At a Meeting of the “Prehistoric Society of East Anglia” held recently at Norwich, I heard a summary read of a paper by Mr. F. N. Haward on the Norwich Test Specimen. It is perhaps needless to say that Mr. Haward's paper purported to show that this specimen of a rostro-carinate flint implement owes its present form to certain natural agencies, and not to the purposeful blows of a human being. It is not, however, within my province to attempt a defence of the humanity of this well-known flaked flint. Sir Ray Lankester has described and illustrated the specimen in a paper published some little time ago (“Description of the Test Specimen of the Rostro-Carinate Industry found beneath the Norwich Crag,” Roy. Anth. Inst. Occasional Papers, No. 4), and prehistorians can choose whether they prefer to accept the opinion expressed in that paper, or the view of Mr. Haward. The latter gentleman's opposition, however, to the idea of the human origin of the flaking upon the Sub-Crag flints does not cease with the Norwich Test Specimen, but includes all the other specimens found in the Norwich Stone Bed.

This floor, No. 46, was situated in the open field close to the North border of the plantation, about 50 yards N.E. of Pit 1. Excavations carried out by Mrs. Richardson and myself revealed the presence of a filled-in pit, of which there was no surface indication, the field having been levelled down for cultivation. The hole dug measured about 11 ft. each way, with a maximum depth of 5 ft. At the bottom on one side was a great tip of hard tabular chalk blocks, shot in from the N.E.; on the other side was a tip of sand shot in from the S.W.; and in the V-shaped depression between these two was a mass of flints without any matrix, most of them of great size, the majority covered with a fungus-like coating of carbonate of lime redeposited from solution. This layer reached a thickness of 3½ ft. in one part, thinning out gradually towards the E. side, where it was only a few inches thick. It was almost entirely sealed in by a small tip of chalk blocks and rubble shot in from the N.E., overlain in its turn by a thin layer of flints, which in one or two places rested directly on the main flint layer.

In the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia (Vol. III., Part III., pp. 389–430) I gave an account of the discoveries made at the 16-ft. level in the Pliocene Red Crag at Foxhall, near Ipswich, and in the detritus-bed beneath the decalcified Red Crag in Pits Nos. 1 and 2 at Bramford. During 1922 further excavations were conducted at Foxhall, and a number of humanly-flaked flints recovered from the floor occurring at the 16-foot level. The Bramford pits were also again investigated, and it is the purpose of this paper to figure and describe some of the specimens found at the sites mentioned. Full details were given in the paper quoted above of the Foxhall and Bramford Sections, and there is no need to again describe them here, especially as the recent diggings exposed no new geological features. The money to pay for the wages of the workmen engaged in the diggings was very kindly subscribed by the Percy Sladen Fund, the American Museum of Natural History, Sir John Ganzoni, M.P., and by Messrs. F. H. Barclay, A. S. Barnes, M. C. Burkitt, Henry Coates, Frank Corner, Vernon Favell, Robert Gurney, C. Hartley, J. J. Lister, W. M. Newton, W. B. Nichols, R. A. Smith, and F. S. Stevenson. The illustrations for this paper are produced from drawings by Mr. E. T. Lingwood, who, once again, has given valuable help to the cause of science by the free gift of his great artistic powers.

Since reading a paper before the Archæological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in February, 1913, on the two factory sites at Peppard, Oxon, we have carried out further excavations, and I propose to give a brief account of the new implements found there, and to discuss the evidence as to the date arrived at as a result of the whole work. Sections of the sites and a map showing their position were given in that paper, and 28 of the implements illustrated.

