The area examined is in the parish of Newbury, Berkshire, nearly a mile from the village of Thatcham, South of Lower Way on the Sewage Outfall Works of Newbury Corporation. The Mesolithic settlement extended along the bluff of the 8-foot gravel terrace, immediately North of the Moor Brook and the railway (SU 502668 to SU 504667).

Thatcham is only one of several sites known in the Kennet Valley to have produced a Maglemosian flint industry.

This paper is the result of a survey of a part of Macedonia and Epirus carried out in 1962 and sponsored by the British School of Archaeology at Athens. In 1963 under the aegis of S. I. Dakaris, ephor of Epirus, excavations were carried out to confirm some of the hypotheses resulting from the earlier survey. The cost of the work was defrayed partly by the British Academy and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, and partly by the members of the expeditions themselves. In this paper it is proposed to place on record some of the findings of these expeditions. A more detailed consideration of them will be published after further information has been acquired in 1964.

Prior to 1962 little was known of the Stone Age industries of Greece. In contrast with the industrial successions established in Western Europe, Central Europe, Russia and the Levant, Greece had remained virtually a blank on the Palaeolithic map. As late as 1923 Jardé had written that not a single palaeolithic tool was known from Greek soil. Apart from three pieces of uncertain provenance attributed by Breuil to the Upper Palaeolithic, and one from Saloniki noted by Obermaier, no further progress seems to have been made until the German and Italian occupation of Greece and Albania. In 1941 Stampfuss dug the cave of Seidi between Thebes and Levadia. He discovered an industry which contained backed-blades, burins, shouldered points and thick scrapers. It is undated, but is a Gravettoid industry, possibly at a fully developed or even later stage. Mustilli also reported in 1941 the finding of a Middle Palaeolithic industry in Albania. Since that time Servais has noted the presence of apparently early flints in the Peloponnese, a fact subsequently investigated by Leroi-Gourhan in 1962. Byelor has also reported some flakes of Levallois type. The most important work, however, has been that of Milojčić, published in 1958, and arising out of the work in previous years of the German Thessaly Expedition.

The foreshore exposures of Pleistocene deposits at Clacton and at Lion Point, two miles to the south-west, mark cross-sections of an ancient river channel which now extends inland in a broad curve between these two localities. The deposits have become famous through the investigations of Mr S. Hazzledine Warren, who has for many years kept a careful watch on the exposures, and who has published a number of important papers on his discoveries (Warren, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1933, 1934).

The gravels in the Clacton channel have yielded a contemporary palaeolithic flake-industry which was recognised by the Abbé Breuil as identical in style with an industry represented in the Middle Pleistocene gravels of Mesvin, Belgium (Warren, 1922). Breuil (1929, p. 6) has since proposed the name of Clactonian for this industry in view of the fact that in the Mesvin deposits the implements in question are in a derived condition, and associated with other industries, whereas at Clacton there is no doubt as to their contemporaneity with the containing gravel. Industries of Clacton style have since been recognised in numerous localities, not only in this country, but also on the Continent (Breuil, 1932). They appear to represent a widespread cultural tradition, possibly of Asiatic origin, and very probably ancestral to the later Mousterian industries.

The industry of the type station—the Clacton-on-Sea district of Essex—represents neither the earliest nor the latest stage of evolution of the Clactonian culture, and importance attaches to establishing its exact position in the Lower Palaeolithic sequence.

First investigated in 1869, the transepted long cairn of Parc le Breos Cwm was re-excavated in 1960–61 but without a report being published. This account presents a number of radiocarbon dates and a detailed re-examination of the human bone assemblages, and attempts to put the monument in local and regional context. Radiocarbon dates place the long cairn in the later part of the earlier Neolithic, and support a fairly long span of time over which its mortuary deposits were accumulated; they also show secondary re-use of the passage, and perhaps also the deliberate incorporation of very old animal bone from nearby caves. The analysis of the human bone assemblages indicates prior exposure of the remains found in the chambers, in contrast to those in the passage. Variation in musculoskeletal stress markers may indicate a mobile lifestyle for at least some of the male mortuary population. Other lifestyle indicators are noted, and isotopic evidence is presented for a terrestrial and mainly meat-oriented diet in the sampled group. The isolated context and hidden setting of the Parc le Breos Cwm long cairn and the apparently low density of south Welsh monuments are stressed.

