A Lower Palaeolithic handaxe found a few years ago at St Catherine's Hill, Christ church, is described. Various aspects of its technology and morphology appear archaic, and although it was found in a secondary context, with no clear geological evidence for its true age, relatively old Pleistocene gravels do occur at the summit of the hill. At the Ballast Hole, Corfe Mullen, a few miles west, J. B. Calkin and J. F. N. Green recorded some 25 years ago a number of handaxes very similar to this one, in a hill-wash deposit below bluff gravels; they suggested that the implements had originally been dropped on the surface of the Sleight (170 ft) terrace while the 130 ft terrace was forming nearby. These implements were demonstrably older than the well-made later Acheulian ovate handaxes from the same pit. They were called Middle Acheulian by Calkin and Green, but it is suggested that Earlier Acheulian would be a better description. Their likely context in the British sequence is briefly discussed. Early Acheulian occurrences in situ in early deposits are rare in Britain and Europe.

This paper describes the results of two seasons of excavation and associated palaeoenvironmental analyses of a wetland site on Beccles Marshes, Beccles, Suffolk. The site has been identified as a triple post alignment of oak timbers (0.6–2.0 m long), over 100 m in length, and 3–4 m wide, running north-west to south-east towards the River Waveney. It was constructed in a single phase which has been dated dendrochronologically to 75 BC, although discrete brushwood features identified as possible short trackways have been dated by radiocarbon to both before and after the alignment was built. It is unclear if the posts ever supported a superstructure but notches (‘halving lap joints’) in some of the posts appear to have held timbers to support the posts and/or aid in their insertion. In addition, fragments of both Iron Age and Romano-British pottery were recovered. A substantial assemblage of worked wooden remains appears to reflect the construction of the post row itself and perhaps the on-site clearance of floodplain vegetation. This assemblage also contains waste material derived from the reduction splitting of timbers larger than the posts of the alignment, but which have not been recovered from the site. Environmental analyses indicate that the current landscape context of the site with respect to the River Waveney is probably similar to that which pertained in prehistory. The coleoptera (beetle) record illustrates a series of changes in the on-site vegetation in the period before, during and after the main phase of human activity which may be related to a range of factors including floodplain hydrology and anthropogenic utilisation of Beccles Marshes. The possible form and function of the site is discussed in relation to the later prehistoric period in Suffolk.

About 170 round barrows and 15 flat graves from Kent are here recorded, almost all on the Chalk. In addition there are at least as many ring-ditches, mostly of ploughed-out round barrows, in Thanet, only a small selection of which are here included as a full list is being prepared by the Trust for Thanet Archaeology. Nine sites have yielded primary central inhumations and ten have contained primary central cremations. Four sites have yielded burials in their encircling ditch. Warrior equipment has come from two sites, and ‘Wessex’ interments from another two. Barrow Wouldham 1/THAN contained a central primary cremation in a four-post mortuary structure with parallels in the Toterfout-Halve-Mijl cemetery in the Netherlands, with which area relations are suggested. One site (Lydden 1/DOV) is identified as the Ellenbeorge of an Anglo-Saxon land charter. Several Bronze Age round barrows were used by the Jutes and Saxons for their intrusive burials, and there are two instances of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery being sited to adjoin a Bronze Age round barrow. More than twenty sites have recorded local names of which the most frequent general name is Mount. Some of the best surviving barrows are beside or near the North Downs Way and the Pilgrims' Way.

