Although it has been widely recognised that the bones of seals occur on Stone Age sites in various parts of north-western Europe, no comprehensive attempt to clarify the history and estimate the role of seal-hunting in the economy of Stone Age Europe has yet been made. The research, on which the present paper is based, is part of a programme to further knowledge of prehistoric times by the study of social activities. Seal-hunting is here considered, not because it gave rise to objects which need classifying and dating, but simply because it was an activity of vital interest to certain coast-dwelling communities in north-western Europe during the Stone Age. If the physiological approach is stressed, this is not to depreciate the morphological: in point of fact the more we discover about any human activity the more fitted we become to interpret correctly the material objects or structures associated with it.

Archaeology is rarely sufficient to recover the way of life of early man. The problem of seal-hunting in antiquity, which is after all basically biological, is one of those which can only be resolved by several convergent disciplines. The foundations of the present study have been laid by zoologists, men who, like Winge, Holmquist, Pira, Degerböl and others, have given us precise information about the seals hunted by early man, through patient identification of bones and teeth from archaeological deposits, or who, by their observation of the life habits and distribution of the various species in the field, have, like Collett, Nordqvist, Nansen and Fraser Darling, enabled us to visualise the opportunities open to the old hunters.

Observations made soon after recent major earthquakes in Algeria, California and Japan have shown that repeated motions on buried fault planes in seismically active areas cause incremental folding of the overlying rocks and sediments. The deformation causes characteristic changes to river profiles and is therefore a factor which must be considered when applying techniques of site catchment analysis in areas of tectonic uplift. Here we examine the relationship between tectonic uplift and the palaeoenvironments of palaeolithic sites in North-west Greece, which is one of the most seismically active areas of Europe. Uplift can substantially alter local topography and sediment distributions and therefore undermine the economic viability of human settlements. Paradoxically uplift can also create stable conditions highly favourable to long-term habitation in two ways: by maintaining well-watered sediment traps which provide a climatically insensitive environment; by accentuating enclosed topography, which facilitates the control of mobile prey species.

In the Secondary Products Revolution model advanced by Sherratt it was predicted that increased use of animals for labour and dairy products would be visible archaeologically in animal bone collections. Published faunal data from Spain and Portugal for the period 5000–1000 bc show that horses, traction animals and dairy products all became more important after 2000 bc. An historical-geographical analogy from pre-industrial Spain suggests that by 1500 bc there was a degree of specialization in stockraising which could be understood best if sites were integrated economically over a wide region. This is the ‘policultivo ganadero’ of Spanish geographers, and the title is selected deliberately to compare with the Mediterranean polyculture based on plants.

Results of the excavation of two rock-shelters in the Phuthiatsana-ea-Thaba Bosiu Basin of western Lesotho, southern Africa are reported. Later Stone Age occupation at both sites was principally a feature of the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene. Analysis of the artefact assemblages shows that, while all in situ occurrences belong to the Oakhurst Industrial Complex, significant differences are apparent between those pre- and post-dating 7500 BC. A shift towards hunting smaller bovids and changes in site occupation at the regional scale are also evident at this time. Differences between the archaeological signatures at the two sites are discussed in the light of recent models of seasonal aggregation and dispersal. Comparisons are drawn with the archaeological record of neighbouring parts of South Africa and a strong contrast is suggested between terminal Pleistocene! early Holocene settlement strategies and those of the recent Holocene within the research area.

This paper discusses the landscape pattern made by the reaves—second millennium bc land boundaries—of South Dartmoor. The upper moorland of the South Moor was probably used as common grazing by 6–7 major sociopolitical units. Each possessed its own grazing land, normally in a valley zone near settlement enclosures. Each group had a ‘parallel system’ of reaves used partly for cultivation. 2 or 3 groups shared the Hameldon Ridge, in similar fashion. The paper discusses gateways, gang junctions, alterations to reaves, and the question of their original height, concluding that stock was probably watched, so that reaves were primarily boundaries, although some may have been built as barriers. The contour reaves, which separate the common grazing land from that in the valley zones, seem to have been less important, and perhaps built later, than the reaves between the sociopolitical groups, and the contour reave zone seems to have been chosen quite often by the builders of stone rows. There were subdivisions within the private grazing areas. It is concluded that the pattern of several territorial groups, clustered round an extensive, probably common resource, is well-known in second millennium British prehistory, and deserves further study.

