During 1926 and 1927 my researches under the auspices of the Percy Sladen Trustees were continued upon the Cromer coast of Norfolk, and a quantity of additional evidence relating to the archæological contents of the Forest Bed obtained. The remarkable spreads of flints exposed at low tide upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham were again examined, while the Estuarine Beds and the Upper Freshwater Bed of the Forest Bed Series received also some amount of attention.

I have to record my thanks to Messrs. J. P. T. Burchell, H. H. Halls, Guy Maynard, and J. E. Sainty for valuable help during these researches.

The further examination of the large spreads of flint present upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham has yielded many new and interesting facts regarding them. These spreads all rest upon the chalk, which along the coast-line between Cromer and Sheringham is exposed in places at low tide. Moreover, though differing in extent, they all present, to the casual observer, a very similar appearance, and are without doubt at the present time being subjected to closely similar physical conditions.

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.

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.

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.

By the very kind permission of the owners, I was enabled to carry out the excavation of some “floors” at Grime's Graves, in June and July, 1919, with some friends.

At the same time Mr. D. Richardson was clearing the remarkable site which he discovered in the North Field.

The centre of Floor 52 was fifty paces N.E. of the corner of the West Field, and fourteen from the edge of the cart track north of the wood. Twenty yards N.W. of the said centre was Floor 47, nearer to the cart track coming up out of the valley, and with comparatively small flakes and cores, of poor quality. The facets are short, deep, and wide, like those on an implement of the Chelles Period. The shapes of the cores differ from the true Grime's Graves type. At Floor 51 Mr. W. G. Clarke rightly pointed out that these traits were, in part, due to the fact that wall-stone was used. Only in part, however, for floor-stone was also used, as examination showed. The chipped flints in the outer part of Floor 47 lay in the lower part of the humus, 9 ins. below the surface.

‘Tilbury Man’ is the partial skeleton of an adult male found in 1883 during the construction of new docks at Tilbury, Essex, on the north shore of the Thames, approximately half way between London and the mouth of the estuary. At the time the find stirred considerable interest due to its depth of nearly 10 m, with the eminent biologist and palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen hailing it as being of Palaeolithic age, though most subsequent (and even contemporary) researchers assigned it to the early Holocene. AMS radiocarbon dating now places the skeleton in the Late Mesolithic, 6065–5912 cal bc. This paper presents the circumstances of the find, describes the surviving skeletal elements, including two healed cranial injuries, and places Tilbury in the context of what little is known regarding Late Mesolithic burial practices in Britain

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.

In former parts of these “Proceedings” Dr. W. Allen Sturge, M.V.O., has put forward views concerning the striæ on surface implements, views which are so opposed to the canons of geology and archæology, and involve so great an upheaval of accepted beliefs, that but for the skill with which the facts and conclusions were marshalled, they would not have received a moment's consideration. Few archæologists have the material on which to form a reliable judgment, and fewer still are prepared to accept the upheaval of current views rendered necessary by the adoption of the theory that minor glaciations occurred after the deposition of the chalky boulder clay. Even more revolutionary was the view as to the occurrence of a glacial period at all and this was strenuously fought for many years, and even now is by no means accepted by all geologists. The drift deposits were referred to by old writers as “Extraneous Rubbish,” and were sometimes divided into Diluvium and Alluvium. It was not until 1840, when Agassiz read his paper before the Geological Society on “Glaciers, and the Evidence of their having once existed in Scotland, Ireland, and England,” that this momentous explanation of a vast and difficult problem was given to geologists, and years elapsed before it was generally accepted.

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.

During the successive Glacial periods which seem to have occurred at regular intervals and of increasing or diminishing intensity, what were the climatic conditions in the present tropical regions?

This is dated from Southern India, where I am endeavouring to visualise and imagine some of the climatic conditions in which ancient man at some of these periods may have lived, and in which the implements, of which I am finding some beautiful examples, may have been made and used and subsequently abandoned, being now found in certain positions and horizons.

Cuddapah is the chief town of a district where I have found most of the implements of palæolithic type of which I have given series to, I suppose, more than a hundred museums. If I include African and Egyptian implements, then the number of museums and institutions is 246 in all. Cuddapah is pretty well searched out now as regards implements, as there is a native whom Mr. McLeod, the late Collector of Cuddapah, trained as a searcher, and who has usually been with me and who is with me on the present occasion, who has searched most of that district in my company. Dr. Sturge has very beautifully and clearly applied the Draysonian theory to certain questions in prehistorics. While man in Northern Europe was being driven backwards and forwards, and alternately scorched and frozen for thousands of years, alternating with long periods of comparative climatic repose such as we are now enjoying, what, I ask, was happening to his confrère in India? As far as I can ascertain from the evidential positions and surroundings of such palæolithic implements as I have myself picked up, the climate in this part of the world was devoid of those catastrophic floods and alternating Arctic and Tropical climates which must have made life so exciting in other latitudes.

Few English deposits have aroused more disputation among geologists than the Crag beds of Norfolk and Suffolk, and on many of the points raised there is as yet no general agreement. This more particularly applies to the sands, gravels, and clays associated with the Norwich Crag, one school considering them part of the Crag formation and therefore Pliocene, and another believing them to be glacial and Pleistocene. Doubt on this matter has had an important bearing on the discovery of Sub-Crag implements in Norfolk, though I believe that the evidence is now incontrovertible. With regard to the basement-bed of the Crag, whether of the Coralline, Red, or Norwich Crag, which appear to have been successive deposits in the order given, the geological evidence as to position and antiquity—though not as to the conditions under which it was deposited—is not disputed. Mr. F. W. Harmer, F.G.S., says:—“In consequence of a combined movement of elevation iu the southern part of this region, and of subsidence towards the north, the whole Crag basin moving as on a pivot, its southern margin was gradually shifted, the sea retiring towards the north.