In the summer and autumn of 1910 Postinspektor Schild found a small cemetery of the Middle La Tène Period (Reinecke, Phase C) on his property at Munich—Obermenzing, Upper Bavaria. Eight graves were discovered by him; one, if not two of them were cremation burials. A number of the graves yielded no goods or were at best but meagrely furnished and had either previously been disturbed or had belonged to poor people. Later, in 1913 and in 1914, G. von Merhart (on what must have been one of his earliest excavations) continued work there with the aid of Schild. Nine more graves were discovered, two being cremation, the others inhumation burials. It is of interest that the three richest burials all housed cremations. Apart from two graves found by Merhart, this cemetery is as yet unpublished, though references to it have appeared in various periodicals.

The material from the site is in the possession of the Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Staatssammlung, Munich, and I am more than indebted to its director, Doktor O. Kunkel, for his kindness in allowing me to publish the grave from this cemetery which forms the theme of this paper. My thanks are also due to two other friends, Doktor W. Krämer and Doktor H. Müller-Karpe for help on a number of points and for placing the respective records of the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege and of the Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Staatssammlung at my disposal.

The large perforated stone axe-hammer, illustrated by fig. 1, was found in 1933 in a peat bog near Cwrt Farm, Llangeitho, Cardiganshire (6-in. O.S. Cards, XX, S.E.). It is described by W. F. Grimes (1935) as being ‘related typologically to other axes which can be dated to the Bronze Age’; he adds ‘a date within that period may be accepted as the most likely. The position and circumstances in which it was found favour such an early date without confirming it.’ The same circumstances suggested that the find might perhaps be dated by the method of pollen analysis. The object itself was examined, but it had already been cleaned thoroughly, and even scraping inside the socket yielded only the merest traces of peat, quite insufficient for analysis.

Within recent years, much attention has been focused on the earliest objects of harness which have long been noticed in the archaeological record. They are a matter of some importance in the perception of social structure from extant remains; Kossack (1954) presented strong arguments in favour of interpreting, in this manner, the early Hallstatt (Ha C) horse harness from Bavarian graves. Other major publications have since added to the picture of widespread, supposedly aristocratic adoption of harness and wagons in association with burial rite (northern and central Italy in the Early Iron Age, von Hase 1969; the Iberian peninsula in the same period, Schüle 1969; the Middle Danube to the Russian Steppes and to the Asian hinterland, Potratz 1966). Nor has the thesis of Gallus and Horvath (1939) been ignored, and the activities of ‘Thraco-Cimmerian’ cavalry still play a large part in the interpretation of west European horse harness. Already in 1954, however, Kossack observed the continuing elements of native, western Urnfield Europe in the entirely new combinations of grave-goods in Ha C and he indicated that the cheekpieces, while being modelled closely on the lines of preceding types found in the region of the Middle Danube, were, in fact, local variants chiefly concentrated in the graves of Bohemia and Bavaria. That western Europe had long had its own forms of cheekpiece was demonstrated by Thrane in 1963, yet the mouthpieces themselves have received no consolidated attention. This paper is an attempt to redress the balance, by gathering together the earliest metal bits in Europe west of Slovakia and Hungary, in order to see what light they throw on the problems of continuity and transition at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

A large hoard of Iron Age coins was discovered by metal-detecting at Pershore, Worcestershire, in 1993. During small-scale archaeological excavation further Iron Age coins were recovered, including a likely second hoard. Further fieldwork in the same vicinity as the hoard(s) produced more Iron Age finds, including more coins, and a possible fragment of a twisted wire gold torc. In total 1494 Iron Age gold and silver coins were recovered. Geophysical survey indicated that the hoard(s) lay at the southern end of an extensive area of settlement which, based on the fieldwalking evidence, was mainly of Iron Age and Roman date. This covered an overall area of c. 10 ha, within which several areas of more intensive activity were defined, including enclosures and possible round-houses. It is suggested that the coin hoard(s) indicate the location of a Late Iron Age religious space in an elevated landscape position situated on the edge of a settlement which continued into the Roman period. As part of the archaeological strategy, specialist deep-search metal-detecting was undertaken in order to establish that the site has now been completely cleared of metalwork caches

It is the object of this paper to examine the evidence for the relative and absolute chronology of the Passage-Graves of the British Isles. The title of the paper as well as this bald statement of purpose begs the immediate question of what exactly the authors mean by Passage-Graves.

We define a Passage-Grave as a prehistoric chamber tomb consisting of a passage leading to a round, polygonal, or square chamber, in which the collective burials were normally made. This type of monument may be walled with orthostats and roofed trabeate-wise by capstones, or it may be dry-walled with small stones laid horizontally and roofed by a false or corbelled vault, or again there may be present a combination of these techniques. On the other hand this type of monument may be wholly or partly cut in the rock or again there may be a combination of surface and rock-cut features in its construction. In almost all cases the surface forms of Passage-Grave are incorporated in a barrow or cairn of earth or stones. The constructional variety of the tomb does not affect its classification in a morphological category; the rock-cut tombs of Alcaide and Palmella are as much Passage-Graves as the corbel-vaulted tombs of He Longue and Alcalá, or the capstoneroofed tombs of Kercado and Bryn Celli Ddu.

The existence of two prehistoric sites close on the south-west side of Salisbury was first demonstrated by Mr O. G. S. Crawford, F.S.A., from a chance air-photograph taken by Pilot-Officer Jonas, R.A.F. (Antiquity, III, 452). They are now called Woodbury I and II from a field name. The smaller of the two sites, Woodbury II, was selected for excavation by the Prehistoric Society because its size (diameter 150 m.) made its complete examination financially feasible and its clear markings promised good results. The site lies in the parish of Britford on high ground overlooking the Avon valley from the south-west, one mile west-south-west of Britford parish church. The ground is flat about 280 feet above sea level, and the site is set well back from the edge of the descent into the water meadows of the valley.

It was tested in March 1938 by Mr C. W. Phillips, F.S.A., who proved that the dark band of the enclosure revealed by the air-photograph (pl. LVII) was a ditch of V-shaped section. His discovery of Iron Age ‘A’ pottery in the silting suggested that the site belonged to this culture.

The aim of the Prehistoric Society in undertaking the investigation of this site has been to excavate it in its entirety. Such a work might be expected to fulfil two objects:

(a) by excavating the site completely many problems raised by the numerous partial excavations of analogous sites might be solved. In particular, profiting by previous experience in Germany, it was hoped to reveal something of the nature of such settlements and of the social organisation which they imply.

(b) the investigation might be expected to throw some fresh light on the interpretation of markings on air-photographs.

The restricted area of the site and the shallowness of the surface soil revealed by Mr Phillips's test made it particularly favourable for this kind of work, while the strong probability of building development in the near future lent urgency to the task.