The Yorkshire Wolds hold an air of mystery for students of the Iron Age. As is well known these chalk hills lie at the heart of the largest group of Early Iron Age burials in Britain, the ‘Arras Culture’, so-called after the first and richest cemetery to be excavated (fig. 1; Stead 1979). Although these burials are often quoted in general discussions and formed an important piece of evidence in the ‘invasion controversy’, it is only in the last few years that up to date illustrations of the material have begun to appear in textbooks (Cunliffe 1978; Champion 1979) following the publication of interim excavation reports (Brewster 1976; Stead 1977). Little is known of the settlements which these cemeteries served and even less is published. The present paper is an attempt to trace settlement patterns by an examination of the funerary material in conjunction with the domestic evidence which was found in the very large-scale excavations in Garton and Wetwang Slacks (Brewster 1981; Dent 1982).

A heavy funerary bias in the material is further exaggerated because the distinctive square-plan barrows of the ‘Arras Culture’ are readily identifiable from the air whereas settlement can rarely be dated without excavation. Many hundreds of barrows are now known in this way (Ramm 1973; 1974; Loughlin and Miller 1979) and all but the most recently excavated have been catalogued (Stead 1979). An essential requirement for a discussion of these is the ability to date the material involved, either in absolute or in relative terms. It would be useful if distinctive groups could be recognized among the pottery from these sites since the metalwork is rare in domestic contexts, whereas even poor sites usually produce some sherds. Unfortunately there is virtually no decorated pottery and the plain jars which are found in graves cannot at present be used as a basis for a chronology. It is the metalwork which presents the best opportunity for such a classification.

The importance of attempting to reconstruct diet from a study of biological data from archaeological sites has been stressed by earlier workers, both in Britain and the United States. The present study is based on materials recovered from the excavation of a midden deposit at Galatea Bay, on an offshore island of the North Island of New Zealand, by Mr J. E. Terrell, whose complete report (No. 1) is to appear in the Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand. The site overlooks a sheltered area of sea from the mouth of a small and now dry valley (see pl. IX) and the excavation revealed an initial, specialized cooking area which was replaced by dumps of food waste and then abandoned. The most characteristic elements of the midden were marine shellfish valves and a much smaller quantity of vertebrate bones. However, the apparent frequency of the shellfish could not be taken as a sure guide to their importance over the vertebrate animals because the nature of the animals and their surviving evidence makes it impossible to directly compare them. Shellfish, though individually small, are found in large numbers and are thus best studied by means of estimating populations derived from samples. Vertebrate populations on the other hand can be measured by more direct means, though it must be recognized, as Mr Terrell points out, that such an excavation is itself only a sample. In his report Mr Terrell examined the effects of dehydration, size and sifting upon the shell samples and then compared the archaeological population with those of living shellfish, so enabling him to demonstrate the relative influence of natural and cultural causes on the archaeological population. These findings provide basic evidence which will be referred to during the course of the present paper.

One of the major problems of British prehistory has been the contrast between the mass of Late Bronze Age metalwork and the rarity of contemporary settlements. The Berkshire river gravels are one area in which a high proportion of bronze objects is recorded in apparent isolation. With the increasing recognition of Late Bronze Age pottery, however, it has been possible to identify domestic finds of this period among the artefacts from gravel pits around Reading. Part of the gap in the settlement record has also been closed by the excavation of two sites on the Berkshire Downs, the earthwork enclosure at Rams Hill, and an open site at Beedon Manor Farm (Bradley and Ellison 1975; Richards in press). But it was not until 1974 that a Bronze Age settlement on the gravels could be examined in situ, and since the formation of the Berkshire Archaeological Unit a series of five sites have been sampled or more extensively investigated. This paper is concerned with the two most extensive sites, those at Aldermaston Wharf and Knight's Farm, Burghfield, but will make cross reference to the other work where necessary, in particular to a more recently recorded site at Pingewood.

It is now clear why this evidence was so difficult to find. The pottery is extremely friable and would not survive on the surface; and the gravel sites contain very few worked flints. The main features are small pits under 50 cm deep, and for this reason the sites cannot be detected from the air; and, even if they could be recognized, there would be nothing to distinguish them from Iron Age open sites, like those in the Upper Thames Basin.

