The recent discovery in the reserve collection of the Cyprus Museum of a bronze cut-and-thrust sword of the form well known as Naue Type II provides an opportunity for a fresh consideration of the significance of the appearance of this weapon type in the Eastern Mediterranean during what, in that area, were the closing stages of the Late Bronze Age.

This paper begins with a detailed account of the sword in the Cyprus Museum both on its own account and as an illustration of the class as a whole. Then follows a catalogue, illustrated by the distribution map (fig. 1), of the known examples from the Eastern Mediterranean, in which emphasis is laid as far as possible on the dating evidence for individual examples. Finally, a general summary is attempted of what is known about their origin and some discussion is offered on their general implications.

This paper discusses the complex societies which flourished on the central plateau of southern Africa between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers between c. AD 800 and 1500, and the models which can be proposed for how they functioned and why they developed. The principal archaeological monuments left by these societies are their regional political centres, the stone enclosures or zimbabwes (fig. 1), of which Great Zimbabwe is the best known and most elaborate (fig. 2). (The traditional spelling zimbabwe(s) is used in this paper rather than the correct but lesser known spelling dzimbahwe singular and madzimbahwe plural.) They varied considerably in size, but the largest probably housed populations numbering several thousands — Great Zimbabwe itself has been estimated to have had a population of some 30,000 people (Huffman 1984) — and their construction implies organized labour on a substantial scale. The main population lived in densely clustered huts outside the stone enclosure. Artefacts suggest that they were commoners, with the servants of the king and minor officials living close to the central hill. Beyond was an outer ring of prestige residences with their own housing units (fig. 2). ‘Great Zimbabwe was the product of a highly stratified society: the stone walls are essentially demonstrations of the prestige of a ruling class, a symbol of political authority that spread over the whole plateau’ (Garlake 1973, 14).

Therfield heath, the expanse of chalk downland on the west side of Royston, has long enjoyed a local fame for the number of barrows and other antiquities which diversify its surface. On the north side it is bounded by the Icknield Way and so is well placed on the corridor between Wessex and East Anglia.

By far the most important monument on the Heath is a small long barrow notable as the only example known in East Anglia, its nearest neighbours being the destroyed Dunstable barrow 25 miles to the west, and, further still, the Churn barrow west of the Thames near the Goring Gap.

The outward form of the barrow is well-preserved (fig. 1, plan 1), exhibiting the typical club-shaped plan, the broader and higher end to the east. It is 110 feet long, 56 feet wide and 6 feet high at the east end, and 25 feet wide and 2 feet wide at the west. The Ordnance Survey references are Herts 6 inch 4 NE and 25 inch 4, 8. The latitude is 52°2′35″ and the longitude 0° 2′ 40″ w. The height above sea level is 385 feet.

It is unfortunate that the late E. B. Nunn of Royston, who opened most of the barrows on the Heath, completely gutted the interior of this long barrow. By the courtesy of Dr W. M. Palmer, M.A., M.D., F.S.A. I am able to publish the following extract from Nunn's manuscript describing his operations here eighty years ago. Fig. 2 is a reproduction of the sketch which illustrates his account.

The discovery by Mr David Walsh, a local metal detectorist, of what proved to be a Late Iron Age, decorated bronze mirror was reported to us on its discovery in the autumn of 1994 and led to a small excavation of the context and immediate environs of the find (Figs 1–2). It was made on the south-facing slope of a low hill, at about the 75 m contour, at SU 632 603 in LP 3516 which lies just within the parish of Bramley and at the southern extremities of a Roman settlement that developed around the junction of the Roman roads leading from Silchester to Winchester and Chichester. The findspot is thus some 2 km south-south-west of the walled area of the Roman town which overlies the heart of the Late Iron Age oppidum of Calleva. The overall extent of the site as revealed by the distribution of artefacts in the ploughsoil has been plotted by Corney over an area in excess of 6 ha (1984, 283–5, figs 81–3). Although some Silchester Ware of latest Iron Age and earliest Roman date had been recovered from around the centre of the settlement, the bulk of the pottery suggested occupation lay principally between the late 1st/early 2nd century AD and the late 4th century AD.

