For well over a decade archaeological theory has been discussed in terms of a number of problematic yet familiar dichotomies. Prominent examples would include the distinction between processualist (scientific) and postprocessualist (post-modernist) thinking, and its concomitant distinctions of biology versus culture, Positivism versus Relativism, and Realism versus Idealism. This paper outlines a novel framework (Cultural Virus Theory) which crosscuts these familiar dichotomies, while also suggesting new explanatory possibilities. Recent convergent trends in archaeological theory are summarised. Some of the basic principles of the theory are defined. It is argued that ideas, rituals, and artefact production systems are culturally reproduced life-forms (‘viral phenomena’ or ‘living artefacts’); that people are therefore biocultural ecosystems of more than one lifeform (‘personal ecosystems’); and that the internal constituent life-forms of personal ecosystems may be found in both symbiotic, and parasitic or predatory relationships, just as are those of larger ecosystems. Human actions, therefore, cannot be approached as if they constitute the behaviour of a single united organism; as ecosystems, people are often subject to internal adaptive conflict and are, in short, ‘biocultural schizophrenics’. Lastly, the anatomy of the synthesis is briefly discussed with reference to first post-processual, and then processual approaches to the familiar ‘megalith icon’ of monuments and their associated rituals — termed ‘megalithic religions’ for convenience — in Neolithic north-west Europe.

A number of distinctive physiographic regions fall wholely or partly within the county of Lincolnshire: the limestone and chalk uplands of the Lincoln Edge and the Wolds, the valleys of the Trent, Ancholme and Witham, and the low lying areas of the Isle of Axholme, the Fens and the Marsh (fig. 1). The scatter of finds of Later Bronze Age metalwork shows considerable local variation (fig. 2).

These differences in distribution can be analysed statistically using the Chi Squared test (Gregory, 1963, 151–66). A comparison is made between the observed distribution of objects (o), and the pattern expected if the distribution was the product of random factors alone (e). A null hypothesis is tested by applying the formula:

.

The probability that the null hypothesis is true can then be shown graphically (Lindley and Miller, 1953). A high reading (e.g., more than 95 per cent) would indicate that the observed distribution was consonant with a random scatter, while a low reading (e.g. less than 5 per cent) would suggest that some factor other than chance governed the distribution.

The Early Iron Age of Wessex has been the study of many distinguished archaeologists, and any fresh investigation is bound to be in large part either a synthesis or a development of the results of earlier workers. Among the latter must be included not only such notable scholars as General Pitt-Rivers, the Cunningtons, Professor Hawkes, Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Mr Radford, but a multitude of professional archaeologists and amateurs, whose accumulated labours help to give solidity to the picture. The present writer owes a profound debt to all of these; he would also like to acknowledge personal help especially from Mr Raymond Farrar, Mr J. Stevens Cox, Mr A. L. F. Rivet, Mr J. B. Calkin, and from the Curators of the Museums at Dorchester, Farnham (Dorset), Salisbury, Devizes and Taunton.

The present paper is a study of the ‘C’ cultures, i.e. cultures of the latest phase of the Early Iron Age which are not simply survivals of ‘B’ cultures, in Wessex. For the present purpose I take Wessex to be the area covered by Sheet 11 of the Ordnance Survey ¼ inch map, excluding the area of undoubted Belgic occupation in the East (which I shall attempt to define later), and in addition a westward extension to the River Exe. In other words, it is a study, primarily (Part I) of the ‘Durotrigian’ culture of Dorset and its borders, and also (Part II) of whatever Belgic penetration can be demonstrated in the surrounding area.

Excavation of the basilica of the Roman town of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) has produced evidence for two phases of pre-Roman occupation. The earlier, probably dating to the mid-first century BC, consisted of roundhouses and pits. Around 20 BC a rectilinear steet pattern, with building plots at right angles to the streets and rectangular buildings, was laid out; later a palisaded enclosure was built. Imports included amphorae and fine pottery; Central Gaulish wares suggest an early trade connection to the south. There is some evidence of disuse before the Roman streets were laid out on a different alignment in mid first century AD.