The deeper site (Site 1) was re-opened by Mr. Reginald Smith, F.S.A., of the British Museum, in October, 1913, and some of the problems connected with it cleared up. This site was then found to be an open pit, similar to a modern chalk pit, with a pathway leading into it from the lowest level, 8 ft. across and 7½ ft. long. The floor of this adit formed a gently inclined plane to the bottom of the pit, being covered at the entrance with 2½ ft. of rainwash. This method of approach to the mine is what one would expect from its situation on the slope of a hill. It differs thus from the mines at Cissbury and Grime's Graves, where the circular cups were much deeper (40 ft.) and must have been entered by some form of ladder, such as a tree trunk with the branches cut short to form steps or a rope made of hide.

Excavations at Grime's Graves during September, 1920, resulted in several interesting discoveries, notably the location of a new chipping and occupation zone, situated near the S.E. margin of the mining area immediately west of the Tumulus Pit, a locality which previous excavations had proved to be rich in occupation sites. Here, upon a living level immediately overlying glacial sand, two pieces of engraved flint crust were discovered associated with a series of flint implements of Mousterian type, bone tools and pottery.

Engraving upon flint crust was first noticed at Grime's Graves in 1915, upon Floor 16, a piece bearing incised lines of indeterminate character being found (Fig. A, 10) which was described and figured in the Proceedings, Vol. II., Part III., by Dr. Peake. Since then numerous similar examples have been discovered upon other floors, which, together with the occurrence of gravers, the discovery of chalk carving in the round, and of chalk balls by Mr. D. Richardson, and by the President, pointed to the hope of definite engravings being ultimately forthcoming if systematically searched for. This hope was further stimulated by Dr. Peake finding a few days prior to our visit a piece of crust bearing an engraved outline suggesting portions of the human figure (Fig. A, 11) and resulted in the careful scrutiny of every fragment of crust turned up during the subsequent excavations, which was finally rewarded by the discovery of two fine engravings (Fig. E).

The particular area dealt with in this paper is the extreme S.W. corner of the County, embracing roughly a triangle having its base of 14 miles along the high moors W. of Sheffield, viz., from Langsett (N.) to Fox House (S.), the apex at Mexboro', and the ridges on the right of the Don Valley forming one side.

From its varied character, including as it does the extremes of bleak upland impossible of cultivation, and sheltered valley and lowland, it is in many respects an ideal area for study.

Unfortunately, flint, for reasons explained later, is scarce, hence it is only by the cumulative results of patient search extending over a period of years that any conclusion can be arrived at touching the culture of the implements found.

The base-line of the area under consideration follows in general the Yorkshire–Derbyshire boundary, and traverses a wide moorland country of considerable altitude, consisting of glacier-sculptured heights, seamed with deep, frequently precipitous ravines.

Prehistoric hammerstones, sometimes known as mullers, pounders, or mauls, are supposed, as the name implies, to have been used as hammers. In the case of those made from flint nodules they present an unmistakable surface which consists of the heads of hundreds of small cones of percussion, and of angular fragments of broken, intersecting, cones, the whole being the result of a long, and continuous rain of blows, each of which affected but a small spot of the surface, and caused by the nodule coming into sharp contact with a surface nearly as hard, or of equal hardness, to the flint itself.

In 1906 I described a “Cissbury type” station at Ringland, Norfolk, the implements lying abundantly on the surface of two fields and covering an area of about 440 yards in length by 90 yards in width. The fields are at the foot of a steep tree-clad ridge known as Cobb's Hills, and slope gently to the river Wensum which is but a few yards distant from the lower part of the fields and is here about 34 feet above O.D. Some of the implements were described and figured in our “Proceedings,” and the site has yielded about 900 implements and several thousand flakes.

The object of this paper is to describe and illustrate a series of heavily mineralised bone implements of a primitive type which (in the case of the Red Crag) have been found associated with numerous humanly-fashioned flints during diggings conducted in the detritusbed below the base of the Red and Coralline “Crags” of Suffolk.

