This paper presents findings within Wyman Abbott's long-missing notebooks and other allied archival sources relating to his Fengate fieldwork during the early decades of the 20th century. Largely focusing upon its monuments, we here publish a manuscript concerned with his extraordinary, multiple-interment 'great' ringditch which is otherwise known from a paragraph's description in Hawkes and Fell's Antiquaries Jourual paper of 1945. Not only do these sources contribute to the further reconstruction of Fengate's renowned Bronze Age landscape, but, it is argued, the centralised multiple-lineage interment evident at his main ring-ditch site may well reflect upon the social organisation which also gave rise to Pryor's equally 'special' Flag Fen platform.

In 1922 Miss N. F. Layard gave as her presidential address an account of some prehistoric cooking-places, which she had discovered near a stream at Buckenham Tofts, Norfolk (Proc., P.S.E.A., Vol. III., Part IV.). One of the hearths excavated consisted of a triangular mass of calcined flints, up to two feet in depth, and covering an area of over 100 square yards. This was on one end of a mound rising about ten feet above the general level of the swamp bordering the stream. Amongst this material were found several flint implements, including knives typical of the Bronze Age. There were also found two sherds of pottery corresponding closely to a known Bronze Age type, though this also continued into the Early Iron Age.

Knowing nothing of Miss Layard's discoveries, in 1927 I came across similar deposits of pot-boilers, etc., at Hoe, near East Dereham. These are on either side of a small stream, which eventually runs into the River Wensum. Mr. Sainty and Mr. Newnham were good enough to come over and examine them, and Mr. Newnham subsequently gave a short account of them at the December meeting that year (Proc., P.S.E.A., Vol. V., Part III. page 311).

I was able to revisit the site in June this year (1931), and at one place where, however, there was hardly a mound at all, a layer of pot-boilers, 6 ins. deep, was found under about 6 ins. of turf and soil. Excavation of an area 12 feet by 8 feet produced nearly a pailful of pottery fragments, three dozen scrapers, and an implement of the bone-breaker type, besides numbers of flakes and cores.

In former parts of these “Proceedings” Dr. W. Allen Sturge, M.V.O., has put forward views concerning the striæ on surface implements, views which are so opposed to the canons of geology and archæology, and involve so great an upheaval of accepted beliefs, that but for the skill with which the facts and conclusions were marshalled, they would not have received a moment's consideration. Few archæologists have the material on which to form a reliable judgment, and fewer still are prepared to accept the upheaval of current views rendered necessary by the adoption of the theory that minor glaciations occurred after the deposition of the chalky boulder clay. Even more revolutionary was the view as to the occurrence of a glacial period at all and this was strenuously fought for many years, and even now is by no means accepted by all geologists. The drift deposits were referred to by old writers as “Extraneous Rubbish,” and were sometimes divided into Diluvium and Alluvium. It was not until 1840, when Agassiz read his paper before the Geological Society on “Glaciers, and the Evidence of their having once existed in Scotland, Ireland, and England,” that this momentous explanation of a vast and difficult problem was given to geologists, and years elapsed before it was generally accepted.

The object of this paper is to make known the existence of a wide-spread implementiferous deposit hitherto unknown in Devonshire, although comparable discoveries have been made in East Anglia by Mr. Reid Moir and in the Thames Valley by Mr. J. P. T. Burchell.

A brief preliminary statement appeared in Vol. VII, part 2, in “Notes on Excavations,” which reported our finding a number of flint implements which lay to a depth of 12 ft. below the surface of a dry valley in Bovey Lane, Beer.

These specimens were revealed in an artificial cutting made in search of water, when only the faces of the sections could be examined, but by aid of a grant from the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund, we were later enabled to carry out two seasons of excavation.

During 1926 and 1927 my researches under the auspices of the Percy Sladen Trustees were continued upon the Cromer coast of Norfolk, and a quantity of additional evidence relating to the archæological contents of the Forest Bed obtained. The remarkable spreads of flints exposed at low tide upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham were again examined, while the Estuarine Beds and the Upper Freshwater Bed of the Forest Bed Series received also some amount of attention.

I have to record my thanks to Messrs. J. P. T. Burchell, H. H. Halls, Guy Maynard, and J. E. Sainty for valuable help during these researches.

The further examination of the large spreads of flint present upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham has yielded many new and interesting facts regarding them. These spreads all rest upon the chalk, which along the coast-line between Cromer and Sheringham is exposed in places at low tide. Moreover, though differing in extent, they all present, to the casual observer, a very similar appearance, and are without doubt at the present time being subjected to closely similar physical conditions.