In this article we argue that within the Danish Bronze Age there was a short-lived period (roughly 1500–1150 bc) that witnessed a dramatic investment of resources into the construction of monumental architecture in the form of barrows and long houses. These investments had far-reaching long-term effects on the local landscape with negative consequences for agricultural productivity. We use two extraordinary well-documented excavations of a barrow (Skelhøj) and a long house (Legård) as a model for labour organisation and resource allocation, which is calculated against the number of barrows and long houses recorded in the Danish Sites and Monuments database for the period. An astonishing minimum of 50,000 barrows were constructed, devastating an estimated 120,000–150,000 hectares of grassland. During the same time period an estimated 200,000 long houses were constructed and renewed every 30–60 years. In densely settled regions the effects are easily recognisable in pollen diagrams as a near-complete deforestation. Thereby, the productive potential of the economy was, in effect, reduced.

The situation was unsustainable in a long-term perspective and, at least on a local scale, it implied the risk of collapse. On the other hand, the exploitation of resources also appears to have entailed a new way of operating in the landscape, which led to a new organisation of the landscape itself and a restructuring of society in the Late Bronze Age. The intense character of these investments in monumental architecture is assumed to rely primarily on ritual and competitive rationales, and it exemplifies how the overall economy may be considered an unstable or contradictory interplay between ritual, political, and domestic rationales.1

This paper discusses 226 earlier Neolithic pits found at Kilverstone in Norfolk. In particular, it focuses on the dynamics involved in the site's creation, investigating what had happened to the material found in the pits prior to deposition, and exploring the material connections (refitting sherds and flints) across the site. As a result of these material insights, it proved possible to shed important light on the character of that place in particular, and on the temporality of Neolithic deposition and occupation in general.

A first formal description is given of the largest collection of lithic artefacts from Britain to be clearly dated to the first part of the Late Glacial Interstadial. Much of this material is interpreted as having been left in the cave following hunting of wild horses and red deer in summer and winter. The large total of artefacts is suggested to be a result of small increments over a lengthy period rather than evidence of use of the cave as a base camp or aggregation site. It is possible that the cave took on an additional or alternative function as a funerary site.

The Newferry area is situated to the north of Lough Beg which is almost a northern extension of Lough Neagh, in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. Newferry is not a precise geographical area; it lies on both the Antrim and Derry side of the River Bann, and is an extensive area of diatomite flats nearly one mile wide which is bounded to the east and west by the drumlins lining either side of the valley. In early post-glacial times this would have been an extension to Lough Beg and until the Bann was dredged in the 1930's it was still liable to flood during the winter months. On the northern edge on the western side of the river the diatomite is known to run under the edge of Ballymacombs More raised bog. Therefore this lacustrine basin may have extended for another two miles north to Culbane where the high ground of Ballynease would have partially separated it from the next lake basin (fig. 1).

Newferry has long been known as an area where Mesolithic material could be recovered from the Quaternary deposits. Several other excavations have taken place in this area prior to the present excavations. The Harvard Archaeological Mission carried out an excavation on the Derry side of the river in the early 1930's (Movius 1936) while in the late 1950's another small investigation was carried out on the Antrim side of the River (Smith and Collins 1971). In total there are now four sites known in this area.

The site of the early prehistoric farming settlement at Nea Nikomedeia, Western Macedonia, was first noted in 1958 by Mr Photios Petsas, Ephore of Antiquities of the area for the Greek Archaeological Service: he investigated the reported discovery of archaeological finds exposed during the course of removing earth from an inconspicuous mound to make a road embankment, and forthwith stopped further destruction of the site. His willing advice and assistance, and the most generous cooperation of the Greek Archaeological Service under the direction of Dr John Papadimitriou, and of the Ministry of Agriculture, made possible the five-week excavation season in the summer of 1961. The excavations were carried out under the aegis of the British School at Athens. Thanks are due to the British Academy, the Crowther-Benyon Fund administered by the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for providing the necessary funds. I wish to acknowledge help and guidance both in the field and in the preparation of this report from Professor Grahame Clark, under whose supervision I worked at Cambridge University during the academic years 1959–60 and 1960–61. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Mr R. W. Hutchinson for his valuable help in the field, and to the undergraduates and research students from the University of Cambridge who willingly undertook most of the field and laboratory work. The ready assistance of the Curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and his staff in shipping matters and the loan of equipment is greatly appreciated.

The village of Shukbah lies at 1,058 ft. above sea-level among the Judaean hills, approximately 17½ miles north-west of Jerusalem and 10½ miles NE. of Ramleh. About half-a-mile to the south of the village a broad winding valley, the Wady-en-Natuf, dry for the greater part of the year, runs westward through the hills towards the coastal plain, and in it is situated the cave to be described.