New radiocarbon dating and chronological modelling have refined understanding of the character and circumstances of flint mining at Grime’s Graves through time. The deepest, most complex galleried shafts were worked probably from the third quarter of the 27th century cal bc and are amongst the earliest on the site. Their use ended in the decades around 2400 cal bc, although the use of simple, shallow pits in the west of the site continued for perhaps another three centuries. The final use of galleried shafts coincides with the first evidence of Beaker pottery and copper metallurgy in Britain. After a gap of around half a millennium, flint mining at Grime’s Graves briefly resumed, probably from the middle of the 16th century cal bc to the middle of the 15th. These ‘primitive’ pits, as they were termed in the inter-war period, were worked using bone tools that can be paralleled in Early Bronze Age copper mines. Finally, the scale and intensity of Middle Bronze Age middening on the site is revealed, as it occurred over a period of probably no more than a few decades in the 14th century cal bc. The possibility of connections between metalworking at Grime’s Graves at this time and contemporary deposition of bronzes in the nearby Fens is discussed.

This article tracks the formation of the rich and socially complex Nordic Bronze Age (NBA), c. 2000–1500 bc, by applying a scalar methodology and using the entrepôt and early metalworking site of Pile in Scania as its point of departure. By regarding the Bronze Age as an ancient example of globalisation, Island Melanesia at the outskirts of contemporary globalisation is first examined to provide an analogue to the Nordic entrepreneurial and maritime culture into which metallurgy was first adopted. How did this northern margin become ‘Bronze Age’, and what impact did its inclusion have? Various scales, from local to Bronze-Age-global were found to intersect in the Pile hoard, and in similar sites near and far. By c. 2000 bc, metals and other commodities travelled along well-established local, regional, and super-regional networks, which even incorporated the British Isles and Únětician hubs at the Middle Elbe–Saale. Back in Scandinavia, metal and metal-related culture provided a comparative advantage when navigating local competition for influence and leadership. The transculturally global was strategically appropriated locally, using the reinvention of tradition as a principal strategy. The first metal boom caused friction and slow social change, rather than a social revolution. The real tipping point came in 1600–1500 bc, when the nearly full-blown NBA emerged, through engagement with a considerably expanded world. By this time, large amounts of metal were in circulation. Seen from the non-urban north, this unprecedented expansion of their world brought new opportunities but likely also deep social tensions. Thus, the effects of adopting metallurgy permeated society and connectivity at every level, even at the outskirts of the Bronze Age world.

In order to discuss the origin of the Michelsberg culture, a question which has been the subject of much debate during the last five years, a closer definition of the culture is first necessary. This paper begins by reviewing the theories as to origins which have been offered during the last half century, a detailed description of the elements making up the various subdivisions of the culture is then attempted, together with some observations on the internal chronology of the material; and in conclusion a return is made to the question of origin.

We owe to Schumacher the first identification of the culture by name, though it was Reinecke's contribution two years later which proposed its attachment to a ‘western’ neolithic family in an article written, as usual, with an insight years ahead of its time. Schumacher had thought that the culture was a late phase of Bandkeramik (Danubian I) influenced by Schnurkeramik (Corded Ware).

Later, Reinecke modified his views somewhat and noted the close connection between the material of the Swiss lake dwelling cultures and the mesolithic of Scandinavia and, in two short papers, laid the basis for the second of the principal theories as to origins. It is interesting that the same man was responsible for two major trends in archaeological thought on the question.