During the successive Glacial periods which seem to have occurred at regular intervals and of increasing or diminishing intensity, what were the climatic conditions in the present tropical regions?

This is dated from Southern India, where I am endeavouring to visualise and imagine some of the climatic conditions in which ancient man at some of these periods may have lived, and in which the implements, of which I am finding some beautiful examples, may have been made and used and subsequently abandoned, being now found in certain positions and horizons.

Cuddapah is the chief town of a district where I have found most of the implements of palæolithic type of which I have given series to, I suppose, more than a hundred museums. If I include African and Egyptian implements, then the number of museums and institutions is 246 in all. Cuddapah is pretty well searched out now as regards implements, as there is a native whom Mr. McLeod, the late Collector of Cuddapah, trained as a searcher, and who has usually been with me and who is with me on the present occasion, who has searched most of that district in my company. Dr. Sturge has very beautifully and clearly applied the Draysonian theory to certain questions in prehistorics. While man in Northern Europe was being driven backwards and forwards, and alternately scorched and frozen for thousands of years, alternating with long periods of comparative climatic repose such as we are now enjoying, what, I ask, was happening to his confrère in India? As far as I can ascertain from the evidential positions and surroundings of such palæolithic implements as I have myself picked up, the climate in this part of the world was devoid of those catastrophic floods and alternating Arctic and Tropical climates which must have made life so exciting in other latitudes.

Contributions to the general study of Prehistory have accumulated of late years, but the methods of cooking in early times have received but little attention. This, then, must be my excuse for bringing this subject to your notice to-day.

Prehistoric man has unwittingly divulged the course of his wanderings over continents, not only by the implements which strew his path, and with which we are familiar, but by the burnt stones which mark his simple hearth.

These eloquent but unattractive little relics have a significance equal, if not exceeding that of the artifacts themselves. For their advent coincides with one of the leaps and bounds of man's evolution, when goaded by his sufferings, to crave artificial warmth, he caught at the vagrant spark inadvertently struck from a flint, or produced by the friction of wood, and prisoned it for his use and comfort. How early he became a fire-maker we have yet to determine, but the insignificant heating-stone (so largely used in primitive cookery), as we trace it back to the horizon of its first appearance, may presently teach us.

This axe and chisel of flint were found together on the Round Course, Newmarket Heath, by a workman “bushgating” on the Course. They are in the possession of Dr. Chas. Lucas, of Burwell, Cambs.

Mr. R. A. Smith (Hoards of Neolithic Celts, Archæologia 71, p. 113) pleads for the publication of authentic associated finds of surface stone implements in order to provide material for determining the chronological sequence of types. The axe (l. 4.3-in.) and chisel (l. 4.7-in) figured, merit record in this connection. Both are of chipped flint, with the cutting edges ground, and with a slight amount of grinding elsewhere, done to remove excrescences. The technique seems to be exactly the same in each case. The patination is similar; the chisel milky white, with darker patches, the axe creamy white.

During the year 1924 I made some observations on the North Kent coast between Swalecliffe and Reculver for the purpose of locating the cultural horizon of the Thames pick, an implement which has been found in plenty upon the beach and sea floor in that locality, but which has not yet been indisputably classified by archæologists.

The finds made up to November, 1924, were shown by me to the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, but the paper must be considered unsatisfactory since the pivot on which any conclusions from those finds had to turn was the date of the prehistoric pottery. On this question I found there were differences of opinion. On the one hand I was advised that the pottery was of the Early Iron Age, on the other that it was Neolithic. Having made a careful study of all the comparative evidence I could trace, I found myself unable to disregard either opinion. The apparent association of flint implements with the pottery, led me to adopt a Neolithic date, as at the time I had no evidence that Iron Age Man fashioned flint implements.

By the very kind permission of the owners, I was enabled to carry out the excavation of some “floors” at Grime's Graves, in June and July, 1919, with some friends.

At the same time Mr. D. Richardson was clearing the remarkable site which he discovered in the North Field.

The centre of Floor 52 was fifty paces N.E. of the corner of the West Field, and fourteen from the edge of the cart track north of the wood. Twenty yards N.W. of the said centre was Floor 47, nearer to the cart track coming up out of the valley, and with comparatively small flakes and cores, of poor quality. The facets are short, deep, and wide, like those on an implement of the Chelles Period. The shapes of the cores differ from the true Grime's Graves type. At Floor 51 Mr. W. G. Clarke rightly pointed out that these traits were, in part, due to the fact that wall-stone was used. Only in part, however, for floor-stone was also used, as examination showed. The chipped flints in the outer part of Floor 47 lay in the lower part of the humus, 9 ins. below the surface.