Decorated cists have been identified at three burial cairns in Kilmartin Glen, Mid Argyll. The paper provides a new analysis of the cover slab at Nether Largie North, which features a series of pecked axeheads. Previous studies suggested that they replaced an array of cup marks, but the evidence of photogrammetry suggests a longer sequence and a more complex scheme. The same approach was taken to the decorated cists beneath the Nether Largie Mid cairn and a comparable structure at Ri Cruin. Additional depictions were identified. The carvings within all three cists are organised in similar ways. They date from a period in the Early Bronze Age when metal was imported from Ireland. At the same time, the reuse of older structures suggests a new concern with the past.

Excavation of a headland on the north coast of Cyprus has revealed a neolithic settlement with well-preserved stone buildings which belong to one stage of a multiphase site. Evidence was obtained for changes in architecture, definable growth patterns and, in Cypriot terms, deeply stratified deposits with painted pottery that clearly links the early Troulli and the Sotira styles. Eighteen structures, many re-built two or three times, two winding passages and open yards were located in such deep, artificial hollows that the settlement may be considered as partly subterranean. Groups of houses were arranged in sectors, in one case divided by an uninterrupted 4 m. wide ridge. A series of Carbon-14 determinations indicates the fourth millennium for this phase; its predecessor was defended by an impressive 4·5 m deep ditch. Faunal and floral analyses disclose a range of domesticated species suggestive of a lively agricultural, rather than fishing-based, mixed economy. As a result of associated surveys, many unexcavated sites may now be placed in the dated Vrysi framework and a start made to the definition of neolithic settlement patterns on the north coast. The connections o Vrysi with excavated sites necessitates a reassessment of the prehistory of fifth-fourth millennia Cyprus which seems to be characterized by cultural continuity, regionalism and, the island's isolation.

The present writer has had recently the opportunity to carry out a revision of the deer of the Cromer Forest Bed series of East Anglia. The entire work is to be published in the Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History). The stratigraphical conclusions will be summarized here.

The occurrence of relatively archaic species together with more modern species in the Forest Bed fauna has puzzled many palaeontologists. Whereas the older authors concluded that it was wholly Pliocene (Reid, 1890, with bibliography) or partially or totally derived (Dubois, 1905), more recently a tendency has become prevalent to attribute the whole fauna to the early Pleistocene, and to explain the more archaic species as relics (Osborn, 1922; Zeuner, 1945). It may be shown that all these interpretations are untenable.

A Pliocene age is ruled out by the presence of species which immigrated into Europe after the close of the Villafranchian. On the other hand, the older representatives, once attributed to the Pliocene but actually of Upper Villafranchian age, do not constitute isolated relics: an entire faunal assemblage characteristic of that epoch is present. Moreover, primitive species occur in the Forest Bed fauna together with their more advanced descendants, and the fauna is richer in species than in any other locality.

In the summer of 1978 pottery and flintwork were noticed in the sections to the south of Cliffe Village during the laying of a pipeline by British Gas (TQ 734744) (fig. 1). This led to the excavation of a series of small trial trenches by Mr David Thomson with the help of local volunteers in the same year. The retrieval of a Beaker and Collared Urn suggested an early Bronze Age site, and excavations by Dr Ian Kinnes for the British Museum were done in September 1979. Although the excavated features contained mainly Iron Age pottery and metalwork, both seasons' work also produced a large quantity of flint artefacts ranging from Mesolithic to Bronze Age in date. The following report is an analysis of the Mesolithic tranchet axe manufacturing debitage which could be distinguished as a discrete group from the other flintwork. It is not intended to present a comprehensive flint report for Cliffe, but to provide a framework for analysis at other sites where tranchet axe production has been shown to take place (Wymer 1962; Parfitt and Halliwell 1982).

Finds of heated stone from prehistoric sites in England were for many years interpreted as ‘potboilers’, a view recommended for the south-east of the country in particular by the finding of pots – invariably of later Bronze Age date – filled with them. When exposed to stress, stone behaves in a predictable way. A comparison of stones from apparently in situ archaeological potboilings with those produced during experimental potboilings supports the evidence of earlier work on pottery (Woods 1984) that they were nothing of the sort, the wider contextual associations of the archaeological finds suggesting instead that they comprise votive deposits. At the end of their functional life, heated stones acquired a symbolic charge, and were placed in pots in funerary contexts. This realisation both supports and qualifies Brück's recent post-modern interpretation of deposits of heated stones from later Bronze Age sites in southern England, reminding us on the one hand of the need to understand our data in terms its of its own nature – in this case geological and sedimentological – as well as its wider archaeological context, and on the other of the importance of non-traditional approaches to these. A number of other possible explanations for heated stones found in Bronze Age pots are reviewed and – for the time being – discarded.