From the Marine Parade, Tankerton, Whitstable, looking East, one obtains a capital view of Tankerton Bay, Swalecliffe, in which my discoveries have been made which are to form the subject matter of this paper. The grassy cliff at Priest and Sow corner at the end of the road stands at 55 O.D. This height gradually declining round the arc of the bay, to die out entirely in the Long Rock occupying the middle distance and through which the Swalecliffe Brook discharges into the sea. Just beyond, a little to the right, are the disused Swalecliffe Brick Works, with Stud Hill and Hampton lying further back. To the left and edging the horizon, Herne Bay Pier is clearly discernable. The accompanying copy of (Plate I.) the 25-in. Ordnance map of this Tankerton Bay section gives the exact position of the 650 yards from the Parish Boundary Stone eastwards indicated thereon with a X in which are found the gravels and brick-earths which have proved so rich in archaeological treasure trove. The whole of this south-easterly directioned well-drained gently sloping ground, from the Priest and Sow corner to the Swalecliffe brook, forms an ideal camping site. Last April a paper was read by me before the Geological Association, at University College, London, entitled “An Examination of the Contents of the Brick Earths and Gravels of Tankerton Bay, Swalecliffe, Kent,” in which the geological aspect of this section was fairly exhaustively treated, so that in this particular it will be unnecessary for me to do more than give a brief summary of the results of that examination as to the relative age and stratigraphical sequence of the Drift material found here overlying the London Clay.

A series of implements were collected during the summer and autumn of 1914 from an area of some twenty square miles lying between the Cray Valley and Kingsdown in North Kent. The specimens were not distributed uniformly over this area, but confined more or less to a few localities where they occurred in considerable numbers. It is, moreover, significant that these localities are on high land commanding extensive views of the surrounding country, and especially of the river valleys. The sites were presumably chosen for this and another reason—the local abundance of green-coated flint, a material which was largely employed in the manufacture of implements.

The sites had been inhabited by a succession of peoples who left their implements behind them. Among these the commonest are assignable to the Neolithic period, but Palæolithic implements are by no means rare. There are, moreover, localities where only Palæolithic forms are found, and these all of one pattern, namely, the pointed ovate. Many possess the familiar reversed S twist, and all are deeply patinated, either pure white, pinkish-yellow, or cream.

A paper in Vol. I., Part III., of the “Proceedings,” on “Pygmy Implements from Cornwall,” by E. L. Arnold, has spurred me on to place on record my discoveries on the same spot.

During the years 1898 to 1903 I paid numerous visits to the western side of Trevose Head, Booby Bay, Constantine Island, and also to the Late Celtic Cemetery at Harlyn Bay, one mite N.E. Flint flakes and cores or cones lay on the surface of the ground, at the cliff edge, all the way from Dinas Head (the western-most corner of the Trevose promontory, and a splendid look-out place), down to Booby Bay and Constantine Island. They had evidently once been covered with soil and are now exposed by the wastage thereof near the cliff edge. Some I dug out from the banks of tiny runlets formed after heavy rain.

Mr. Arnold says that “the artificers appear to have turned out immense numbers of barbs and arrow-points, but practically nothing else.” Like him, I found many hundreds of chipped flints, leaving quantities of them where I found them, after examination. But I found no true arrow-head. None of the pygmy tools were of especial smallness, but some were straight and sharply pointed, and I suggested, in “Man,” Vol. VII., No. 9, 83, their possible use as barbs to harpoons and also as fish hooks.

One flake, however, has been cleverly snicked from the base to half-way up its length, on each side, so as to leave two projecting shoulders as barbs, and a tang. It is carefully retouched round the edges on one face only. It has curved edges and a narrow, sharp chisel end.

The site occupies the top and upper slope of the gravel plateau O.D. 200 feet, ¾ mile West by South of Weybourne Station. (See Ordnance Datum Map, Norfolk, Sheet X., S.W., 6-ins. to 1 mile). It consists of unploughed heathland, mainly undisturbed, though during the war some trenches were dug, whilst, at some past date, heather “turves” have been cut for the making of a turf bank, possibly an old boundary bank. As a result stony patches occur among the heather, and it was the discovery in August, 1923, by my daughter, Olive, of a worked point (Fig. 11) on one of these patches that led to the investigation of the site.

The parish boundary between Weybourne and Kelling lies at the foot of the eastern slope of the plateau at this spot. 1,100 yards East by South is a tumulus, adjoining which are the “Weybourne Pits,” whilst just over a mile west by north lie a series of tumuli on Salthouse Heath.