Enclosures with ditches and banks were a feature of Neolithic cultures in western Europe from the end of the Linear Pottery culture onwards, and seem to have served a wide variety of purposes within the settlement patterns and economic strategies based on mixed farming such as prevailed in the fourth and third millennia be (on the uncorrected radiocarbon chronology, used throughout). The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to draw attention to the earliest known examples in western Europe, belonging to the late Linear Pottery culture and to its immediate successors in what may be called the Linear Pottery culture tradition, to outline the variety of possible functions which these may have had, and to suggest that they are ancestral to subsequent enclosures in other parts of western Europe and particularly in southern England; second, to show that the enclosures of the earlier Neolithic of southern England may also, like their continental predecessors, have had varied roles, such that the hypothesis of ritual function is inadequate and even the label ‘causewayed camp’, like ‘henge’ or ‘hillfort’, cannot denote more than common constructional techniques.

The Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 cal bc) in Britain is traditionally understood to represent a major funerary transition. This is a transformation from a heterogeneous funerary rite, largely encompassing inhumations and cremations in burial mounds and often accompanied by grave goods, to a homogeneous and unadorned cremation-based practice. Despite a huge expansion in the number of well excavated, radiocarbon dated, and osteologically analysed sites in the last three decades, current interpretations of Middle Bronze Age cremation burials still rely upon a seminal paper by Ellison (1980), which proposed that they comprise and represent an entire community. This paper analyses 378 cremation sites containing at least 3133 burials which represent all those that can be confidently dated to the Middle Bronze Age in Britain. The new analysis demonstrates that relatively few sites can be characterised as community cemeteries and that there are substantially more contemporary settlement sites, though few contemporary settlements are in close proximity to the cemeteries. The identifiable characteristics of cremation-based funerary practices are consistent across Britain with little evidence for social differentiation at the point of burial. It is also evident that only a minority of the population received a cremation burial. There is a substantial decrease in archaeologically visible funerary activity from the preceding Early Bronze Age (c. 2200–1600 cal bc) and a further decrease in the proceeding Late Bronze Age (c. 1150–800 cal bc) in Britain. This is comparable in form, and partially in sequence, to Bronze Age funerary practices in Ireland and several regions in North-west Europe.

Taking grave and non-grave pottery together, five summary regional groups of beaker pottery are proposed for Britain and Ireland: Group A, Ireland; Group B, north Britain and eventually widespread; Group C, north and to some extent south Britain; Group D, south Britain; and Group E, East Anglia and south-east England. It is anticipated that further discoveries and research will enable these groups to be refined regionally.

These groups are set in a quarter-millennium calendrical chronology, which suggests that they may all have appeared around or near the mid-3rd millennium BC, and that many of their aspects were long enduring, some surviving to the 2nd quarter of the 2nd millennium BC.

Decorative features especially are related to bell-beaker pottery in western Europe, to Single Grave pottery across the North Sea, and to native Late Neolithic pottery. In presenting the chronology of these relationships, it is argued that a widely held view that bell-beaker pottery evolved in north-west Europe requires modification.

It is convenient to begin this study of Azilian harpoons by first considering the Magdalenian harpoons of northern Spain. The two Basque sites of Aitzbitarte, a few miles within the Spanish side of the frontier, and Isturitz, not many miles within the French side of the frontier, are useful in delimiting the Spanish area from the point of view of the fauna. At Aitzbitarte, Harlé (1908) found a great predominance of red deer with one or two odd fragments of reindeer antler, whereas the well-known excavations by St. Périer (1936) at Isturitz showed a great preponderance of reindeer in conformity with other sites in the Pyrenees. The other occurrences in the three east Spanish provinces agree with that at Aitzbitarte (for instance, at Valle, Lorenzo Sierra, 1908, gives the ratio of antler fragments as red deer to reindeer: 73–1). Judged by the fauna, therefore, the modern political frontier corresponds roughly to the limit of the effective penetration of the reindeer westward, and consequently to the line of demarcation between harpoon-heads made respectively from red deer and reindeer antler.

The subdivision of the Magdalenian deposits in north Spain has never been satısfactorily resolved, and they have obstinately refused to conform to the French sequence. The main difficulty has been the lack of stratified sites; only Cueto de la Mina has yielded three layers; and two or three other caves have given two layers. Nevertheless two stages, an earlier one without and a later one with harpoons have been clearly distinguished (Breuil and Obermaier, 1936, 165–70, 192–4). Although no stratigraphical division of this later stage is possible, a number of interesting points arise from a typological study of the known harpoons.

