As a botanical field investigator for many years past interested in bogs and fens I have often had occasion to notice that these areas appeal very differently to different persons: to some I fear they do not appeal at all, and I fancy that many an archaeologist at heart prefers the dry chalk trench to the soaking black peat face. There are, however, such great advantages to be gained from the study of peat and lake-deposits in relation to archaeology that archaeologists increasingly realise the need for much fuller knowledge of the inherent character and properties of these deposits. Since such deposits are formed by the accumulation of plant-remains under water-logged conditions, and thus incorporate the remains of past generations of aquatic plant communities, it is evident that we shall need to consider the peat beds from the standpoint of the plant-ecologist already familiar with corresponding communities as they grow and form peat at the present day. It is therefore chiefly as an ecologist that I have sought to understand the problems offered by peat stratigraphy, and it is as such that I hope to convey something of the problems they concern.

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.

The average person knows very little about British Somaliland, hardly indeed where it is situated; yet archaeologically speaking it seems likely that it will prove of considerable importance. Although up to the present no systematic investigations have been undertaken, enough material in the way of stone implements has been unearthed by amateur collectors to show that there are great possibilities of important finds being made in the country; and, now, a very interesting rock shelter art has been discovered. Clearly the archaeological importance of the country merits investigation by a competent archaeologist, and it seems possible that such an expedition may eventuate at a not too distant date. The article that follows, therefore, is primarily intended to bring these discoveries and the possibilities of the subject in general to the notice of the public in a preliminary way.

Some little time ago Major Glover, Chief Pasture Officer in the country, sent me some, implements that he had collected, together with an intimation that he had been studying some rock shelter paintings. Frankly, the implements, though interesting, yielded little more information as to the cultures present than was already known from the work of previous investigators, and which had been in part epitomised by Burkitt and Barrington Brown in an article in Man for 1934, No. 164.

Within the past few years the multiplication in the Egyptian Nile Valley and adjoining desert of stone industries with Levalloisian technical characters or affinities, has suggested to me that a review of the evidence about them—geological, chronological and typological—might be of some momentary value pending the resumption in a post-war world of field-work in palaeolithic studies.

Even without the perhaps beneficial interruption to them of the past six years, it was already, I think, becoming apparent before the war that the periodic stock-taking of world prehistory of rather a drastic kind was again due. It may make a clearance of several current doctrines and give others a rest. Among the latter I should myself like to number the overworked conception of culture-contact to account for modifications and new introductions within a given stone industry. Culture-contact may, I concede, have occasionally occurred in rare geographical passage-areas—Palestine is perhaps one of them, the Iberian peninsula another. But I doubt in general if, on the simple level of the Old Stone Age, we are justified in readily assuming that the industrial culture of one group was perceptibly affected by another until late in palaeolithic prehistory.

Although a large number of bronze ‘razors’ have been found in these islands, the literature concerning them is very scattered, and there has been no attempt to synthesize the information concerning them. There are frequent references to the so-called ‘plantain’ (our Class I) form or to the ‘maple-leaf’ (Class II) examples with their suggested connection with Siculan razors, but there has been no detailed analysis of their chronological and cultural positions in the British Late Bronze Age. This paper attempts such a classification of the razors on a typological and cultural basis so that they can be fitted with greater accuracy intq their place in Late Bronze chronology.

This paper, written at the kind invitation of the Honorary Editor of our Proceedings, has as its original aim the review of activity in Irish prehistory during war-time, thus to provide a résumé such as has already been furnished by other writers for other countries in Europe. It has, however, been agreed that a slight extension of the range of the period has in this case certain advantages, since an admirable summary of the position of Irish prehistory was provided in 1937 by Dr Mahr's Presidential Address to the Prehistoric Society (Mahr, 1937). The present paper cannot aim to give as full a treatment as did Mahr's, which has in many aspects served as a summary text-book of Irish prehistory, nor can it devote lengthy space to any theory—new or otherwise—as Mahr did for his Riverford Culture, yet it must be its aim to summarise the work which has been done since the publication of his ‘New Aspects,’ and to indicate as far as possible, the advances and modifications of outlook which have resulted during the intervening years.