An apology of some sort is so usual a preamble to an address, that I might be tempted to court originality by departing from the normal and foregoing the confessional. Circumstances, however, are compelling in my case and I have no opening for escape. In the first place a combination of factors prevented my delivering a presidential address to the Society during my term of office, and for this I owe sincere apologies. I have to ask you in your kindness to accept this as a belated and actually “post-mortem” address from your late president, delivered, as it is, under the aegis of my successor in office, to whom I desire to offer a cordial welcome and sincere congratulations. At the same time I wish to thank the Society most heartily for the high compliment which was paid to me when I was invited to assume the presidency last year. It is difficult to say how very highly I appreciate this kindness and courtesy.

In the second place, my choice of a subject needs at least some explanation and, if possible, justification. I cannot avoid the confession that the topic which I have selected has no direct bearing upon East Anglia in particular, nor, indeed upon Great Britain in general. Having confessed this with all due apologies, I must try to justify my temerity.

The problem of the transition period between Palæolithic and Neolithic times has long fascinated prehistorians. Much work has been done and a good deal more is known of this elusive era than was the case formerly, though still many things remain obscure. It is proposed here to try and sketch out what has been discovered with special reference to some of the early cultures of Northern Europe and then tentatively to apply this knowledge to our own country. The problem of the surface finds in East Anglia are very intricate and although it is not the province of this paper to concentrate on them, it is hoped that a little light may be thrown on the subject by this study and that some perhaps helpful suggestion may be made.

As is well known, the difficulty that the early prehistorians had to face was the apparent catastrophic change in everything which took place at the end of Palæolithic times. Suddenly the Palæolithic industries, art and fauna cease, and their place is taken —as it then seemed—by the comparatively monotonous Neolithic industries of the so-called Western Circle with domestic animals, pottery, polished stone axes and a more or less modern fauna, showing that the climatic conditions, far from being arctic, had become reasonably genial.

In 1924 at the invitation of Dr. Garson, the official delegate of the British Association, I attended the French Congress for the Advancement of Science, which was being held at Liège, and at his request took over for exhibition a large number of flint implements from various parts of East Anglia. I was much struck by the great interest taken in the exhibits, many of these English examples being apparently new to the audience. A desire was expressed by more than one of the professors present that they could oftener have the opportunity of examining typical tools from this country.

While at Liège I paid a visit to the Archaeological Museum, and also to M. Hamel Nandrin's private collection, with its stores of Neolithic specimens from the ateliers of Sainte-Gertrude, Holland, and this impressed me with the necessity of having examples of tools from Continental sites more conveniently at hand in England for reference and comparison than they are at present. I therefore determined to make an effort to secure for home study, some of the abundant spoil from the Sainte-Gertrude workshops.

The Kelling Flaking Site was described in the Proceedings of the P.S.E.A., Vol. IV., Pt. II., p. 165–176. During the past year a considerable amount of work has been done in the hope of throwing further light on the problem of the date of the culture. Several thousand specimens have been examined, and, in general, they agree closely in type with those already described. Over one hundred “points,” of which many were damaged, and sixty scrapers have been obtained, whilst nuclei, worked flakes and worked-angle flakes are numerous. No fabricators or geometric forms have been found, whilst microburins, though specially searched for, are still lacking. I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. F. H. Barclay and Mr. E. Dyson in the somewhat arduous task of excavating the site.

In remote times bleak and exposed sites in the east of the county of Durham were occupied by folk who made microlithic implements. On the top of Sheddon's Hill, near the Black Fell, Gateshead, these relics were fairly abundant among hundreds of pieces of flint collected; and examples have been found elsewhere in the district and on the coast.

Many of the Belgian Tardenois types are represented among these finds, the small trapezoid which has not yet been excavated on Sheddon's Hill was found on a site near by and a small round scraper on a coast site. The finding of these remains on Sheddon's Hill adds something to our information about the distribution of the Tardenois folk in Britain who probably as Capt. Buckley has suggested spread westwards from the Continent at a time when the North Sea did not exist.