In 1998 a circle of timber posts within the intertidal zone on the north Norfolk coast was brought to the attention of the Norfolk County Council Archaeological Service. A subsequent programme of archaeological recording and dating revealed that the structure was constructed in the spring or early summer of 2049 BC, during the Early Bronze Age. Because of the perceived threat of damage and erosion from the sea a rescue excavation was undertaken during the summer months of 1999. The structure was entirely excavated, involving the removal of the timbers and a programme of stratigraphic recording and environmental analysis. A survey was also undertaken within the environs of the site which has identified further timber structures dating from the Bronze Age. Detailed examination of the timber from the circle has produced a wealth of unexpected information which has added greatly to our understanding of Early Bronze Age woodworking, organisation of labour and the layout and construction of timber ritual monuments.

The discovery of a prolific palaeolithic site near Cambridge, led to an examination of its relationship to other sites in England, and it seemed that the time was approaching for a general survey of the palaeolithic succession in this country concerned with open stations of a period prior to that already dealt with by Dr Garrod and Dr Grahame Clark. To this end it is intended to devote a series of papers, to be published consecutively in this journal, descriptive of various industries in the light of the latest evidence, both geological and prehistoric.

The first paper, hereunder, is given over to a description and analysis of the palaeolithic site mentioned, for, as will be demonstrated, it has been found essential to the main thesis on succession. The sequence in East Anglia will be chosen for initial study, partly because it is a region with which the author is best acquainted, and also because it has been found to form a distinct cultural province, more nearly related, indeed, to Belgium and Germany than to southern England and France. The contacts between these provinces are many and it will be the whole purpose of one of this series of articles to show these connections by cultural and geological correlations. Therefore, references to comparable industries will be left out of the discussion of the finds following the description, and will be treated fully in an appropriate chapter at a later date.

The cave site Prolom II situated in the eastern part of the Crimean peninsula has produced evidence of repeated inhabitation during the Middle Palaeolithic. The stone artefacts permit a sure cultural identification and comparison with analogous material belonging to the Ak-Kaya culture. In a broader sense the Ak-Kaya culture of the Crimea may be regarded as one of the variants of the East European Micoquian. Unfortunately we do not at present have the natural science data which would allow us to define exactly the chronological position of Prolom II. The comparative typological and technical data allow us to connect the Middle Palaeolithic layers of the cave with the pre-Brörup period of the Early Würm. This is partly supported by the faunal data. The discovery of a curved arc-like deposit consisting of bones of mammoth, horse, bison and other animals in the second layer of the site, as well as a considerable collection of bone artefacts, both add to the unique character of the site. Some of the bone artefacts cannot reasonably be explained as utilitarian and may constitute evidence of a spiritual culture of Neanderthal Man. In this connection it is possible to enumerate two fragments of diaphyses with parallel and fan-shaped engraved lines, one distal fragment of Saiga tatarica first phalange with fan-shaped engraved lines, and one horse canine with deep subparallel engravings.

In some areas of Britain landscape reorganization in the post-Roman period has not destroyed earlier systems of land division, which have instead been preserved in modern arrangements. Topographic analysis of landscapes on the heavier soils of East Anglia reveals sometimes very extensive co-axial field systems of probable later prehistoric origin. Other such systems, however, are probably of later date. Co-axial planning may be not a continuous tradition of landscape organization, but rather a recurringly adopted solution to the problem of competing claims to large areas of open land.

My aim in this paper is to put the question, ‘Where was the centre of the Upper Palaeolithic world?’. I promise no answers and I will confine the discussion to Europe.

