In a note in the last issue of these Proceedings, Professor C. Daryll Forde commented on some of the tentative conclusions set forth by the present writer in two articles in earlier issues, and went on to a general discussion of the morphology and diffusion of prehistoric burial chambers. During the last few years it has been generally held by archaeologists that the megalithic colonisation of western and northern Europe was dual in character, consisting of two separate movements—the one diffusing Passage Graves, the other diffusing Gallery Graves: this notion is implicit in the recent writings of Childe, Hawkes, Estyn Evans, Powell and Megaw. It has seemed to me abundantly clear that, even if these two sets of movements were ultimately from the same Mediterranean source (and this, too, is open to question), as far as western and northern Europe was concerned they were two distinct and separate movements. This conclusion Forde challenges, and regards all Gallery Graves as local developments from degenerate Passage Graves in the various regions of Europe to which the Passage Graves were diffused. It has seemed worth while to the present writer, before meeting Forde's detailed criticisms, to deal with his general thesis, and it is the purpose of this article to argue and describe the dual nature of the megalithic colonisation of Europe.

For many years past on both formal and informal occasions, archaeologists and others, including Mr W. F. Grimes (1932 and 1935) and Dr F. J. North (1938), have been stressing the importance of a scientific examination of the numerous stone axes in public and private collections. It has been urged that an exact determination of the rock material and its original provenance, together with a knowledge of the locality at which the tool was found, would lead to far wider and more exact information concerning early trade routes and other factors of economic and social importance in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times.

A major hindrance to the realisation of these anticipations lay with owners who required the petrologist to identify the rocks by macroscopical characters alone. It was of little avail for the geologist to point out that grinding, polishing and patination had often obliterated the few surface features available and that even if fracturing of the specimen were allowed, no real progress could be made until a thin section of the axe was obtained. Pressed for an identification even on the above unsatisfactory grounds, geologists have at times given answers which are really little better than reasoned guesses, and the archaeologists have based some equally speculative deductions upon them.

The area covered by this survey, which epitomizes the writer's work on Wessex barrows since 1929, is limited on the west by a line drawn from Weston-super-Mare to Bridport, on the east by a line drawn from Dorking to Arundel, on the north roughly by the northern limit of the chalk downs south of the Thames, and on the south by the sea. It encloses the great majority of bell, disc, and saucer barrows, all of which appear to be expressions of Piggott's Wessex Bronze Age culture. It should be noted however that elements of this culture are found outside the area dealt with, notably at various places to the north-east. Nearly all of these are so close to the Icknield Way as to make it certain that this was the means of communication linking the one with the other. Another, though less important, extension of the Wessex Bronze Age culture is represented by a few sites, some of them doubtful, within a short distance of the course of the Upper Thames, and it is probable that the river was the means of communication used.

Here it is well to point out the respects in which the boundaries of Bronze Age Wessex, as determined by my own distribution-maps of barrows, differ from those adopted in the O.S. Map of Neolithic Wessex, and by Mr Stuart Piggott in his recent paper, ‘The Early Bronze Age in Wessex.’

A preliminary report on the discovery and partial excavation during 1936 of the Late Bronze Age farmstead or settlement site on Thorny Down, Winterbourne Gunner, in South Wiltshire has already been published. Sufficient material was there recorded to prove beyond question the approximate date of the site. This was assigned to phase B of the Late Bronze Age (c. 750 B.C.), the culture being that of the Deverel–Rimbury immigrants which for convenience was described as the Cranborne Chase culture, since it was so closely connected with the sites excavated by Pitt Rivers. Further, it was emphasized that this more westerly culture was distinguishable from such sites of similar date in Sussex as New Barn Down and Plumpton Plain in that the highly ornamented globular vessel appeared to be more characteristic of the culture than are the widely diffused barrel- and bucket-shaped vessels. Such local differentiation of ceramic forms during the Late Bronze Age is a well known feature of the period, and Mr C. F. C. Hawkes in his analysis of the Plumpton Plain pottery has called attention to the fact that the Late Bronze Age immigration was not a single event, but a multiple process, in which the Deverel-Rimbury family of urns need be no more than a component.

The available evidence which is rapidly accumulating clearly points to the introduction at this period of a developed and highly organized agricultural system, one feature of which was the small enclosure or compound, a type of earthwork constructed as required either for human or for animal occupation.

The Belgic Cremation site at Stone, Kent, was discovered during the week of January 31st to February 4th, 1939, by workmen engaged in quarrying operations in the Cotton Lane Pit, about one mile west of the village of Stone on the south bank of the Thames between Dartford and Greenhithe. The area is being worked by the Associated Portland Cement Company, who had the finds carefully collected and reported them to Mr S. Priest, F.G.S., Curator of the Dartford Public Museum. The writers are most indebted to Mr Priest for drawing their attention to the site at once, and for all the information he has supplied. The Committee of the Associated Portland Cement Company, through their Manager, Mr Double, most kindly arranged for us to visit the Pit, and lent us all the material for investigation. We should like to acknowledge here our thanks to them for their interest and co-operation and for rescuing this valuable evidence from the fate it so nearly suffered in the jaws of the mechanical excavator.

Cotton Lane Pit lies on the slope of the Boyne Hill (100 ft.) Terrace on the south bank of the Thames at about 85 O.D. (fig. 1). In this field the Terrace gravels slope away over an outcrop of Thanet sands which in places overlies the chalk. The pottery was found in a pocket of dirty ballast overlying clay loam on top of the chalk.