In his Presidential Address to the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia in 1916, Proc., Vol. II., Pt. II., p. 279, Dr. A. E. Peake described a flint implement obtained from Floor 16 as a hollow-end scraper; remarking that Dr. Sturge had “a number of similar implements found on the surface.” Two views of the implement are, fortunately, given; whereby it can be seen that the hollow at the supposed scraping end is brought to an acute edge by chipping on both faces, and, therefore, was not used in hollow-scraping. The work is identical with that on a barbed but stemless arrowhead, at the hollow base thereof; fitting it for mounting in a shaft. The suggestion is that this is an arrowhead or lancehead.

In 1920 my daughter Morwenna picked out from Floor 75 the flint shown in Fig. 1. This, also, is trimmed at the base, from each face; precisely after the manner of numbers of accepted arrowheads, and in such fashion as to produce an edge which would facilitate hafting. The remainder of the secondary chipping is on both sides of the point, and all down one side of the weapon. The other side needed no trimming; it is acute and sharp and would easily do its share of piercing.

This site lies in the parish of Little Somborne, Hants, to the west of Turnpike Copse and just south of the Stockbridge-Winchester road. The ground rises steeply from the road to form a ridge about 300 O.D. and then gradually sinks towards Fox Heath Copse. Just below the crest of this ridge, the plough brings to the surface many large blocks of flint where a stratum outcrops. These blocks are the raw material from which the tools were made and the picks found were probably used to extract them. Large rough flakes are very numerous. Many of them show trimmed butts. This site extends for about 2 acres, and in this area are found picks, choppers, large cores, hammer stones, anvil stones, borers, end scrapers, and rarely a large horseshoe scraper, but no arrow heads or polished axes. The tools are patinated a blue-white or blue-grey; but the quality of the flint is so bad, there are so many quartz, chertz and calcedonic inclusions, that the patination is often patchy and unequal and sometimes varies in colour in different parts of the same flake scar. There is not much lustre. Iron staining and at times iron incrustation, found chiefly on the aretes, is very marked and there are numerous quicksilver spots of polish. The edges of these tools are sharp and show very little signs of use. What signs there are may be due to accidental damage by the plough.

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.

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.

The old manor of Waddon is part of the Parish of Croydon and lies to the south west of the Parish Church of that town. Here at the head of the Wandle River there are many evidences of a wide spread population in prehistoric times and the fields on the lower slopes of the North Downs which steadily rise from Waddon Station towards Purley are littered with flakes and have yielded many implements.

The particular site to which I draw the attention of the Society, and indicate as the Cedars Estate, is easily reached by the bridle path running westward by Waddon Mill on the banks of the river, and the section under discussion, is the north east corner of the plot marked as Brandy Bottle Hill on the six inch Ordnance Survey. A hillock of Thanet sand here rises and extends eastward over the next field, the top of which is some 140 feet above sea level and makes a vantage spot with a good look out, over the wide stretches of the level plain running north from the present course of the Wandle river, in early times no doubt a stretch of marshland. It is still called Waddon Marsh.

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.

The specimen to which this note refers was found by Mr. Stephen Notcutt, of Ipswich, who has kindly allowed me to illustrate, and to describe it. This important implement was lying among some largish stones upon the beach, exposed at low water, at the mouth of the River Deben, Bawdsey, Suffolk, and was derived, in all probability, from some ancient bed of gravel occurring higher up the valley.

It will be realised by an examination of the coloured illustration (Plate XII.), the publication of which has been made possible by certain generous donations to the Illustration Fund, that this specimen conforms to a well-known type of axe (the “Thames Pick”) of the Early Neolithic period, and. at the same time, exhibits a colouration such as, so far as my knowledge extends, has only been found, hitherto, in Suffolk associated with flint implements referable to the Lower Palæolithic-Chellean-phase.