When C. E. Moss (1907) first described the vegetation of the peat areas of the Somerset Levels, he referred to them as ‘moors’, a term offering no distinction from upland peats such as those of the Pennines or Dartmoor. It was not until much later that they were recognized as the remnants, much degraded and dissected by peat-cutting, of an extensive complex of raised bogs (Godwin 1941). This was a conclusion of considerable significance since raised bogs belong to the category of ombrogenous mires, that is to say, of peat structures built up in almost total dependence on rain and snow falling directly upon them, and drawing not at all upon ground water. Such bogs receive very little mineral supply and become very acidic and poor in plant nutrients, so that their vegetation is highly specialized and most characteristic, consisting very largely of species of the moss genus Sphagnum, various flowering plants of the order Ericales, cotton-grass, deer-grass (Trichophorum caespitosum) and a restricted number of other species of equally restricted range. It is the various assemblages of the remains of these plants that allow us to identify given peat samples as having formed in raised bog, and often permit us to relate them to given communities characteristic of different aspects of the vegetation of still-active raised bogs.

This is a very helpful circumstance, since the raised bogs are entities in such close dependence upon annual precipitation that they respond quickly to phases of increased or decreased wetness by altered surface vegetation. Thus in periods of dryness they become covered with ling (Calluna vulgaris), cotton-grass (Eriophorum vaginatum) and sometimes trees, chiefly birch (Betula verrucosa), and the peat then formed is very colloidal, dark and fully humified. By contrast, when it is continuously wet the bog surface is covered with actively-growing Sphagna (which form a matrix for the associated higher plants), and the peat formed in these conditions is pale, fibrous, and undecayed. An abrupt transition from the one peat type to the other, if consistent across a bog, is referred to as a recurrence-surface (RY is the familiar contraction from the Swedish word).

The object of this paper is first to describe and reconstruct the halves of two Neolithic bows found in the course of peat-digging in the Somerset Levels during 1961 and second to put these in historical perspective in relation to the development of archery in north-western Europe. The outcome of comparative studies has been to show that the Somerset bows fall into the last quarter of the first major cycle in the history of the bow in this part of the world, one that lasted from the 9th to the 2nd millennium B.C., during which the bow was by far the most important weapon for both hunting and fighting. So soon as metallurgical industry had made swords and socketed spears available these weapons became predominant and indeed bows and arrowheads fade almost, if not in some areas wholly, from the archaeological record of this part of Europe. It was not until around A.D. 200–400 and, then only among the Teutonic peoples centred on Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark, that there is evidence for a revival in archery. So far as Britain is concerned, the use of the bow was reintroduced by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, probably reinforced by Danes. If the traditional source of the English Long Bow in Gwenth is correct, the weapon must be thought of as developing in the immediate wake of the Anglo-Norman invasion of the closing years of the 11th century. As a major weapon in English armies it lasted from the end of the 13th until the second half of the 16th century when it was effectively replaced by firearms.

The distribution of Mesolithic sites in Wales is controlled to a great extent by the terrain, for physiographically, Wales is a highland block defined on three sides by the sea and for the greater part of the fourth side by a sharp break of slope. Geologically the Principality is composed almost entirely of Palaeozoic rocks, of which the 600-foot contour encloses more than three quarters of the total area. There are extensive regions above 1,500 feet and 2,000 feet and in the north the peaks of Snowdonia and Cader Idris rise to 3,560 feet and 2,929 feet respectively. Indeed North Wales consists of an inhospitable highland massif, skirted by a lowland plateau and cut deeply by river valleys, providing only limited areas for settlement. The hills and mountains of Snowdonia with their extension at lower altitudes into the Lleyn Peninsula, and the ranges of Moelwyn, Manod Mawr, Arenig Fach and Cader Idris, are discouraging obstacles to penetration, save for a short distance along the river valleys. To the east of these peaks are extensive tracts of upland plateau dissected by rivers, bounded on the west by the vale of the river Conway and cleft by the Vale of Clwyd. To the east of this valley lies the Clwydian Range and further again to the east these uplands descend with milder contours to the Cheshire and Shropshire plains.

To the south the district merges into the uplands of Central Wales, which are continuous until they are replaced by the lowland belt of South Wales.