The author is fully aware of his heterodoxy in claiming that bone was utilised in implement-making at such a remote period as that to which any pre-Crag remains must be referred, but having conducted a number of experiments in which mineralised and unmineralised bones were subjected to the effects of fortuitous blows and pressure, and after having fractured numerous modern shank bones of the bullock by striking and cutting them with flints and other stones held in the hand with a view of thus shaping them to the forms of the sub-Crag examples, he is compelled to regard these latter specimens as undoubted works of man.

In my article published in the Proceedings for 1950, I mentioned the settlement at Nowosiółka Kostiukowa in West Podolia belonging to the final period of the Tripolye culture. Recently, during my visit to Poland, I was able to recover some of my pre-war notes which escaped destruction, thanks to Professor R. Jamka, Cracow; among these was also a short report on investigation of the settlement above and a sketch plan.

A field known as ‘Petrynskie’ lay c. 3 kilometres east of the village of Nowosiółka Kostiukowa, over 4 kilometres from the river Seret, a tributary of the Dniester, in the valley of a small stream which ultimately joins the river. On the southern slopes of this valley, north of a narrow lane cut deep in the loess and on the surface of the field lay a large mass of potsherds, lumps of fired clay plaster (of ‘ploščadka’ huts), stones, flints, etc. This was mostly Tripolyan painted ware of Koszyłowce type, belonging to T. S. Passek's period C-1, although wrongly considered to be of period C-2. However, many black, highly polished potsherds were also found, of what is known as the ‘Thracian Hallstatt’ ware, mainly in the lower part of the field. All these remains formed small concentrations marking the sites of ancient huts situated at a small distance from each other.

The Wickliffe Mounds site is a Mississippian town and mound centre dated to c. AD 1100–1350. Excavations at Wickliffe Mounds from 1984–1996 have re-evaluated a 1932–1939 semi-professional project and have provided additional data over much of the remaining area of the site. The site was established c. AD 1100 as a small village clustered tightly around a central plaza. From AD 1175 to c. 1350 the Wickliffe people built two platform mounds next to the plaza plus several smaller mounds around the site, and expanded the village area to the edges of the bluff. The village was abandoned c. AD 1350, but a cemetery appears to be intrusive, indicating the presence of a population in the area with ties to the site. A scenario of a single chiefly cycle, followed by dispersal of the population with continued use of the site as an ‘empty’ ceremonial centre, best fits current data.

The recent discovery at Knossos of a bronze bell helmet (pl. 1; also de Jong and Hood, 1952, and Hood, 1952) of Late Minoan 11, usually dated 1450–1400 B.C., focuses attention on the series of similar helmets that have long been known from Europe. The helmet from Knossos is topped with a knob within which is a tube that penetrates the inside of the helmet. This must have been for a plume. The knob is held in place by seven small rivets. There are also a pair of cheek pieces of a more elaborately curved profile than the plainer ones from Ialysos of Late Helladic III (Lorimer, 1950, 211, pl. XIII), Weissig in Saxony of Bronze Age III b (Kleemann, 1941–2) or the pair belonging to the Pass Lueg helmet from Austria of Hallstatt A or B (Merhart, 1941, 30, fig. 8, 3). Around the rim of the Knossos helmet and around the cheek pieces are rows of small evenly-spaced holes. Inspection of the Ialysos cheek piece shows that it had a similar row of holes, though the examples from Weissig and Pass Lueg did not. Evidently these rows of holes were to attach a padded lining as well as to fasten the cheek pieces to the helmet and to the chin strap. No neck guard was found, though such were in use in the Aegean on boar tusk and other kinds of helmets of this shape (Lorimer, 1950, figs. 16, 22). I am greatly obliged to Mr Sinclair Hood of the British School in Athens for so generously giving me photographs and full information on this important find.

The cairn at Mount Stewart has attracted wide attention as the alleged find-site of one of the very small group of Irish beakers. Since the ‘beaker’ and another bowl-shaped food-vessel from the cairn have now been rediscovered in the Belfast Municipal Museum—and the last relic of the cairn recently removed—we feel the time has come for a review of the available data.