In a recent discussion of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, Julian Thomas decribed the Mesolithic as a ‘cybernetic wasteland’ (1988, 64). By this he was presumably referring to the picture we gain of Mesolithic society when ‘human behaviour [is seen] in terms of adaptive responses to environmental pressures’ (ibid., 59), which Thomas states as the basis of Mesolithic research. Is he justified in the use of this damning phrase? When archaeologists see human behaviour in an ecological framework do they deny people their humanity by turning them into robots, helpless ‘victims of externally-imposed circumstances’ (ibid., 61).

Two Bronze Age cremation cemeteries excavated between 1968 and 1975 are reported and discussed. At Coneygre Farm, Notts., fifty-one cremations were excavated, thirty-one in pots, six in cists, and fourteen uncontained. Cremations were deposited in a roughly linear arrangement and no barrow was found. At Pasture Lodge Farm, Lincs., twenty-seven pots were found, of which twenty-five had associated cremations, and fifteen further sherds could represent burials. Vessels in this cemetery form a small cluster. Pottery from these two cemeteries is broadly similar to Deverel-Rimbury ware and with vessels from other sites in the region is considered to form an East Midlands group of Bronze Age pottery. Vessels of this type from Frieston and Grantham, Lincs., are illustrated for the first time. Examination of thin sections of the pottery from the two cemeteries suggests that most, although not all, of the materials used could have been found locally. Organic remains found in thin sections provide environmental information. The effect of soils on durability of pots and their probable function is discussed. A direct relationship is noticed for the first time between the age of the cremated individual and the capacity of the pot in which the cremation was deposited.

This paper presents the results of a programme of research on an unusual group of prehistoric stone settings located on Exmoor, south-west England. Taking a variety of semi-geometric and apparently random forms, a total of 59 settings have been identified, with new discoveries taking place on a regular basis. These stone settings are remarkable for their diminutive size, with component stones often standing to heights of 100 mm or less, a factor which has led to their being termed ‘minilithic’. Through reference to the results of a programme of geophysical survey and small-scale excavation targeted upon a particularly rich cluster of settings around the upper reaches of Badgworthy Water, issues of morphology, dating, relationships, and the implications of the Exmoor miniliths for developing understandings monumentality are discussed.

The prehistoric rock art of Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — is surveyed, with specific reference to the over 900 sites bearing motifs more complex than cup-marks alone and apparently random grooves. Of sites bearing cup-marks alone, there are at least 700.

The majority of motifs is geometric, with a few animals, weapons and human hands and footprints. Two main groups are recognized, the Boyne or Passage Grave type and the Galician type. The former occurs mainly on the slabs of Neolithic tombs, especially in Ireland, and includes spirals, rings, lozenges, zigzags and flower-like figures, only some of which occur in Britain. The latter is more restricted in design, with mainly cup-and-rings, rings, and spirals, usually on rock outcrops and boulders. A third group is recognized by some workers, in which cist and burial stones are carved with mostly the Boyne type, but sometimes with Galician or simple cup-marks or a mixture of these. There is also occasional overlap between Galician and Boyne types, occurring on natural rocks and tombs.

The main characteristics, locations in relation to topography and archaeology, and distribution are detailed. Dating and significance are briefly discussed.

Most of the art occurs in a central belt of Britain, but within that it is recognized as being distributed spatially among 16 main regions which are defined both geographically and with regard to concentrations of sites.

There is a gazetteer of all sites, similarly arranged.

The excavation of a large circular dished earthwork near Carnforth, North Lancashire, in 1982, has revealed a substantial Bronze Age funerary monument. The earliest structure was a sub-rectangular enclosure of limestone boulders dated to c. 1740–1640 BC cal. and associated with parts of two poorly preserved inhumation burials lying on the previously cleared ground surface. Both burials were accompanied by typologically early metalwork. The central inhumation was associated with a flat axe and dagger, suggesting an individual of high status as well as providing an important link between the early stages of development of both bronze types. The subsequent overlying cairn of smaller stones included eleven fairly discrete concentrations of inhumed bone, and seven of cremated bone and pottery. All this material was extremely fragmentary, and was probably derived from later re-use of the cairn.

The Molène archipelago appears to be particularly rich in Neolithic and Bronze Age remains and an exceptional concentration of megaliths has been brought to light. Several settlements are confirmed by dry-stone structures or by shell middens. These data give precious indications on the occupation chronology of the area. Moreover they allow us, for the first time in Brittany, to reconstruct everyday life during the late Prehistoric period. A prerequisite to this reconstruction was a better understanding of the evolution of the environment during this period, which locally implies a better knowledge of paleogeographic changes related to Holocene sea-level rise as well as on floral and faunal resources.