The purpose behind raising such a seemingly irrelevant problem is that its investigation leads us directly into issues of palaeolithic society, the interpretation of art in such contexts and the often opposed views of how art contributed to adaptation and change.

At the outset let me declare that I am not dealing with the origins of art and its association, or not, with language. Art for me is, however, a system of communication and includes a wide range of mediums and messages. As an act of social communication it is defined by style which, as Wiessner (1984, 191) argues, has its behavioural basis in a fundamental human cognitive process; personal and social identification through comparison. Consequently style is not just a means of transmitting information about identity but is an active tool used in building social strategies (ibid. 194). It has a role in negotiation which, as I shall argue below, is the basis for defining palaeolithic society.

This paper presents a re-assessment of the date and constructional sequence of the Sanctuary, a later Neolithic timber and stone setting on Overton Hill, near Avebury. Previous interpretations involving elaborate phasing and a protracted chronology for the site are rejected. Instead, it is argued that the site represents a single or double phase monument, constructed around 2500 cal BC and associated with pottery of the Grooved Ware tradition. The character of the pre-monument activity, construction and use of the site is examined. Patterns of formal deposition, involving pottery, lithics and human bone, are recognized, and considered in the context of the site's architecture and the structured organization of space, access and movement.

The site at Red Barns was excavated in 1975, but the large lithic collection remained unstudied following preliminary examination. This paper reports on further analysis of the lithic material from the site, together with a reappraisal of the faunal remains and original mineralogical analyses, and the results of processing sediment samples from the 1975 excavation. An abundant molluscan assemblage was recovered from the deposits covering the main archaeological horizon, allowing climatic/environmental reconstruction and amino acid dating. The synthesis of these data indicates the site to be older than previously thought, dating to between 425,000 and 200,000 BP.

Analysis of the lithic material has suggested that the site is an undisturbed palimpsest of flint tools and debitage. The poor, severely frost-fractured nature of the raw material used for knapping, together with the location of the site on a Chalk outcrop, have enabled investigation of some assumptions about the influences upon knapping technology of i) poor quality raw material and ii) local availability of flint fresh from Chalk bedrock. The persistent manufacture of finely worked plano-convex handaxes suggests that, even in an area where fresh Chalk flint must have been abundant, the immediately available poor quality flint source was not a bar to formation of an assemblage dominated by handaxe production. Secondly, the emphasis on carefully shaped pointed plano-convex handaxes suggests that this shape was both deliberately imposed and not dictated by a lack of local availability of flint fresh from the Chalk. Behaviour at the site was investigated by analysis of the organisation of the lithic production and it was demonstrated that, while some handaxes and flake-tools were abandoned at the site and some flake core reduction also took place there, the dominant pattern was for handaxes to be made at the site and then removed and abandoned elsewhere.

The excavation of two adjacent round barrows at Trelystan, Long Mountain, Powys, in 1979, has revealed a complex sequence of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age funerary structures and traces of Late Neolithic settlement. The earliest structure was a large pit grave, dated to about 2400 bc, which was superseded at about 2200 bc by a settlement represented by stake-walled buildings associated with Grooved Ware. Following this some activity took place, possibly domestic, which is represented by sherds probably derived from several southern Beakers, which by analogy with sites elsewhere are to be dated to a period after about 1850 bc. The subsequent Bronze Age cemetery, dated to between about 1800 and 1500 bc (but possibly continuing later), presents a sequence of burial types and structures which can broadly be seen to illustrate a change from the concept of barrow cemetery to that of cemetery barrow. The earliest burials, which consist of cremations in pits and occasionally accompanied by a Food Vessel, were covered by separate small mounds of stone or turf, or a combination of the two. These were eventually overlain by and amalgamated beneath two larger turf barrows associated with Food Vessel Urns, which employed stake circles in their construction and which acted as repositories for additional cremation burials. The cemetery was sited along a pre-existing boundary fence, set up after the Late Neolithic phase, which was renewed at various times throughout the life of the cemetery in response to changes in its layout. A small undated cemetery of inhumation graves, possibly of the Early Christian period, was founded on the eastern side of the barrows at a later date.

