A series of undoubtedly Palaeolithic engraved figures have been recorded for the first time in the United Kingdom in Church Hole Cave, Creswell Crags. The first recorded images were thought initially to be two birds and a large ibex. This paper presents the preliminary results of the first systematic survey of the caves for engravings which identified a total of 16 figures. On closer examination with correct lighting the ibex was seen to be a stag, accompanied by a bison and another herbivore. The presence of the birds was confirmed and at least one other bovid and several other images, including possible vulvas, were identified.

The object of this paper is to record and discuss the investigation of an unusually prolific Mesolithic chipping floor recently located on War Department land between Bordon Camp and the hamlet of Oakhanger, near Selborne, on the Hampshire Greensand. These lands are particularly sterile and undulating, and are dissected by a stream which emerges from Oakhanger Ponds to enter the Oakhanger Stream about a mile to the north (fig. 1). The section west of this stream is named the Warren, and that on the east is called the Slab. The site now being discussed is one of five located on the Warren and Slab, and is known as Site V. The group forms part of a series fringing the watercourse known sectionally as the Oakhanger Stream, Kingsley Stream, Oxney Stream, and the Slea, which eventually feeds the Frensham Wey. Thus the Oakhanger sites integrate with the important network investigated in West Surrey.

The Warren, together with the Slab, forms a roughly quadrangular area with its northern side coinciding, for about a mile, with the Bordon-Oakhanger road. Together they make up, approximately, a square mile of rough ground which is marshy along the course of the dividing stream. Geologically it is on Folkestone Sands which, in this area, are extensively covered by blown-sand deposits. Towards Oakhanger, half a mile to the north, these deposits are unusually thick and form dunes. In the Folkestones there is much carstone in thin layers which, here and there, tend to induce marshy conditions. The nearest chalk outcrop is some two miles to the westward in the Selborne district.

In 1984 the entrance grave at Bosiliack, Cornwall, was excavated by Charles Thomas on behalf of the Institute of Cornish Studies. It was a comparatively small example, approximately 5 m in diameter encircled by a substantial kerb. A deposit of cremated bone was found within the chamber accompanied by sherds of plain pottery from three vessels. Two radiocarbon determinations were obtained on the cremated bone. The dates were almost identical, falling between 1690 and 1500 cal bc.

Because Bosiliack is the only entrance grave in Cornwall to have been excavated to modern standards, and to have had any analyses undertaken on the contents of its chamber, it is significant to the study of small chambered tombs elsewhere. This paper outlines the results from the excavations before moving on to a discussion of the use of monument and a consideration of its possible affinities with monuments elsewhere.

Excavations at Hengistbury Head Site 6 (Dragonfly Ponds) in 1984–5 uncovered a rare sequence of cultivation features, with pre-Late Iron Age to Romano-British period spade marks and an associated cultivation soil underlying proposed Romano-British furrows and another cultivation soil (Chadburn & Gardiner 1985; Chadburn 1987). Keyhole excavations for soil micromorphological study of these features and soils were conducted in 1997 as part of a larger project on identifying and characterising prehistoric cultivation from soil indicators in the field and in thin section (Lewis 1998). Profile inversion indicators identified within the implement marks suggest that the spade-mark horizon may show ‘double-digging’, and that the furrows were probably created by post-Roman mouldboard ploughing. Excavation and soil micromorphology results are presented here, and the importance of the remains at Hengistbury Head to the study of ancient agricultural land use is discussed in terms of methodological issues.

The attributes to be defined in this paper have been designed to characterize the main areas of variation of those scrapers which have been termed ‘Aurignacian’ (de Sonneville-Bordes, 1960, 29), owing to their numerical pre-eminence in Aurignacian assemblages. These attributes were worked out primarily on the Aurignacian assemblages (Levels 6–14) from the Abri Pataud, Les Eyzies (Dordogne), although to test the general applicability of the method, samples from the Grand Abri de la Ferrassie and from the Abri Castanet (Musée des Eyzies) were also considered.

As a group, Aurignacian scrapers may be distinguished from end-of-blade scrapers in that the majority of Aurignacian scrapers are manufactured on blanks produced by a non-blade technology. The term ‘Aurignacian scraper’ includes: (1) carinate scrapers (fig. 1), (2) nose-ended scrapers, (3) some shouldered scrapers (see p. 260) and (4) miscellaneous steep scrapers on flakes (fig. 2).