The results obtained through paleogeographic reconstructions show that the archipelago since 4500 bc was already disconnected from the mainland. The megalithic monuments must therefore have been erected and used by islanders present on the archipelago from the middle of the 5th to the 2nd millennium bc. The distribution of the megalithic tombs reveals landscape occupation strategies which respond to both cultural choices and natural constraints. Throughout the entire period, geographic isolation has continued to increase, although it did not imply strong cultural specificities. Nevertheless, the increasing remoteness of the islands has fostered the search for livelihoods based on the intense exploitation of coastal resources. Despite their focus on the sea, these people did not neglect what inland areas could offer as evidenced by the early agro-pastoral practices in the archipelago.

This paper considers the dynamics of deposition around and across the causewayed enclosure at Etton, Cambridgeshire. As a result of detailed re-analysis (particularly refitting) of the pottery and flint assemblages from the site, it proved possible to shed new light both on the temporality of occupation and the character of deposition there. Certain aspects of our work challenge previous interpretations of the site, and of causewayed enclosures in general; but, just as importantly, others confirm materially what has previously been suggested. The quantities of material deposited at Etton reveal that the enclosure was occupied only very intermittently and certainly less regularly than other contemporary sites in the region. The spatial distribution of material suggests that the enclosure ditch lay open for the entirety of the monument's life, but that acts of deposition generally focused on a specific part of the monument at any one time. As well as enhancing our knowledge of one particular causewayed enclosure, it is hoped that this paper – in combination with our earlier analysis of the pit site at Kilverstone – makes clear the potential that detailed material analysis has to offer in relation to our understanding of the temporality of occupation on prehistoric sites in general.

Choppers and chopping tools have long been associated with the Clactonian industries of Britain. They have either been dismissed as cores, or often described as woodworking tools, but have rarely been studied from a functional perspective. The purpose of this paper is to publish the results of a series of experiments which has been carried out to investigate the functional efficiency of choppers or chopping tools as compared to other alternative tools. These results are then reviewed in the light of the archaeological information from Clactonian and other Lower and Middle Pleistocene sites.

Due to the problems of definition, for the purposes of the experiments both chopping tools and choppers have been taken to be small nodules of pebbles which have had several flakes removed bifacially along at least one edge. The morphology of the working edge is identical to that found on the edges of many of the Clactonian cores. For this reason, chopping tools, choppers and cores are regarded as artefacts with potentially an identical function. In the experiments they are termed simply as chopping tools.

The peat deposits in the Somerset Levels have yielded many finds of prehistoric and early historic age, ranging from flint and metal artefacts to roadways and other structures. These finds have been a source of interest to archaeologists for many years, and the work here described represents only one aspect of the early occupation of the region. The Levels themselves lie between the major uplands of the Quantock Hills and the Mendip Hills (fig. 1), but within the Levels are extensive ridges of limestone (including the Polden Hills and the Wedmore Ridge), smaller and lower areas of limestone (such as Westhay and Meare), and patches of sands (Burtle Beds) all of which provided dry ground for occupation or other activities. We are concerned in this paper with the earliest wooden roads and tracks of Neolithic age which were built to allow communication between the Westhay ridge and the largest Burtle Bed north of the Polden Hills (pl. XIV).

The purpose of this paper is to give an account of the ancient agriculture of the British highland, by indicating the broad distribution of the remains and by describing some examples in detail. The paper is based for the most part on records compiled in recent years in the course of the routine field reconnaissance carried out by the Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey, during which work on ancient highland agriculture was directed and prepared for publication by Mr James Fox, F.S.A., Assistant Archaeology Officer, Ordnance Survey. The illustrations are reproduced from documents held by the Ordnance Survey with the sanction of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Crown copyright reserved.

The highland areas of Britain comprise: 1, the southwest of England; 2, Wales; and 3, England and Scotland from the River Trent to the Arctic Ocean. Most of the new information about ancient agriculture in the highland refers to area 3. It will be convenient first to summarize the situation in 1 and 2 and then to discuss area 3 in greater detail.

The excavation of these barrows was undertaken in the autumn of 1949 for the Ministry of Works in advance of building. They stood immediately adjacent to each other on Plateau Gravel overlying the Bagshot Beds towards the western extremity of the Hampshire Basin, and only a hundred yards north of the crest of the Bourne Bottom which leads down to Bournemouth and Poole Bay about three miles distant (fig. 1). The surrounding heath is rich in round barrows, and the district has yielded plentiful evidence of prehistoric man.