Prehistorians concerned with the Pleistocene have traditionally defined their cultural units (‘industries’) mainly by the types of stone artefacts they contain. One of the best known of these units is the Mousterian, authoritatively defined by Francois Bordes (1953, 458) as ‘… an industry of flakes, comprising a variable proportion of side-scrapers, points, denticulate tools, and also bifaces. Technically, the flakes may or may not be of Levallois débitage and may or may not have faceted butts, Levallois débitage and butt-faceting having no necessary relation to one another’. The Mousterian is generally assumed to have its roots in an earlier group of industries known as the Acheulean. It is difficult to determine when the Mousterian emerged as a distinct entity both because differentiation from the Acheulean occurred only gradually and because our geochronological controls are imperfect. Certainly, however, the Mousterian was in existence by the beginning of the Last ( = ‘Würm’) Glacial Period, that is, no later than 65,000–70,000 years ago (Table I). In the earlier part of this Glacial, it was distributed from the Iberian Peninsula on the west to Uzbekistan (and perhaps beyond) on the east, and from the British Isles on the north to the Mediterranean littoral of Africa on the south. Sometime between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago (the exact time perhaps depending upon the place), the Mousterian was rather abruptly replaced over most, if not all of this range. The demise of the Mousterian is of especial interest because there is considerable evidence to suggest that it was intimately connected with the disappearance of Neandertal Man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and the subsequent spread of modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens).

Our purpose is to examine the hypothesis that Palaeolithic parietal image sites in south-west Europe model or map a specific area of the terrain around them in so far as that terrain was useful to the people who made the images. So far as we are aware the hypothesis has not received wide attention (Eastham 1979; Kehoe 1990). Maps were made by some hunter-gatherer peoples. There are Amerindian maps (Brody 1981; Leacock 1969), and maps have been used as an explanation of some Australian parietal figures (Mountford 1956; 1961). There has been, however, little systematic application of the hypothesis to Palaeolithic images.

The images under discussion are the recognizable representations of animals painted, engraved or carved on the walls, floors and roofs of caves and rock shelters during the last glaciation. They are recognizable because the marks of which they are composed make redundant reference to known species. They may be accompanied by others which can be interpreted as representations of human beings and ambiguous configurations of animals.

Recent analysis of the ceramic assemblage from the Neolithic loch islet settlement of Eilean Dòmhnuill, North Uist, in the Western Isles of Scotland has highlighted the intense conservatism of the potting traditions over a period of more than 800 years. Hebridean Neolithic pottery exhibits clear relationships with pottery from Argyll, Arran, and Bute, as well as Orkney and the north-east mainland of Scotland. It appears to have developed a distinctive, often decoratively elaborate regional form very soon after its initial appearance, which subsequently appears to have undergone little or no significant change until the introduction of Grooved Ware in the early 3rd millennium bc. An association exists between large assemblages of elaborately decorated Hebridean pottery and a number of artificial islets in freshwater lochs, some very small and producing little or no evidence for domestic activities. This might be explained by the importance of commensality in mediating relations between small communities in the Western Isle at such sites following the introduction of agriculture in the 2nd quarter of the 4th millennium bc. The conservatism and stasis evident at Eilean Dòmhnuill, in the face of environmental decline, raises wider issues around the adaptive capabilities of the first farming communities prior to significant social changes in the earlier 3rd millennium bc.

Megalithic art is associated with passage tombs in Atlantic Europe. But it is not found in all areas, rather it has a restricted distribution. In those areas where it occurs it is very often associated with large and, therefore, prestigious tombs. These tombs have a confined distribution within defined areas. It can be argued that such areas indicate tribal regions within which elite societies existed and where cohesion was provided by a leader, possibly in the form of a chief.

This paper is a study of the location of several causewayed camps in central southern England. We first discuss their contemporary environment, the cultivation technology of the early neolithic farmers, and the implications of this technology for land use. We conclude from soil studies that all except one of the sites examined were in pastoral situations, although the seasonality of the pasture varied between the sites. On the basis of the location studies and our earlier arguments, we put forward a model of early neolithic land use in the area as an alternative to the traditional brandwirtschaft model.

This paper describes the development of a prehistoric landscape by the river Nene at Grendon Lakes, partly revealed in the 1970s and partly during excavations in 1998 and 2001, which are reported in full. Two major phases of archaeological activity are evident, one interpreted as Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the other as Iron Age. The gap between these is bridged by an environmental sequence reconstructed with the aid of a pollen core from an adjacent palaeochannel, which shows that human activity continued in the intervening period. The landscape is comparable in form, though not in scale, with that investigated 13 km downstream at Raunds, and helps shed light on the distinctive features of Midlands river valleys like the Nene in prehistory. In conclusion it is suggested that the different characters of the Neolithic and Iron Age features at Grendon mask some underlying similarities in the way they structured people's movements and encounters.