The cave of Shukbah was first noticed by the late Père Alexis Mallon S.J., Director of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, in the course of a journey from Jemmala to Lydda in September 1924. Père Mallon was not able at that time to make any soundings, but he picked up a number of flint implements, and noted the presence of masses of breccia containing flints and bones. At the beginning of 1928, when I arrived in Palestine for the first time, he generously suggested that the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem should undertake the excavation of the site, which he rightly considered to be promising. Thanks to the generosity of the late Sir Robert Mond the British School was enabled to do this, and in April 1928 I went to Shukbah with two collaborators, Mr George Woodbury, afterwards Research Associate at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, and the late Mrs Edna Thuner Woodbury, who share with me the responsibility for this piece of work. Excavation was carried on from the beginning of April until the middle of June, when we left with the intention of returning in the following year. At the beginning of 1929, however, the British School was asked by the Director of Antiquities in Palestine to undertake at once the excavation of a group of caves in the Wady el-Mughara, Mount Carmel, then threatened with destruction by quarrying. This work was carried out in collaboration with the American School of Prehistoric Research, and the two schools planned to return to Shukbah after it should be completed. In the event, however, the Wady el-Mughara turned out to be an extraordinarily important site, and excavations were carried on there until 1934, while the study of the material and its preparation for publication lasted until 1937. As there is no prospect at present of continuing the work at Shukbah, it has been decided to publish without further delay the results of the excavations of 1928.

Current belief ascribes the origins of agriculture in the Nile to diffusion in the fifth millennium B.C. from southwest Asia of plants and animals the domestication of which had first begun there in the eighth millennium or earlier. A growing body of evidence is now becoming available which shows the cultural pattern in the Nile Valley at the termination of the Pleistocene to have been appreciably more complex than was previously thought and necessitates a re-examination of the evidence on which the belief for the late appearance of domestication in Egypt is based. This pre-agricultural complexity, when examined in the light of the abundant historical and ethnographic evidence for distinctive man/animal, if not also man/plant relationships in north and northeast Africa, suggests that a process of pre-adaption using the local animal and plant resources is most likely to have preceded the introduction of the Asian domesticates. Many of the indigenous practices relating to local animals and plants persisted as late as Middle Kingdom times (2052–1786 B.C.). The appearance of the Asian food plants and animals in the fifth millennium may reflect, therefore, not the beginnings of domestication in Egypt, but the replacement of genetically less suitable local species by more satisfactory, exotic forms, a situation made possible by the beginnings of regular communication between the Nile and the Levant from that time onwards.

Since 1840, a number of anthropomorphic wooden figures have been discovered in Britain and Ireland. They are described and illustrated, and aspects of their manufacture discussed. Previous interpretations of date and function are reviewed, noting the lack of recent interest, and the evidence available for dating the figures is summarized, demonstrating that although they were generally attributed to the later prehistoric period no firm evidence supported this conclusion. AMS radiocarbon dates have recently confirmed the prehistoric age of the carvings, ranging from about 3000 BC cal. to about 350 BC cal. Similar wooden figures from the continent are briefly examined, along with comparative representations in other media, and some common features are identified. The significance of various similarities and attributes is discussed, noting affinities with Scandinavian rock-art and bog-burials. The sexual ambiguity of the figures is recognized, along with a tendency to asymmetry and slighting of the left side of the face. It is suggested that these attributes may relate to the original symbolism of the carvings.

For over 40 years South Africa and for over 25 years East Africa have been yielding fossilized remains of creatures identified on their bony structure as lowly members of the Hominidae or human family. From five sites in the Republic of South Africa (Taung, Sterkfontein, Kromdraai, Makapansgat and Swartkrans) and from three sites in the Republic of Tanzania (Garusi, Olduvai and Peninj) have emerged a considerable number of hominid fossils of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene. Most of them have been classified as members of an extinct hominid genus called by R. A. Dart, the discoverer of the first specimen, Australopithecus. Although variable among themselves, the structural features which aligu these fossils with the Hominidae, rather than with the family of the apes or Pongidae, are as follows:—

(1) Australopithecus showed modifications of his skeleton—especially the pelvis, femur, ankle and foot—which permit us to infer that he walked upright, even though such modifications had not progressed as far as in hominids of the genus Homo.