In most societies, the presentation of human hair makes statements about projections of self, belonging, and difference. Drawing upon analogies from living traditions where hair makes an important contribution to symbolic grammars of personhood, this paper seeks to explore the evidence for symbolism associated with head and body hair in later European prehistory. This evidence is wide ranging, and includes the (exceptional) survival of hair in the archaeological record, iconography, and the equipment used for the management of hair. Questions are raised as to the manner in which hair may have been employed in visual languages, not only those associated with self-identity, but also in the presentation of ‘others’, whether social outcasts, sacrificial victims, shamed prisoners or special people, such as priests, shamans, or heroes. Issues of relationships between hair and gender are addressed, particularly with reference to iconography. The final part of the paper is concerned with the socio-political connotations associated with personal grooming and, in particular, the significance of adopting new, Roman, ways of managing hair in late Iron Age Britain.

The excavations of the cemetery groups at Balneaves, Loanleven and Park of Tongland facilitate an examination of many aspects of Bronze Age burial practices in Scotland. They are notable as much for the differences in burial ritual they imply as for the very narrow chronological period in which they were used. The three sites produced a total of seventeen 14C dates, two of which are aberrant, with means of the remaining fifteen falling within a period of 250 years (3370–3610 bp in radiocarbon years). The excavations were sponsored by Historic Scotland (formerly Historic Buildings and Monuments, Scotland).

At Balneaves, a penannular ditch enclosed sixteen features, including a group of seven pits with cremation burials, four of which were associated with a distinctive assemblage of collared urns. The cremated bone was well preserved. At least one large standing stone had been erected on the site, and this was buried in the medieval period.

At Loanleven, only a segment of the enclosing ring-ditch survived, within which were four cists, two containing inhumations and two cremations, one of the latter (Cist 2) associated with a fragment of a food vessel. A decorated slab, in so-called ‘Passage Grave Style’, was recovered from Cist 1, and the same cist produced palynological evidence for grave furnishings in the form of a mat of plant material which probably underlay the body. 14C dates give a terminus ante quem of 3620±50 bp (GU–2543) for the re-use of the decorated slab, and a terminus post quem of 3410±50 bp (GU–2542) for the food vessel grave.

Park of Tongland, regarded as a Four-Poster stone circle, was excavated after the fall of a standing stone. It was shown to be of multi-period construction, consisting of a cairn which overlay seven pits containing fragmentary cremation burials, two associated with collared urns. The standing stones may not all have been erect at the same time. A series of 14C dates fell within the range of 1480–1530 bc.

The object of the excavations described in this preliminary report was to recover evidence of:

(a) the more perishable elements in the material culture of a Maglemosian community,

(b) the fauna on which this community largely subsisted and

(c) the vegetation which formed the ecological setting of man and beast alike.

The best way of appreciating the need for such an investigation and of judging the measure of success attained in this first season is to consider how knowledge of the Maglemosian culture in Britain grew up between the two world wars. There appear to have been two main clues, namely single finds of barbed bone points, commonly, though probably wrongly, referred to in the early literature as ‘harpoons,’ and flint industries of a type associated with analogous points on Maglemosian sites in the Baltic area.

Over 45 years have now elapsed since attention was first drawn to an apparent paucity of pre-Roman Iron Age funerary sites in southern Britain (Hawkes and Dunning 1930). This remarkable lacuna, contrasting with a wealth of Bronze Age burial forms, received little further attention until Hodson defined an absence of burials as a ‘negative type-fossil’ of his insular and otherwise prolific Woodbury Culture and emphasized the cultural implications of this uncomfortable gap in the archaeological record (Hodson 1964). With the exception of supposedly intrusive continental disposal forms in restricted areas of Yorkshire and south-eastern England and a third rather hazy rite from the extreme south-west, the British Iron Age was characterized by an embarrassingly invisible method of disposal that could neither be compared nor contrasted with contemporary continental traditions. Although efforts have been made to explain this absence in terms of hypothetical practices that would leave no archaeologically recognizable traces, there have been few attempts to consider in detail the scattered references to human remains that have slowly accumulated in the literature. A reconsideration of this evidence in the light of more recently excavated material suggests that the dearth of funerary remains is to an extent illusory and that further distinctive disposal rituals can now be added to those already recognized. It is also apparent that certain shared characteristics may force a general reconsideration of the origins of these different rites.

In recent years increasing attention has been focused on the palaeoeconomic interpretation of prehistoric sites, and a number of projects have been carried out both in Britain and abroad on plant and animal remains from archaeological sites with a view to interpreting subsistence patterns and activities of early communities. Though large-scale, systematic sampling and recovery of palaeoethnobotanical data has been carried out on several sites in the last ten years, the practice is still not widespread and has yet to be judged by its results. Fundamental issues relating to sampling, recovery and data presentation still require attention. Although studies of palaeoeconomic material have been done on Iron age sites in southern Britain, for example at Portway (Murphy 1977a) and Abingdon (Parrington 1978), as yet little evaluation of this evidence has taken place. The aim of this paper is to present, assess and compare the evidence from two such studies of different types of Iron Age site.