While examining the pottery from Little Woodbury in 1939–40, Professor Hawkes observed that the critical pottery from the lower filling of the Ditch ‘DA’ was so sparse as to be useless for comparative purposes. On his suggestion, the Council of the Prehistoric Society decided that a substantial section of the Ditch should be cleared for the purpose of obtaining additional material from the primary filling, and in the spring of 1947 it became possible to put this project into effect. The work was superintended by Mr J. W. Brailsford and Professor Stuart Piggott and Mrs C. M. Piggott, with the assistance of Mrs M. F. Brailsford and members of the Archaeological Society of Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury. The Prehistoric Society is indebted to the landowner, Mr F. H. T. Jervoise, F.S.A., for permission to carry out the excavation, and to his tenant, Mr Tilley, for the interest and cooperation which he showed throughout.

Two ten-foot lengths of the Ditch ‘DA’ were cleared, in the northern sector, Pl. XXIV lower (inset). Significant finds of pottery and other objects were recovered from all levels of the filling, though it was confirmed that layers ‘A’ to ‘C’ were very poor in archaeological material. The pottery is included with that from the pre-war excavation in the Pottery Report, and the small finds are described in the general report on small finds (Part V).

Reports on the animal bones by Dr F. C. Fraser, of the Dept. of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History), and on the non-marine mollusca by Mr A. E. Ellis of Epsom College are appended to this note.

The Beaker phenomenon in Britain is typically represented by a particular form of pottery and its inclusion in graves with flexed or crouched inhumations referred to as Beaker burials. Analysis of the full range of burial evidence, however, reveals a high degree of variability in funerary rites including cremation and skeletal disarticulation. Summed probability distribution analysis of radiocarbon dates provides evidence for continuity of these other, atypical rites from the pre-Beaker Late Neolithic (c. 3000–2450 cal bc) through the Chalcolithic (c. 2450–2200 cal bc) and into the Early Bronze Age (after c. 2200 cal bc). Regional diversity is apparent in Beaker period funerary treatments and grave good provision between these typical and atypical rites, as is differential selection of rites on the basis of age and biological sex. This evidence for within and between community funerary diversity has implications for understanding the large-scale processes of cultural and genomic transformation across this period of major transition in British prehistory.

In the light of discussions surrounding the social changes attributed to the arrival of the Corded Ware culture in central Europe, here we investigate the economic strategies of one of the cultural complexes of the immediately preceding Late Neolithic. The Cham culture of southern Bavaria is characterised by a variety of economic choices but problems remain in synthesising and combining archaeozoological and archaeobotanical evidence. Using lipid residue analysis from Cham culture pottery excavated at the unenclosed settlement of Riedling, Lower Bavaria, we succeed in identifying a dairying economy at this time. Compound-specific lipid radiocarbon dates are then combined with other samples to provide a formal estimate for the duration of activity at Riedling and the first Bayesian chronological model for the Cham culture as a whole. Although data are currently not fine-grained enough to distinguish between competing models for site permanence, we suggest that the Cham culture pattern fits into a wider central European trend of greater mobility and economic flexibility in the pre-Corded Ware horizon, concluding that key economic strategies previously associated with ‘steppe invasions’ were already present in the preceding centuries. Finally, the demonstrated use of cups for milk-based products, as opposed to alcoholic drinks as previously suggested, leads us to propose possible alternative uses and users for these items.

The skeleton described below was discovered recently in Southery Fen, Norfolk, by men employed in widening and deepening a drainage ditch. It was unfortunately removed before it could be seen in situ, but I was able by an examination of the ground not only to determine the exact level of the skeleton, but also to recover the lady's bronze pin or awl. She had lain on top of a layer of compressed sedges 2ins.-3ins. thick, which rested directly on undisturbed clay, and she was covered by 1ft. 9ins. of peat. The place where she was found was 28 yards away from one of the second type of Major Fowler's extinct waterways (“Old Run,” Plate XXXII.). There was no evidence of burial, and we conjecture that she had been drowned, carried down by this river, dropped among the sedges bordering it when the flood subsided, and subsequently covered by the growth of peat.