In March 1960 Mrs D. R. Tweedie discovered a painted rock shelter at 8,000 feet in the forests of Mt Elgon, about 15 miles west-north-west of Kitale, Kenya. The site is of particular interest because it is the first recorded instance of representational rock art in Kenya with any claim to antiquity.

The writer visited the site during September 1960 to copy the paintings. Tracings were made on cellophane stuck to the rock with sellotape. Glass ink was used as suggested by Dr L. S. B. Leakey, but in the more awkward copying positions a chinagraph pencil gave accurate lines more easily. With a warm pencil no pressure on the rock was needed to produce an outline. A photographic record was also made on colour film with flashbulbs.

The paintings have been preserved from weathering by a deep, dry overhang, and trees growing immediately in front of the shelter. They are also preserved from vandalism by the extreme difficulty of finding the site without guidance. Most of the paintings form a frieze at the left-hand side of the shelter, which is the best protected region.

A Middle Bronze Age house and burnt mound were excavated in 2001 within the large-scale prehistoric landscape under investigation at Bestwall Quarry, Wareham, Dorset. The house was succeeded by the burnt mound which was associated with two large pits. All the structures were associated with a substantial and well-preserved assemblage of Deverel-Rimbury pottery. Most of this pottery, and two copper alloy bracelets, also of Middle Bronze Age date, comprised remarkable closing deposits that marked the abandonment of the structures.

Aerial survey in Essex has revealed a number of elongated enclosures interpreted as either long barrows or mortuary enclosures of Neolithic date. Excavation of one of these sites at Rivenhall in 1986 produced finds of flintwork and pottery which help to substantiate this hypothesis. A surface collection survey of the field containing the enclosure produced Mesolithic and Neolithic flintwork. A short discussion considers the Essex sites in their wider context.

The nature of landscape use and residence patterns during the British earlier Neolithic has often been debated. Here we use strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel, from individuals buried at the Hambledon Hill causewayed enclosure monument complex in Dorset, England to evaluate patterns of landscape use during the earlier Neolithic. Previous analysis suggests that a significant proportion of the artefacts found at the site may originate from lithology of Eocene and Upper to Middle Jurassic age that the enclosures overlook to the immediate west and south. The excavators therefore argued that the sector of landscape visible from Hambledon Hill provides an approximate index for the catchment occupied by the communities that it served. Most of the burial population exhibit isotope ratios that could be consistent with this argument. Connections between Hambledon Hill and regions much further afield are also hypothesised, based on the presence of artefacts within the assemblage that could have been sourced from lithology in Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall in south-west England. However, few of the sampled individuals have strontium isotope ratios consistent with having obtained the majority of their diet from such areas during childhood. The individuals who exhibit the highest strontium isotope ratios are all adult males, whom the excavators suggest to have died during one or more episodes of conflict, following the burning and destruction of surrounding defensive outworks built during the 36th century bc. At least one of these individuals, who was found with an arrowhead amongst his ribs, did not obtain his childhood diet locally and has 87Sr/86Sr values that could be comparable to those bioavailable in the south-west peninsula.

The Scandinavian landscape is littered with postglacial outcrops, many of which carry engraved motifs. Although drawings of ships are most often discussed, this paper focuses on representations of feet. In Northern Europe ship motifs are often associated with cosmologies based on the movement of the sun. This paper investigates whether drawings of feet could have been associated with the same worldview. A number of interpretations are offered of the images at two sites in different parts of Sweden: Järrestad 13:1 and Boglösa 138:1.

Since its publication in 1954 Star Carr has held an iconic status in British Mesolithic archaeology. The original excavations at the site recorded a large assemblage of bone and antler tools from a sequence of peat deposits at the edge of the Lake Flixton. Over 60 years later this remains the largest assemblage of bone and antler artefacts of its date in Britain and has been an invaluable source of information for life in the early Mesolithic. However, the interpretation of this material has been the subject of intense debate, and the assemblage has been variously described as the remains of an in situ settlement, a refuse dump, and the result of culturally prescribed acts of deposition. Fundamentally, these very different ideas of the nature of the site depend on differing interpretations of the environmental context into which the majority of the organic artefacts were deposited. This paper presents the results of recent work at Star Carr that helps to resolve the debate surrounding both the context of the assemblage and the motivations that lay behind its deposition.