(2) The calvaria or brain-case of Australopithecus was characterized by a number of hominid features, such as marked flexion of the axis of the cranial base; forward displacement of the occipital condyles by which the skull articulates with the vertebral column; a small, low nuchal area at the back of the base of the cranium, for the attachment of those muscles which tether the back of the cranium to the trunk—the last two features suggesting a different, more man-like poise of the cranium on the spine; the consistent development, early in life, of a pyramidal mastoid process as in man, and unlike the apes in which this process develops inconsistently and then only later in life (Schultz 1950).

(3) The canine teeth of Australopithecus, like those of Homo, lacked the enlargement and marked interlocking which characterizes the upper and lower teeth of the apes—correspondingly, Australopithecus lacked the diastemata or gaps which, in apes, lodge the projecting tips of the enlarged canines.

(4) Another dental characteristic shared by Australopithecus with Homo was the bicuspid structure of the first lower premolar tooth: in apes, this tooth does not possess two sub-equal cusps but is a cutting or sectorial tooth with one predominating cusp, like a canine tooth.

(5) Although the brain-size of Australopithecus (as inferred from the volumetric capacity of the brain-case) was no bigger than that of some largerbrained apes, the shape or morphology of the brain, as preserved in endocranial casts, approached more closely to that of early Homo than to that of the apes. We have, however, no direct evidence whether these external observable differences between the brains of Australopithecus and of apes were paralleled by internal, microscopic, structural differences such as those which have been demonstrated between modern man and modern apes.

(6) Many other detailed morphological features of the skull, the teeth and other bones of Australopithecus showed human resemblances.

Tell Bouqras is situated in eastern Syria, on the right bank of the Euphrates, c. 35 km south-east of Deir ez-Zor (35°05′ 12″N, 40°23′ 50″E). The ‘neolithic’ village was built on a promontory of the plateau area overlooking the Euphrates floodplain, just opposite the mouth of the Khabur (fig. 1). H. de Contenson and W.J. van Liere (1966) conducted a trial excavation at the tell in 1965. Their results showed that the ‘hunter-shepherd society’ of Bouqras (van Liere and de Contenson 1963; Hooijer 1966) dated from the second half of the seventh millennium bc (Vogel and Waterbolk 1967).

Before this period villages with an economy based on agriculture and animal husbandry mainly occupied the mountainous areas bordering the ‘fertile crescent’. During the second half of the seventh and the first part of the sixth millennia be the spread of such villages can be observed outside of the areas formerly occupied. The chronological and geographical position of Bouqras makes the site particularly suited to be investigated as an example of the sedentary communities which started to settle the more downstream Euphrates and Tigris drainage basins in the lowlands of eastern Syria and Iraq, beyond the regions where rainfall-fed farming would have been possible. Furthermore, the location of Bouqras at similar distances, as the crow flies, from Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites in western and northern Syria and early sixth millennium settlements in northern Iraq, would give the opportunity to trace contacts between these separate regions.

With these objectives a team from the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen, directed by Prof Dr H. T. Waterbolk and Prof Dr M. N. van Loon, undertook new excavations at Bouqras from 1976 to 1978. Financial support was obtained from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research, the A. E. vanGiffen Instituut voor Prae- en Protohistorie in Amsterdam and the Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in Groningen. We express our gratitude to Dr A. Bahnassi and Dr A. Bounni of the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in Damascus, for granting the excavation and survey permits and for their interest in our work. Mr A. Mahmoud of the Museum of Deir ez-Zor was very helpful during our stay in the field.

This paper is primarily concerned with the large series of Bronze Age shields known in central, north and western Europe, but, for purposes which will become apparent, some attention has also been paid to certain shields of the Mediterranean world. The first part will be devoted to a culture-historical study of the shields and the second to the methods used in their production.

The excavation of eighteen round barrows was undertaken by the late Charles Green during summer seasons from 1958 to 1960, in advance of their destruction by ploughing. The excavated barrows are members of two linear groups which occupy adjacent spurs to the east of the village of Shrewton in the modern parish of that name (fig. 1). One of the barrows investigated lies in Winterbourne Stoke parish. This western part of Salisbury Plain is termed the ‘Lower Plain’ comprising those areas having their ‘upper limit… between 400 and 450 feet OD and their lower limit where they overlook the valley trenches … between 250 and 300 feet O.D.’ (Gifford 1957, 6). In such a lower valley lie the modern villages of Shrewton and Rollestone, and through it flows the river Till, the nearest modern open water supply to the barrows. This connects the area to the River Avon via the Wylye and Nadder.