This paper describes the distribution of reaves (Bronze Age land boundaries) on North and East Dartmoor (cf. Fleming 1978a for South Dartmoor). It is suggested that they form a pattern which reflects the territorial arrangements of several communities distributed around the edge of Dartmoor. Each of these territories tended to be about 3–4 km in breadth and to include a single block of enclosed land laid out on one axis, sometimes covering over 1000 ha. The scale of territories here is more independent of the incidence of major geographical features than is the case on South Dartmoor. There is normally a simple division between enclosed land and upland pasture, without the intermediate settled valley zones which are important on the South Moor. Classic parallel reave systems occur, but so do simpler ‘block systems’, and this variability can best be conceptualized as a continuum, within a broad tradition of laying out enclosed land on a major axis and in rectangular parcels. It is suggested, mainly on the basis of the interdependence of the pattern's components, that most boundaries on Dartmoor were laid out in response to a single decision taken around 1300 bc (1700/1600 BC), although some cross-ridge reaves may be earlier in date. Some details of the layout reflect different levels of social organisation — what are here termed the neighbourhood group, the community, and the regional level of organisation. The paper also discusses the settlement history of different regions of Dartmoor, suggesting that a third major upland common, the East Moor, should be considered equivalent to the North Moor and the South Moor in terms of the development of land use. The East Moor was eventually encroached upon by the Rippon Tor parallel reave system, probably the largest prehistoric field system known in Britain.

This paper is derived from chapters of a PhD dissertation by Keith Muckelroy which was partially completed at the time of his death in September 1980. Publication of sections relating to work on two Bronze Age wreck sites was thought appropriate since the maritime context of the material and Muckelroy's assessment of its significance related to Bronze Age studies in general as well as the more specific focus of Middle Bronze Age maritime archaeology which formed the core of the research. In these chapters Muckelroy discussed the individual artefact types and their continental relationship and assessed the implications of the Langdon Bay and Moor Sand cargoes in terms of Bronze Age seafaring and the seaborne transportation of goods. His detailed discussion of the bronze forms has been summarized here; and it is upon the maritime aspect that this paper concentrates, this being the area in which Muckelroy's work at the two sites was making its unique contribution.

The two sites under examination, Langdon Bay and Moor Sand, are well-enough known through various interim statements (Baker and Brannigan 1978; Coombs 1976; Muckelroy and Baker 1979; Muckelroy 1980) to require little detailed introduction other than a short description here. Both are important not so much for the particular objects found, but for the implications of the associations and contexts and as a result of the briefest consideration it can be asserted that in the later second millennium BC there existed vessels of size and quality sufficient to transport bulk materials across the channel, probably at regular intervals, and certainly guaranteed of receptions which warranted the organization of Bronze Age shipping by a community or segment of a community.

The existence of a ‘radiocarbon plateau’ at 9600 BP causes problems for early Mesolithic archaeology and palaeoecology, since events separated by up to 400 calendar years are not distinguished by radiocarbon dating. A new sequence of closely spaced radiocarbon accelerator dates from waterlogged deposits at the early Mesolithic site at Star Carr, Yorkshire, has enabled recognition of this plateau. It has been possible to ‘wiggle-match’ these Star Carr dates to the recently produced dendrochronological calibration curve for the early post-glacial period, providing an ‘absolute’ chronology for formation of the deposits. Associated high resolution palaeoecological analyses indicate two local phases of human activity, the lengths of which can be estimated from the calibrated time-scale. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that it has been possible to provide ‘absolute’ dates for human activity at an early Mesolithic site in Europe.