This Paper is the outcome of a very long standing hope of proving the existence of “Eoliths” “in situ,” under the surface position where in 1866, Benjamin Harrison first found what he thought must be the very rude earliest forms of humanly worked flints, which in the “nineties” became known as “Eoliths.”

He felt pretty sure of his own opinion but no one to whom he showed his finds was at that time bold enough to accept them; this discouraged but did not deter him; for though he put them away to “Suspense Account.” he always had them in his mind and at all opportunities tried to advance his belief and convert others for many years with but very little success indeed; till 1884 when Mr. H. Walker agreed with him that they were human artefacts. In April, 1887, I became acquainted with Harrison; he lectured particularly on the “Rudes” doubtless hoping to find a tyro whom he hoped to educate to be a supporter.

He took me to South Ash and his other “Red Spreads” on which we found many specimens.

This lies about 2½ miles S.W. of Seaton, on Beer Head, which is an isolated and the most westerly mass of chalk in England, at a height of approximately 450-ft. O.D., at the extreme top and S.W. edge of the catchment basin of the Axe.

Up to the present, all artifacts found have been picked up in 4 or 5 large ploughed fields on a plateau immediately behind the part of Beer Head known as South Down. These fields are divided from the cliff-edge by a strip of undisturbed turf only a few hundred yards in width. An aerial photograph shows this apparently level turf to be a network of small divisions and boundaries of various shapes, and several parallel curved lines or rows, all of which continue to where the cliff breaks away and which are untraceable from ground level.

Few English deposits have aroused more disputation among geologists than the Crag beds of Norfolk and Suffolk, and on many of the points raised there is as yet no general agreement. This more particularly applies to the sands, gravels, and clays associated with the Norwich Crag, one school considering them part of the Crag formation and therefore Pliocene, and another believing them to be glacial and Pleistocene. Doubt on this matter has had an important bearing on the discovery of Sub-Crag implements in Norfolk, though I believe that the evidence is now incontrovertible. With regard to the basement-bed of the Crag, whether of the Coralline, Red, or Norwich Crag, which appear to have been successive deposits in the order given, the geological evidence as to position and antiquity—though not as to the conditions under which it was deposited—is not disputed. Mr. F. W. Harmer, F.G.S., says:—“In consequence of a combined movement of elevation iu the southern part of this region, and of subsidence towards the north, the whole Crag basin moving as on a pivot, its southern margin was gradually shifted, the sea retiring towards the north.

In January, 1912, Mr. Reginald Smith read a paper before the Society of Antiquaries entitled “Flint Implements of Special Interest,” in which figured an implement of the Thames pick type— the author relegating it to the palæolithic period. I will read an extract from this paper describing the “pick.”

“The implement in question was found during the War by the late Captain Harvey Webb while searching the coastal gravel near Netley Hospital. It is a flint rod of roughly triangular section, with one face chipped flat; one end is nosed with bold fluting, the other is crusted and therefore, not functional. The whole is patinated an ochreus colour and the ridges are much battered by rolling.

Length 6 inches—the flat face 2 inches across. It was submitted to the British Museum in November, 1916, with other (obviously palæolithic) specimens from the same deposits: a large pear-shaped hand-axe with brown patina; a white St. Acheul ovate much rolled; a cordate brown St. Acheul implement; unrolled; a pointed triangular hand-axe; and a brown chert ovate, this last being from the top of the loam beneath the gravel.”

From my title, you might think that this was to be a discourse on human origins and the story of early Man — about the fossil and genetic evidence for regarding Africa as the cradle of mankind such as the lecture to our Society by Mary Leakey four years ago. However, such is not my intention. My title is taken from a poem by A. E. Housman, the relevant portion of which reads:

‘Oh I will sit me down and weep For bones in Africa‘.

Housman (1956, 123) was uttering a threnody for a soldier who died in Africa, but I utter my lament on behalf of others.

But first, a brief look at aspects of the Prehistoric Society which show that it continues to flourish and grow. In these days of falling memberships, the Society has actually grown. We have made a modest increase in our Research Fund. The Proceedings and the maintenance of their high standard remain the Society's greatest contribution to prehistoric archaeology and justify the large proportion of our resources which we devote to them. This is in the realm of scholarship and research. In addition, we are moving into archaeological policy, with the intention of making the Society's voice heard in the councils of the nation as they affect prehistoric archaeology.