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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The renewed controversy over the question of Mycenaean trade with ‘barbarian’ Europe (Renfrew 1968; Branigan 1970, 1972; etc.) has emphasised the need for a thorough study of the various classes of evidence involved. Recent work on the faience beads of Early Bronze Age Europe (Harding 1971; Harding and Warren 1973) has tended to show that local production is likely, at any rate in continental Europe, while a study of the amber trade to Mycenaean Greece (Harding and Hughes-Brock 1974) has shown that two main periods of trade with the Baltic are likely, the first, via Wessex, in the sixteenth/fifteenth centuries B.C., the second around 1200, down the Adriatic. Here I should like to tackle another group of material, bronze tools and implements, some of which have been used (or mis-used) in the current debate. I include here agricultural, wood-working, metallurgical and general-purpose tools; razors and tweezers are omitted, and will be discussed elsewhere, as will ornaments and objects of personal use. Knives are included, but daggers await examination together with other weapons.

Tools and implements have not often been found as items of trade in the Bronze Age Aegean. They have intrinsic value as metal, it is true, but they are usually heavy and bulky, and most easily susceptible of adaptation to local needs by local smiths. Accidental loss and intentional imitation are correspondingly less likely.

The discovery of a large hand-axe of the Chelles period in the bed of the river Nidd at Goyden Pot Hole in 1922 has, after eight years careful work, established the fact by the results obtained, that Palæolithıc man lived in Yorkshire from the earliest times. This paper concerns only the upper part of Nidderdale, from Pateley Bridge to the source of the Nidd on Great Whernside. For the privilege of examining this large tract of country my thanks are due to the late Mr. T. E. Yorke, Col. C. J. Huskinson, Mr. H. A. Ramsden, Mr. W. Nicholson, and Mr. L. Mitchell.

As the nature of the country in which the implements have been found is so different from all other sites where implements of the same periods exist in England, a short description of it will not be out of place.

Nidderdale, like all the other Yorkshire dales, has been carved out by the glaciers of the Pleistocene period, and the course which the river follows is the same as that of the glaciers. The Nidd rises in Great Whernside at the height of over 2,000 ft., and by the time it reaches Pateley Bridge, some 15 miles from its source, it is only 383 ft. above sea. The fall of the hills corresponds more or less with this, the top of Great Whernside being 2,310 ft. O.D., and the moors at Pateley Bridge being 1,100-ft. to 1,050 ft. O.D. All down the dale on both sides many streams flow into the river: these have cut out deep narrow valleys, known locally as gills, and in doing so have exposed the lateral moraines which exist there.

Fabric categories.

Fabric 1 : flint tendered (28%)

Inclusions; medium size calcined flint temper of medium abundance (approximately 1000 grains per 1 gm of sherd) with a negligible backing of medium grade sand quartz natural to the clay.

Example of analysed sherd: flint temper (99%0; G - 0.9%, VC - 8#5%, C - 26.8%, M - 39.4%, F - 24.4% quartz sand (1%); M - 11 grains per gram of sherd

Firing and surface finish; surfaces and core are generally reduced but patches of buff, brown and orange exist. Exterior and some internal surfaces show signs of horizontal burnishing.

Sherd wall thickness; 4 - 8 mm

Technology; handmade with evidence of coil construction and subsequent drawing up (Rye 1981, 67-73).

The implications of pit-deposits containing aurochs/Bos primigenius skulls dating to the Bronze Age, found in two recent excavations in Bedfordshire are outlined. Involving a review of related findings in south-eastern England, these serve as a platform to consider the dynamics of aurochs extinction, which is held to have occurred in Britain by the middle–later centuries of the 2nd millennium bc. It should be stressed that, although consulting many ‘expert’ colleagues, this paper is not written from a faunal remains-specialist perspective. It is essentially discursive and primarily intended to highlight a significant site-recovery trend. It reflects, moreover, on issues of broad social relevance. Holocene human-induced extinctions have both an inherent curiosity and poignancy. Indeed now, faced with currently threatened mass-species loss, they can even involve – beyond regret – a sense of cumulative guilt.

Vessey Ponds are a pair of irregularly-shaped hollows high on the Chalk Wolds of East Yorkshire at about 220 m OD (Fig. 1). Recent fieldwalking recovered a large flint scatter in the vicinity of these hollows. Mesolithic activity was represented by worked flint displaying soft hammer technology whereas hard hammer technologies indicate Neolithic and Bronze Age tool production and usage. The presence of large numbers of cores and a vast quantity of industrial waste indicates on-site preparation of tools. Statistical analysis of the fieldwalking data implies that the flints are concentrated around the hollows. Auger sampling across the ponds revealed natural clay deposits that still hold water close to the pond surface. Consideration of exploitation of mineral resources on the Wold top and possible mechanisms of formation of Vessey Ponds highlights the complex effects of glacial activities on the local surface geology. Karstic origins for some features of surface geology are suggested. The nature of the ‘prehistoric’ economies represented by the flint scatter is considered along with ethnoarchaeological evidence to support the assumption that the ponds at Vessey were a potential water supply during the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Ages. Evidence from Vessey Ponds and elsewhere in Yorkshire implies an association between areas of ‘prehistoric’ activity and the availability of surface water. Above all else, this work highlights the impact of water supply on settlement pattern and land use on the Chalk of the Yorkshire Wolds.

The cairn at Mount Stewart has attracted wide attention as the alleged find-site of one of the very small group of Irish beakers. Since the ‘beaker’ and another bowl-shaped food-vessel from the cairn have now been rediscovered in the Belfast Municipal Museum—and the last relic of the cairn recently removed—we feel the time has come for a review of the available data.