly direction through the low alluvial plains, reaches the Thames estuary.

Thus the course of the Medway opposite Rochester takes the form of a V-shaped bend, and the land flanking the river within the bend forms a promonitory of chalk jutting southward, the surface of which rises from the edge of the marshes on either side to a height above 100-ft. O.D. (Fig. 2.)

Rainsborough is 1 mile South of Charlton village, in the parish of Newbottle, S. Northants, 20 miles North of Oxford, (SP 526348). The camp lies at c. 480′ OD, and the area enclosed is c. 6·25 acres.

It lies on the edge of a plateau: the approaches to it are flat on the north-east, east, south and south-west, but a gentle slope to the north, north-west and west gives it a wide view across the Cherwell valley, towards Madmarston and Tadmarton (see map, fig. 1 and also pl. XXV). The defences are bivallate: the inner bank stands to 10 feet above the interior, and there is a drop of about 15 feet from the crest into the inner ditch; the second bank is very much lowered by ploughing, but still reaches a height of about 4 feet on the south side, where a hedge line has protected it; the outer ditch is nowhere visible on the surface, except on the west, when it carries a higher growth of weeds. The defences are covered with turf: the inner bank has also trees, bushes and the stumps of large beeches felled c. 1950. The bank is riddled with tree roots, and the sandy character of the core has attracted rabbits: recent attempts to dig and smoke out the warrens have slightly damaged the profile of the bank. A small dry stone wall is visible part way up the outer slope of the inner bank in several places.

During the Easter and Summer of 1958 a programme of investigations into British Upper Palaeolithic cave deposits was initiated on behalf of the Prehistoric Society, with the aid of a grant from the Research Fund. The work was further supported by the Crowther Beynon Fund of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Cambridge. Labour in the field was provided by students in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University, with notable assistance from several members of the Society in different areas.

The prime objectives of the work, which is still in progress, are to define more precisely the character of the different stages in the British Upper Palaeolithic, and to study them against their chronological and environmental background. In this way it is hoped to throw light on wider problems of the relation of British finds to the rapidly emerging picture of the Late Glacial hunting communities of Central Europe and the Low Countries.

The long barrow on Willerby Wold, 7 miles south of Scarborough, was dug into about the middle of the 19th century by the Rev. Canon William Greenwell. The results of this excavation are described in his book British Barrows and show the mound to be one of the crematorium long barrows peculiar to Yorkshire.

In September 1958 the present excavations began with the sectioning of the south ditch in search of any evidence of occupation so frequently found in long barrow ditches. Further work in 1959 included sections of the mound and as these showed Greenwell's excavations to be of only limited extent a more extensive programme of work was undertaken during 1960 to clear the whole of the eastern end of the mound.

Stratigraphic and typological analysis tends to confirm the two-fold division of the Zarzian suggested by Dorothy Garrod, while palaeobotanical data indicate that a very dry steppe prevailed throughout the sequence. Both the low carrying capacity of the contemporary vegetation then and at present in winter, and the resultant winter migration to warmer areas of wild game at present (and presumably in the past) suggest cyclical short distance movements by hunter-gatherers and fishers within two ecological zones: 1, the mountainous area which must have been occupied from spring to autumn; 2, the winter camping grounds in the upper plains along the foothills region of the Zagros Mountains.

The ancient village of Carn Euny, formerly known as Chapel Euny, lies on a south-west slope just above the 500 foot contour in the parish of Sancreed in West Cornwall (fig. 1). The granite uplands of the region are rich in antiquities, as a glance at a recent survey shows (Russell 1971), not least those of the prehistoric period. The hill on which the site is situated is crowned by the circular Iron Age Fort of Caer Brane (pl. 27). Across the dry valley to the north-west rises the mass of Bartinny Down, with its barrows, while in the valley below the site near the hamlet of Brane is a small, well preserved entrance grave and other evidence of prehistoric activity. To the south-east about one mile away is the recently excavated village of Goldherring dating from the first few centuries of our era (Guthrie 1969). From later times, the holy well of St Uny and the former chapel which gave its name to the site, lie nearby to the west. The village contains a fine souterrain, locally known as a fogou, after a Cornish word meaning a cave (Thomas 1966, 79).

Nothing appears to have been known of the settlement or Fogou before the first half of the 19th century when the existence of an unexplored fogou at Chapel Uny is first mentioned by the Reverend John Buller (1842), shortly followed by Edmonds (1849) who described to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society an ‘Ancient Cave’ which had been discovered by miners prospecting for tin.