This report outlines the unexpected discovery of a group of Late Neolithic structures at Greenbogs, Monymusk in Aberdeenshire, along with a series of later prehistoric features in the mid-1990s. Recent radiocarbon dating shows that two four-post timber structures found here date to the period 2890–2490 cal bc. These were found in association with a range of other features including an oval structure and diffuse areas of burning. The closest parallels for the four-post structures can be found in a slowly growing body of Late Neolithic timber structures, some being interpreted as roofed dwellings and others as roofed or unroofed monuments. This article places the Greenbogs structures in their wider context, identifies a number of unexcavated parallels in the aerial record and addresses the nature of the four-post structures found across Late Neolithic Britain and Ireland and suggests that four-post structures were a more common element of Late Neolithic architecture than previously identified. A common building type appears to have been shared across large areas of Britain and Ireland in a variety of contexts, from the seemingly mundane to the more ‘charged’, as part of elaborate monument complexes. The later prehistoric features identified at Greenbogs include a concentration of Middle Bronze Age features including graves containing cremated human bones, one with an upright urn, and a number of Iron Age pits and other features.

The late W. G. Clarke recorded the occurrence of palæolithic implements in thirty Norfolk parishes, a fact which suggests that the county is exceptionally rich in implementiferous gravels. On detailed examination of the records it is seen that the great mass of the finds lies in two widely separated districts. In the extreme south-west the valleys of the Thet and Little Ouse have long been famous among collectors, and large numbers of specimens were obtained at a time when the making of the Fenland roads caused a demand for the gravel of the district; the fine collections in the Norwich and Thetford Museums testify to the number and beauty of the specimens obtained there. In more recent years the centre of interest has shifted to the north-east, where the hopes, first raised by the discovery by Mr. A. C. Savin of a fine hand axe (Geology of the Country Around Cromer, p. 130) in 1878, have at last been fulfilled by Mr. Reid Moir's recognition of a Chellian workshop on the foreshore at Cromer (“The Great Flint Implements of Cromer,” Harrison, Ipswich, and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, LI., 1921, p. 385–418). Apart from these finds, isolated discoveries of importance have been made from time to time, notably the beautiful implement found by Mr. W. R. R. Spelman on the beach at Eccles (P.S.E.A. II., I., p. 156), the Palling platessiform implement discovered by Mr. Randall Johnson, the Chellian side chopper from the Till at Sidestrand by the writer, and Acheulean hand axes from Runton cliff gravels by Mr. G. Maynard. These have all been carefully described and figured by Mr. J. Reid Moir (“Man,” April 1926; J.R.A.I. LI., p. 399; Antiquaries' Journal, April 1923, and P.S.E.A., IV., 1., p. 126; “Nature,” Aug. 16, 1924). A few miles inland at Gresham, the patient and persistent work of Mr. J. Cox has produced a number of finds of the first importance, especially those described and figured in the Proceedings (P.S.E.A. I., III., p. 380, Plate XCVIII; III., II., p. 317, Fig. 78; I., I., p. 118, and I., II., p. 236). Apart from these two border districts, the records refer mainly to isolated specimens, mostly surface finds. Dr. C. B. Plowright reports implements from a pit at Tottenhill, near King's Lynn (P.S.E. A. I., I., p. 118), whilst a fine hand axe of La Micoque type was found by a schoolboy at Salhouse.

This paper considers the timing and mechanisms of deforestation in the Western Isles of Scotland, focusing in particular on the landscape around the Calanais stone circles, one of the best preserved late Neolithic/early Bronze Age monumental landscapes in north-west Europe. We present new archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence from a soil and peat sequence at the site of Aird Calanais, which spans the main period of use of the Calanais circles. We then draw on a new synthesis of archaeobotanical and palynological evidence from across the Western Isles and a review of comparable data from the wider North Atlantic zone, before assessing the role of early farming communities in clearing the wooded landscapes of the region. Pollen and radiocarbon dating at the site of Aird Calanais reveal that a layer of birch branches, dating to the late Neolithic (2912–2881 cal bc), was contemporaneous with a decline in woodland at the site, as well as with the major phase of Neolithic activity at the Calanais stone circle complex. However, our synthesis of the pollen and plant macrofossil evidence from across the Western Isles suggests that the picture across these islands was altogether more complex: woodlands declined both before, as well as during, the Neolithic and deciduous woodlands remained sufficiently abundant for Neolithic fuel procurement. Finally, we consider the implications of the results for understanding the interactions between first farmers and woodlands in the wider North Atlantic region.