Several years ago during the investigation of neolithic chambered tombs in Galloway a fragment of green jade polished on two opposite flat faces was found in the floor of the ante-chamber to Tomb I at Cairnholy in Kirkcudbrightshire. It was only about 3 centimetres square and 1.5 centimetres thick but, nevertheless, Professor Stuart Piggott and Mr T. G. E. Powell recognized that it had once formed part of a flat triangular axe of a type already known from several places in Scotland. A fine collection of such axes in jade existed in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Edinburgh. In an appendix to their paper on the chambered tombs Piggott and Powell listed the jade axes recorded from British and Irish sites and republished the map compiled by Miss L. F. Chitty and published by Sir Cyril Fox in 1933. This appendix also contained brief notes supplied by me on thin microscope sections of the Cairnholy fragment and of five other British axes reported to be made in jade. Some of these identifications were only partly correct, and have now been revised (see below, pp. 145, 158, 159 and footnote 2, p. 153).

Some years later the question of the identification of the material of reputed British jade axes arose again and it was decided to examine as many of the axes in Piggott and Powell's list as could be borrowed and to utilize in their examination determinations of density and refractive index, and, where possible, to obtain X-ray powder photographs and to have thin sections prepared.

The long barrow on Willerby Wold, 7 miles south of Scarborough, was dug into about the middle of the 19th century by the Rev. Canon William Greenwell. The results of this excavation are described in his book British Barrows and show the mound to be one of the crematorium long barrows peculiar to Yorkshire.

In September 1958 the present excavations began with the sectioning of the south ditch in search of any evidence of occupation so frequently found in long barrow ditches. Further work in 1959 included sections of the mound and as these showed Greenwell's excavations to be of only limited extent a more extensive programme of work was undertaken during 1960 to clear the whole of the eastern end of the mound.

That the London Museum possesses one fine Iron Age bridle-bit has been known since the publication in the 1939 Proceedings of that from Walthamstow, Essex. It is the purpose of this paper to draw attention to another in the same collection.

The second bit was found in 1897 in the Thames at Old Windsor, Berkshire, and was acquired by Mr William H. Lloyd, Jnr., of St. Margaret's. In 1908, with the rest of his collection, it passed to Richmond Public Library, and in 1949 the Lloyd Collection was transferred by Richmond Borough Council on permanent loan to the London Museum.

The bit (pl. XXIV, 1), cast in bronze throughout, consists of a central figure-of-eight link with a pronounced central moulding, flanked by two side-links and two side-rings. The side-rings are cast solid in one piece with the link-heads. Each side-ring has two emplacements for ornamental studs, now missing, one on either side of the link-head: each stud was originally secured by small bronze pins, one of which (pl. XXIV, 2) remains. The holes for the pins perforate the thickness of the left-hand ring (pl. XXV, 2): in the right-hand ring, however, the holes stop halfway through. Each link-head also has a stud-emplacement, now empty. On the right-hand link, the stud was fixed by a pin, now lost, similar to those used in the side-rings: the left-hand one was attached by a square-headed bronze pin, still present. The right-hand link-head is further enriched with a curvilinear motif executed partly in cast relief, partly incised, while the other has incised enrichment only.

The bit is 10.6 inches (270 millimetres) long, the distance between the rings being 4.8 inches (122 millimetres). The side-links are 2.6 inches (68 millimetres) long, and 0.9 inch (24 millimetres) in greatest width. The centre-link is 2.4 inches (62 millimetres) long, the diameter of its central moulding 0.8 inch (21 millimetres). The side-rings are not true circles, their greatest and least diameters being 3.1 inches (80 millimetres) and 2.9 inches (73 millimetres) respectively: the rings measure 0.3 inch (8 millimetres) in section.

When, in 1948, Childe reviewed in these Proceedings the later phases of the European Bronze Age he expounded a series of new views on the causation and chronology of episodes apprehended in archaeology by the spread of cremation urn cemeteries, and by advances in bronze technology. He also put forward proposals for changes in terminology, for he was well aware of the haphazard and casual way in which archaeological nomenclature had come about. Childe's interpretation of the origins of the urnfield cremation rite was valuable as a stimulus to a reassessment of the problem, but research in the years that have followed has produced so much new information that a very different story can now be told. Nor has the terminological reform seen much progress. The grounds on which Childe has been opposed as regards the nomenclature of subdivisions of the later Bronze Age have carried weight because it has been generally agreed that at least for the zone of the North Alpine foreland, a genuine cultural break should be recognized in and after the phase that Reinecke originally defined and nominated: Bronze D. This phase is the ‘End Bronze Age’ of many scholars, and what comes after is either ‘Hallstatt’ or ‘Urnfield’, appropriately subdivided and so Childe's Bronze phases E and F have not been accepted.

The object of this essay is to study the effect of shifting Pleistocene climates on the numbers and distribution of early man. The geographical setting for the study is southern Africa. Chronologically, it is concerned with the cultures of the First Intermediate Phase—the Fauresmith and the Sangoan, which flourished in this region during the period 50,000–40,000 B.C.