In a previous article in these Proceedings I raised some doubts about the current system of classifying the British pre-Roman Iron Age (Hodson 1962). My main criticisms were that the first stage of this classification into three divisions A, B and C did not reflect a clear threefold division within the material to be classified and also that this system did not deal satisfactorily with the British Iron Age as part of a wider European phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to look for steps towards a modified first classification that may overcome these objections. Following the four principles of classification suggested (Hodson 1962, p. 153) an attempt will be made to pick out the most distinctive characteristics or type-fossils within the pre-Roman Iron Age and to see whether these features recur together in definite groups in Europe as a whole. These groups should represent cultures in the archaeological sense and afterwards their interpretation should provide a general archaeological account of the early Iron Age in Britain.

Although attempting to put forward for discussion a provisional classification of some sort, the real purpose of this paper is to emphasize serious gaps in the available evidence. Until these gaps are filled, no classification can hope to be in any way definitive.

It is first necessary to establish some simple chronological system by which to inter-relate any cultures that may be established. A direct reference to absolute dates (or periods of, say, a hundred years) would be most convenient.

Archaeological evidence for centralized storage facilities may provide useful information about the organization of prehistoric economies. In the background are a range of explanatory ideas. ‘Redistribution’ is a term which has been applied to the evidence from some British hillforts. Resources might be collected and then re-allocated through a permanent agency of co-ordination. They might be mobilized as tribute to elites as part of political strategy. This has been suggested for early British hillforts, and the evidence is reviewed. Much depends on the interpretation of the ‘four-poster’ structures at these sites as storehouses. A survey of these structures on British and continental sites strengthens this interpretation, and a further survey shows that, in Britain, disproportionate numbers of these structures are found at massively enclosed sites. A modified form of site catchment analysis suggests that some of the hillforts stored produce mobilized from an area which was greater than is likely to have been farmed directly from these sites. One possible inference is that resources were mobilized from subordinate settlements. It is suggested that stored grain was a critical commodity if rising populations and climatic change combined to increase the risk attached to the cereal harvest.

The work presented in this paper arose from an attempt to study society and economy in England during the period conventionally referred to as the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. The discussion of questions of this sort is traditionally supposed to be less reliable and important than taxonomic studies aimed at the construction of a relative chronology; this is largely because the basic assumptions of typology have not been questioned very much recently. The establishment of an absolute chronology has also been a major object of research, but now that the Mycenaean import horizon has finally collapsed (Newton and Renfrew, 1970) there is a vacuum which is hardly filled by the handful of radiocarbon dates available. We have the vaguest of ideas about what was actually happening in terms of people, but our understanding of when it was happening, and in which order, is only marginally better.

Most information has come from the contents of burial mounds, but the topographical aspects of the barrows have been neglected, despite the immensely valuable information collected by Grinsell for much of southern England, including lists of all known barrows and what has been found in them. Without this information, this kind of study would have been impossible. Grinsell's maps of round barrow distributions in Dorset (Grinsell, 1959, maps 2 and 4) and Wiltshire (Grinsell, 1957, maps IV and V) suggest that even on one geological solid (in this case chalk) there are great differences in the densities of these monuments, that bell- and disc-barrows are not distributed at random, and that a study of the sizes and types of cemetery might prove rewarding, although maps at this scale can only provide general indications.

The site at Eldon's Seat (fig. 1) lies on the side of a shallow valley cut into the Kimmeridge clay bedrock. Occupation began probably in the 7th century B.C. or earlier, at a time when the ceramic assemblage was based upon Late Bronze Age traditions, and continued with interruptions until the 2nd century A.D. Three major periods have been isolated: during period I (Late Bronze Age style pottery) and period II (haematite-coated ware) a series of circular huts were built against the downhill side of a sporadically growing lynchet. The huts were occupied by farming communities who were also engaged in making armlets from the local Kimmeridge shale. Period III buildings have not been identified in the excavated area, but Durotrigan and Roman pottery, which typifies this phase, has been recovered from the uppermost layers of the lynchet.

The finds from the excavations will be deposited in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, Dorset.