Torcs made from the gold/silver alloy known as electrum are among the most striking features of British Iron Age craftsmanship; yet despite the interest they generate, little effort has been directed towards unravelling the problems of their development. This paper seeks to correct this neglect by considering the reasons for the decline of electrum torc art, with particular reference to those found in East Anglia.

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 determination of human flaking as against Nature's work upon flints has always been a vexed question with archæologists. It appeared apparently in the first place with the discovery of the Neolithic arrow-heads, as in some old books we find these relics described as “elf-darts,” which clearly proves that a supernatural origin was accorded to them. Though unfortunately we have no records of the discussions held over these first discovered Neoliths, we may I think assume that in those days the archæological camp was split into two sharply defined sections, one declaring that the arrow-heads were the outcome ot supernatural agencies, the other that some ancient race of men had fashioned them. Be that as it may, the fact remains that no such discussions have for many long years raged round these particular flaked flints, and they are now accepted as being as much evidences of man's work as is a dining-room table or a fireside arm-chair.

The discovery of a Group XVIII stone axe-hammer with the remains of its wooden haft in the peat deposit associated with the submerged forest at Cleethorpes, South Humberside provided an opportunity to obtain an accurate dating for one of these implements. Radiocarbon dating showed that implement had been in use around 1400 bc but had apparently become incorporated in an earlier peat deposit. Previous work on the dating of axe-hammers is reviewed and their possible function is discussed.

On the 26th October, 1908, at the inaugural meeting of this Society, Dr. Allen Sturge, its first president, delivered his Presidential Address. In this he reviewed the situation of prehistory, and more especially of Palæolithic archæology, as it stood at that time, ten years after the death of Gabriel de Mortillet, and forty years after the death of Boucher de Perthes. Dr. Sturge concluded, incidentally, that this country was immeasurably behind France, Belgium, and Germany in the pursuit of our science, a reproach which the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia has since done much to remove. Three years later Colonel Underwood, Dr. Sturge's successor in this chair, gave a further brief outline of recent discoveries in Palæolithic archæology. The general aspect of the subject was thus temporarily exhausted, and the last thirteen Addresses have dealt with some particular aspect of prehistory, or with some special piece of work. To-day, within a few weeks of the twentieth birthday of our Society, I feel that the time has come when it is again legitimate to attempt a more general view. The twenty years which separate us from Dr. Sturge's first Presidential address have not perhaps been marked by any single startling discovery in the region of human palæontology, but they have brought us a great mass of new evidence, much of which is still imperfectly assimilated, and with this evidence they have brought the first signs of a new orientation of our science.

Pottery-making in parts of Igboland is discussed from an ethnoarchaeological perspective. In line with a long tradition of descriptive studies, the pottery manufacturing processes are here outlined, but emphasis is laid firstly on studying pottery decorations (techniques and motifs) prevalent in parts of Igboland within their socio-cultural and economic contexts; and secondly, on observing and studying how the Igbo people (potters and users of pots) classify pottery products (traditional pottery classification). A second set of observations concerns functions of pots, their distribution, consumption, life span and eventual disposal. Finally, the paper also looks at the social and cultural setting of pottery production — factors which still favour pottery production in Igboland and those that may lead to its eventual abandonment (including the status of potters in Igbo society and the learning process of pottery manufacture).

This paper examines the evidence for specialist artefact production during the later Neolithic on the Yorkshire Wolds. It is proposed that such an industry was responsible for the production of some of the highly distinctive lithic artefacts present in that period, such as polished discoidal knives, ripple-flaked and polished oblique arrowheads, and polished flint axes. It is suggested that much of the value attached to these items derived from the highly organised but restricted nature of their production. Two sites on the Wolds were fieldwalked and the finds subjected to both technological and spatial analysis. Results indicate that an industry exercising a higher level of skill existed alongside more everyday knapping activities. This industry was divided into two phases, consisting of the roughing out of flint nodules at the stone source and the completion of the specialised artefacts in spatially restricted workshops within settlements.