The main body of the work is devoted to a description of the ecological zones of southern Africa and an evaluation of these zones in terms of their suitability for hominid occupation. Three maps of ecological zones are employed: the first shows the vegetation as it exists under the present climate; the second and third plot the zones as they might appear under conditions of higher and lower rainfall respectively. The regions of southern Africa are then classified on the basis of their long-term favourability for hominid occupation.

The use of this framework enables one to reinterpret the distribution of archaeological materials and to produce revised estimates concerning the numbers of men in the Pleistocene.

This paper is concerned with the earliest use in Britain of copper and bronze, from the first artifacts of copper in the later Neolithic until the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age, as marked by palstaves and haft-flanged axes. It does not attempt to deal with all the material, but instead certain classes of evidence have been chosen to illustrate some of the main styles of workmanship. These groups have been considered both from the point of view of their archaeology, and of the technology they imply.

Such an approach requires on the one hand that the artifacts are sorted into types, their associations in graves and hoards studied, their distributions plotted, and finally a consideration of the evidence for their affinities and chronology. On the other hand there are questions also of interest that need a different standpoint. Of what metals or alloys are the objects made? Can their sources be located? How did the smiths set about their work? Over what regions was production carried out? If we are to understand as much as we might of the life of prehistoric times, then surely we should look at material culture from as many view-points as possible—in this case, the manner and setting of its production as well as its classification.

One of the features of the Irish Late Bronze Age is the appearance of wind instruments, commonly called ‘Trumpets’, often found in groups and only rarely in association with other material. Being conical and curved, these are therefore members of the horn family, to which the other large musical group of the Bronze Age, the north European lurer, also belong.

The Irish horns have attracted the attention of antiquarians for over 100 years, with the principal collection and listing of these beginning in 1860. Evans devoted a section of his 1881 book to the ‘trumpets’, and was followed by Day, Allen and Coffey. The latest treatment, which brought together most of the previous lists of horns, was by MacWhite in 1945. All of these later works were primarily concerned with the typology of the horns, and attention was paid neither to their actual production nor to their music. In the present study, all previously published horns have been examined where possible, as well as a number of unpublished finds, and an attempt will be made not only (i) to describe the typological variations and dating of the horns, but also (ii) to discuss their production as objects from Late Bronze Age workshops and (iii) to consider for the first time their musical potential.

The first palaeoliths to be described from this country were found in the south of England, particularly from the Thames Valley and East Anglia. In 1880 Boyd Dawkins wrote that tools of Drift Man were ‘conspicuous by their absence from the gravels north-west of a line passing through the Midland counties from Bristol to the Wash’. In 1897 John Evans (Evans 1897, 580), in the light of the Saltley find from the Birmingham district, questioned the view then current that their absence was due to glacial conditions prevailing north of the Severn—Wash ‘imaginary’ line, and held out hope for future finds in that northern area.

Though hand axes had earlier been described from Chester (Stone 1908, 25) and Bridlington (Evans 1897, 572) it was not until the 1920's that Sir John Evans's hopes began to be realized. Randall Davies brought attention to a hand axe found in railway ballast gravel from Skellingthorpe in Lincolnshire in 1920.

In the West Midlands numerous isolated finds were described from 1920 onwards by Burkitt (1920), Jack, Smith, Shotton and Clifford, the last two authors having in recent years (Shotton 1934 and 1953, Clifford 1954) provided a fairly comprehensive account and bibliography of the Lower and Middle palaeolithic finds from the West Midlands. In the East Midlands the story of discovery has been slower and very little of the material found has been published. In 1922 R. A. Smith published two flake implements from Leicestershire, though these cannot now be accepted (Posnansky 1955, 31).

The barrow, the excavation of which is described below, is one of the two situated close to the Cranborne-Wimborne road, some 150 yards north of the Avenue Lodge entrance to St Giles' Park, in the parish of Edmondsham, Dorset.—Nat. Grid. Ref. SU 04611155 and SU 04631160, and map (fig. 1, no. 3).

The attention of the Ministry of Works was drawn early in 1959 to the denudation by ploughing of Barrow 2. Permission to excavate was given by Lord Shaftesbury, the owner, and by Mr Lawes, the tenant farmer. Excavation on behalf of the Ministry of Works was planned and carried out by the writer, with the assistance of two workmen and some volunteers, during July and August 1959.

The Edmondsham barrows are situated at the foot of the long, gentle slope down from St Giles' Crossroads, at the edge of the Park, on a slight rise in the chalk. The land in this area is fairly heavily wooded, and is not typical downland, although the sub-soil is chalk. The junction of the chalk and the clay-with-flints lies only half a mile to the east of the barrow under discussion, at the village of Edmondsham.