An apology of some sort is so usual a preamble to an address, that I might be tempted to court originality by departing from the normal and foregoing the confessional. Circumstances, however, are compelling in my case and I have no opening for escape. In the first place a combination of factors prevented my delivering a presidential address to the Society during my term of office, and for this I owe sincere apologies. I have to ask you in your kindness to accept this as a belated and actually “post-mortem” address from your late president, delivered, as it is, under the aegis of my successor in office, to whom I desire to offer a cordial welcome and sincere congratulations. At the same time I wish to thank the Society most heartily for the high compliment which was paid to me when I was invited to assume the presidency last year. It is difficult to say how very highly I appreciate this kindness and courtesy.

In the second place, my choice of a subject needs at least some explanation and, if possible, justification. I cannot avoid the confession that the topic which I have selected has no direct bearing upon East Anglia in particular, nor, indeed upon Great Britain in general. Having confessed this with all due apologies, I must try to justify my temerity.

Before the end of the 1st century B.C. the Celtic coinages in south-east Britain had begun to employ representational types in place of or in addition to traditional and barely intelligible patterns. By the time the coins ceased nearly a century later, a great many of these representational types had been issued. The purpose of this paper is to try to show from enlarged reproductions to what extent these coins provide a visual illustration of life and customs in this country immediately before the Roman Conquest.

In a period of intense archaeological effort, such as the present, it is odd that this has not already been attempted. The reason lies partly in the intractability of coin material, but perhaps more in the fear of reading false meanings into coin types with such an obvious debt to Greece and Rome. This caution is reasonable, but can be carried too far. There are remarkably few British coins which are unchanged copies of Roman originals. The Celtic engravers rapidly and to a surprising degree absorbed the ideas and art forms of the classical world, but used them more often than not to depict Celtic or partly Celtic themes. Opinions may vary on where the dividing line comes, but it may be said with confidence that in a great majority of these coins, side by side with strong Greco-Roman influences, there remains an element of representation which is indubitably Celtic. Our task is to identify it.

The analysis of Bronze Age barrow sites excavated as long ago as 25 years can provide information on more significant and wide ranging topics than basic funerary rites. At Buckskin no primary burial rite was recorded nor any high status artefacts found. The analysis, of stored soil samples and animal bones however, produced evidence for ceremonial activity and feasting prior to the construction of the barrow mound. This encourages discussion on both the role of this barrow and the primary function, other than interment, of similar monuments, especially from the evidence of environmental data. Study of both land Mollusca and faunal remains enabled a greater explanation of the cultural history of this monument and aided the site phasing.

In January 1974 I started my doctoral thesis supervised by Prof. O.-H. Frey (Marburg an der Lahn) at the University of Hamburg, on the subject: ‘Arms, armour and warfare in Central Italy during the Iron Age, ninth to sixth century B.C.’. During the work on this subject, it soon became evident that a detailed treatment would not be possible if the work were restricted to the geographical region of Italy. Many questions and problems appeared, the answers to which could not be found in Italy only, but in other geographical areas, surrounding more or less the whole Mediterranean and the foothills of the Alps. These connections and influences in Etruria determined to a great extent the historical development of the Central Italian military systems. Of course these military influences came at different times and from different sources, with Etruria taking a key position because of its extraordinarily favourable geographical, topographical and other natural conditions. Therefore Etruria had a special importance in the taking up and passing on of foreign elements of warfare from the Iron Age onwards, which influenced and even determined the military history of this region during the whole first millennium B.C. On the other hand the new military technology, which mostly reached Etruria first, was passed on after a delay from Etruria to Latium in the south and to Umbria in the east, then to the Adriatic Coast and to northern Italy and finally in a modified and selected form also beyond the Alps, to the under-developed peoples of Central Europe.

The rockshelter of Jiita II, known locally as Dahr al-Mghara, overlooks the wooded ravine of the Nahr el-Kelb (Dog River) about 8 km upstream from the present sea-shore and 15 km north-east of the centre of Beirut. The site is listed as ‘Jaita II’ in the inventory of Copeland and Wescombe (1965). The shelter faces south and opens onto a platform which interrupts the precipitous north bank of the ravine; about 180 m below the platform's edge, the subterranean branch of the Nahr el-Kelb emerges from a series of large caverns. The platform measures c. 175 sq. m, and was inhabited by a succession of Late Upper Palaeolithic hunters whose flint industries were mainly microlithic. Excavations have been conducted here since 1964 by one of us (F.H.) with emphasis on careful recording of finds dug in fine stratigraphic units by use of dental tools (Hours 1966; Hours and Chavaillon 1970; Hours 1973 and in prep.).