The moorland south of Penmaenmawr in Caernarvonshire, extending from the great outcrop of Penmaenmawr-Graig Lwyd rock, well-known for its group of stone-axe factories, as far south as Foel Lwyd and Tal-y-fan, and averaging 1,200–1,400 feet in height above O.D., bears a rich concentration of prehistoric monuments. The best known of these is probably the stone circle known as the Druids' Circle, but nearby are many other circles and cairns (fig. 1) which will be referred to in this text by the serial numbers used in the Caernarvonshire Inventory of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. In the present paper an account will be given of the excavation of the Druids' Circle (no. 277) and also of a tiny ring of five large stones (no. 275) to the north-east and of a small embanked circle (no. 278) to the south-west. Apart from other circles (nos. 271a and 279) and cairns (nos. 271b and c, 273 and 274) there is a large mound of stones with an encircling ditch and bank (no. 425), approximating in form to the Wessex bell-barrows. To the south of these, on the summit of Moelfre, is another small cairn (no. 419), and in the featureless moor-land south of Moelfre, known as Bryniau Bugeilydd, is a large cairn cemetery including at least two examples (nos. 418 and 429a) of flat barrows with stone kerbs and central cists, suggesting a Highland Zone version of the Wessex disc-barrow.

Some recent literature on the problem of hoards is reviewed, dealing particularly with the distinction between votive deposits and stores of objects. An alternative approach is developed, considering the long-term variations in the nature of intentional deposits in European prehistory. Three stages are suggested. In the initial stage, a unitary system of deposits prevailed, especially of food and selected artefacts, including metal when available. In the developed stage, characteristic of the Bronze Age, a dual system allowed both votive deposition and accumulation and recycling, especially of non-local metal. The final stage, in the later Iron Age, saw renewed emphasis on votive deposits, especially on the borders of emerging polities.

In 1951 Dr Werner Kissling, who for many years has been studying and collecting specimens of the old folk culture of the Outer Hebrides, asked me to undertake the excavation of some site on South Uist (fig. 1) to encourage the local people to take an interest in their antiquities. The site chosen was a large midden among the dunes in the Kilpheder machair (sandy coastal plain). Five hundred yards to the northward a midden with a few stones is all that remains of a wheel-house, known as Bruthach an Tigh Tallan (the brae of the buried house), which was completely removed some years ago. Half a mile to the north of this another wheel-house, Sithean a Phiobaire (the piper's fairy hill), was removed to build a wall round a nearby grave-yard. The middens of both these wheel-houses have produced ring-headed bronze or iron pins similar to ones found in the North Uist wheel-houses and approximately dated at Traprain Law in Haddingtonshire to between A.D. 100–200. To the south-west of our site, one about 150 yards distant, the other some 200 yards further on, are two more middens with traces of building stones. One of these produced a specimen of the well-known long-handled weaving comb. Yet another midden of the same period, two hundred yards to the south east, is now completely buried. It will be seen that this was once a highly populated area. I have not enumerated all the sites which are known to exist.

Brînzeni cave occupies an important place in the Palaeolithic of Moldova. Its significance is reconsidered in the light of work carried out at the site in 1992–1993 and subsequently, and the opportunity is taken to bring together both published and previously unpublished reports about it, to shed light on its environmental history and archaeological characterisation. On current evidence, the principal occupation layer occupies a chronologically intermediate position between the Aurignacian and the Gravettian in the region, and the archaeological assemblage is certainly distinctive, although probably not ‘transitional’ in the sense previously claimed.

Six of the twenty-five British implement petrology groups (Clough and Cummins 1979, 127)—Group I (Penzance, Cornwall), Group IV (Callington, Cornwall), Group VI (Langdale, Lake District), Group VII (Penmaenmawr, North Wales), Group VIII (South-west Wales), and Group XVI (Camborne, Cornwall)—account for almost half of all the stone axes so far examined from England and Wales. In every part for the country, one or other of these six is the most abundant individual group. On the basis of stone axe distribution studies (Cummins 1979), the country seems to fall naturally into three major provinces (fig. 1), which might possibly be interpreted as Neolithic tribal territories. Northern and Central England, the largest of these provinces, is dominated by Group VI axes which, though originating in the Lake District, seem to have been distributed from a secondary centre in Humberside. Wales, including Herefordshire and part of Shropshire, forms another province and is dominated by Welsh axes, Group VII in the north, and Group VIII in the south. Southern England, the third province, is dominated by Cornish ‘greenstone’ axes, mainly Group I but locally, in the south-west, Groups IV and XVI.

Cumulative percentages of all axes belonging to each group plotted against distance from its distribution centre (Cummins 1979, figs. 4–9) give an indication of absolute frequency variation in relation to that centre. The shape of the plots is controlled by two variables, (i) the cumulative increase of area with distance from the centre, and (ii) the variation in average frequency of the grouped axes (per unit area) with distance from the centre.