According to the workmen's account she was lying face downwards with one arm across her face and the other arm extended. The bracelet of jet beads (Plate XXXIII., a) is said to have been round the wrist of the extended arm; pin or awl (Plate XXXIII., b) must have been worn near the waist.

This paper discusses the rock carvings at Kasen Lövåsen, a site which now lies 5 km inland but, during the Bronze Age, looked out over a sea in process of withdrawal by the isostatic rise of the land. The site carries eight panels of carvings that have been the subject of several surveys and descriptions. Recent work has clarified the nature of some of these and revealed more. Carvings include discs, numerous boats, human figures (some explicitly male), including helmeted individuals, spear and swordsmen and paddle or torchbearers, duck figures, boots, dog-like creatures, and horse-riders. Composition and siting are discussed in relation to the quality and preservation of carving, dating, and to aspects of topography, communication routes, and sea level recession. The reasons and mechanisms behind transformations in the imagery are explored in terms of changing social symbolism and ideology in response to a rapidly changing land- and seascape.

‘The huts are now roofless, the fires of the hearths quenched for ever, the fortifications levelled; yet these ruins have out-lasted the erections of more civilized times, and they still remain to tell us something of the busy population who hunted, tended flocks, tilled the ground, and quarrelled and fought, at a very distant period (in the valley of the Breamish)’. George Tate (1863, 302)

This paper describes the results of the South East Cheviots Project undertaken by the former Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME; now part of English Heritage) during the 1980s. An area of 66 square kilometres was analytically recorded, ranging from the Breamish Valley in the north to Alnham in the south and from Brandon in the east to Schill Moor in the west. The project recorded with metrical accuracy all forms of cultivation remains, field systems, and settlements of all periods (only the prehistoric evidence will be reviewed in this paper). This landscape approach has led to a greater understanding of settlement histories in these remarkably well-preserved uplands. Recent excavations undertaken by the Northumberland Archaeological Group (NAG) and Durham University, under the auspices of the Northumberland National Park Authority (NNPA), have helped to clarify and contextualise further aspects of the chronology of settlement and landscape change recorded by the SECP.

This is a subject to which scarcely any detailed attention has hitherto been paid. Parker Brewis pronounced the accepted theory when he said that the rapier ‘evolved by lengthening the dagger little by little, keeping step with the ever-growing command of metal and ability to make longer castings’. This general explanation has been accepted, since it conforms with the canon of technical evolution and is supported by the available evidence of associations. It is not, however, sufficient to explain the form taken by British rapiers, since comparison of the daggers of the Wessex and Food-vessel cultures with the daggers and dirks of the early part of the Middle Bronze Age reveals so great a difference between them that the latter cannot be considered simply to have evolved from the former. The Early Bronze Age daggers are much smaller and broader, they have three or more rivets, and ornamental hilts with separate pommels. Middle Bronze Age dirks are longer, stronger and almost invariably have two rivets in a simple hilt. Also, the distribution of weapons in the two periods differs: in the Early Bronze Age the chief concentration is in Wessex, but this area has produced hardly any rapiers.

This paper is a study of the 58 recorded antler maceheads of the so-called ‘crown’ type, their technology, distribution, dating, and possible origins and relationships. An illustrated catalogue is appended.

Investigations into the ceramic typology of the southern Italian neolithic have helped little in the understanding of neolithic origins there. In this paper the evidence of the radiocarbon chronology is used to demonstrate the antiquity of the southern Italian neolithic. There are now sufficient sixth millennium bc dates to suggest that the appearance there of a neolithic with mixed impressed and red-painted wares was contemporary with the earliest neolithic of both Greece and the West Mediterranean, while the penetration of those traits further north into Italy seems to have been delayed.

Although a large number of bronze ‘razors’ have been found in these islands, the literature concerning them is very scattered, and there has been no attempt to synthesize the information concerning them. There are frequent references to the so-called ‘plantain’ (our Class I) form or to the ‘maple-leaf’ (Class II) examples with their suggested connection with Siculan razors, but there has been no detailed analysis of their chronological and cultural positions in the British Late Bronze Age. This paper attempts such a classification of the razors on a typological and cultural basis so that they can be fitted with greater accuracy intq their place in Late Bronze chronology.