Archaeologists of earlier generations were often interested exclusively in the artifacts of early man. We have now learned that the geological context in which they are found and the natural objects associated with them are often as important as the artifacts themselves for the reconstruction of the way of life of ancient peoples. The soil itself, in which archaeological objects occur, can, in certain cases, tell us something about the way in which it has been formed and therefore about the environment and habits of the people concerned.

This paper is a small selection from our ‘case-book’ in the Department of Environmental Archaeology of the London University Institute of Archaeology, designed to illustrate some of our methods and giving results from a number of Bronze Age monuments which have been studied during the last few years.

This particular material was chosen because the problems presented by the individual sites are linked, in many cases, by a constantly recurring question as to how the climate of the British Bronze Age differed from that of the present day. The amount of soil evidence now accumulating does point, on the whole, to a Bronze-Age climate characteristically different.

The Iron Age settlement on Micklemoor Hill, West Harling, (Nat. Grid 62/975857) was discovered by Mr H. Apling while prospecting for Bronze Age cooking-places on the course of the river above Thetford during 1932. The site is a prominent hill of glacial gravel approximately 300 yards long and 150 yards wide, rising some 20 feet above the level of the surrounding marsh and rough grazing pasture and bounded to the north at a distance of between 200 and 600 feet by the river Thet. Its most prominent feature at the present day is a mound covering a brick-lined ice-house of 19th century construction and surrounded by a group of conifers. The prehistoric features discovered by Apling comprised two enclosures, an ‘Eastern Camp’ (our Site II), consisting of a low broad bank with external ditch and well defined opening on the west, and a larger ‘Western Camp’ (our Site III) of which only slight traces of a ditch were visible.

The excavations carried out by Apling in 1932 were mainly directed to the eastern enclosure: in addition to a number of trial holes he dug two-foot trenches across the site from two directions. No pottery was found in the interior, but the ditch which he located outside the bank yielded pottery, bones and flints. Accordingly a length of some 20 yards of the ditch-filling was removed on the eastern side and from this a really substantial quantity of material was obtained.

The excavations carried out between 1949–51 at the Proto-Maglemosian site of Star Carr, near Seamer, Yorkshire, yielded abundant remains of the wild animals hunted during the Pre-boreal stage phase of the Post-glacial period in north-eastern England (J. G. D. Clark, 1949, 1950, 1954). Examination of this material has thrown much light on the methods used to make implements and weapons from the antlers and bones of animals killed primarily for food. The particular object of this paper is to draw attention to the technique used by the Star Carr people to obtain material for barbed points by cutting strips or splinters from stag antlers and to consider its significance in relation to some of the main developments of European prehistory during late Pleistocene and early Post-glacial times.

The present paper is based on a new study of the material from all the prehistoric sites so far excavated in the Maltese Islands. This was made in the course of preparing for publication a Corpus of all the known monuments and material of the islands (for the Royal University of Malta). The results achieved, especially those gained by the intensive study of the pottery (much of it hitherto unpublished), seemed to justify more rapid publication than could be expected for the Corpus itself, and I have to thank the Archaeological Survey Advisory Committee of the Royal University of Malta for very kindly granting me permission to publish this preliminary report on the advances made so far. At the same time I should like to record my best thanks to the Director of the Valletta Museum, Dr J. G. Baldacchino, and his Assistant, Mr C. G. Zammit, for their wholehearted co-operation in granting me every facility for the pursuit of my studies, and for the help which they have given in innumerable ways in forwarding the work of the Survey. Lastly, it is a pleasure to thank Prof. L. Bernabò Brea for his great kindness during a week spent with him in Syracuse and Lipari, and for much help from his unique knowledge of Sicilian archaeology.

The ornamental piece of sheet-gold found near Mold, in the county of Flint, North Wales (fig. 1), is one of the largest and heaviest pieces of prehistoric gold-work so far discovered in Europe, and it has been one of the principal treasures in the collection of prehistoric antiquities in the British Museum for more than a century.

Although the object has been frequently illustrated, no detailed study has been made of it since the original publication of its finding which appeared in Archaeologia in 1836.

In the present study an endeavour is made to restate the circumstances of the discovery, to offer a detailed description of the object itself, and to put forward certain views as to its age and use.

The gold ornament was discovered in 1833 during the destruction of a mound of stones and earth situated in a field named Bryn yr Ellyllon which lay about half a mile E.S.E. of the parish church of Mold, Flintshire. There are three early accounts of the discovery, but none of them are at first hand. They have been brought together by Canon Ellis Davies, and the fullest and most objective of these accounts is the second reproduced by him. In this, which was by the then Vicar of Mold, Rev. C. B. Clough, a fairly clear idea is obtained of the circumstances of the discovery, but it must be emphasized that the actual opening of the grave was not witnessed by him or by any of the other writers. The following reconstruction of, and commentary on, the discovery is, however, mainly based on the Vicar's account.

The idea that the Beaker ware found over a large part of western and central Europe was Spanish in origin was made popular by the writings of Alberto del Castillo and Bosch Gimpera some thirty years ago. Although others have argued that the greater density of Beaker finds in central Europe makes that region a more likely homeland for the pottery, the Spanish theory is still the more generally accepted. Its implications for European prehistory are obvious: for if Beaker ware evolved from local Spanish traditions, then it is events in Spain which determine the terminus post quern for its appearance in Europe. Moreover, Castillo and Bosch Gimpera propose even more precise starting-points for different varieties of Beaker ware in Europe, since in the Peninsula they interpret different styles as stages in the development of the pottery, and therefore regard them as necessarily consecutive. At the same time if, as Castillo maintained, Beaker ware represents an evolution of early Spanish pottery, then its inventors, as descendants of the original neolithic population, might well be distinct from the later metal-using peoples in the Peninsula, among whom the pottery is found. It would therefore be plausible to suggest that Beaker ware was diffused in the Peninsula by the movements of a separate (basically neolithic) group; and the existence of such a group south of the Pyrenees would strengthen the hypothesis that in Europe also the pottery was spread by the migrations of a separate ‘People.’

Two contributions of unusual value for our knowledge of the comb- and pit-marked pottery culture of North-eastern Europe have recently appeared in vols. 20 and 29 of the series Materialy i Issledovaniia po Arkheologii SSSR (Materials and Investigations on Archaeology of the USSR), published in Moscow in 1951 and 1952 by Akademiia Nauk SSSR. The English titles of the two volumes are:

(1) The Neolithic and Early Metal Age Sites in the Northern Part of the European USSR (1951, 173 pp., 82 illustrations), edited by M. E. Foss, which includes studies on ‘The Pile-dwelling Site on the Modlona River and other Sites in the Charozer Region of the Vologda District’ by A. J. Briusov, ‘The Neolithic and Early Metal Age Sites on the Northern Coast of Lake Onega’ by N. N. Gurina and ‘The Neolithic Sites on the Northern Coasts of the Kola Peninsula’ by N. N. Gurina.

(2) The Earliest History of the Northern Part of the European USSR (1952. 280 pp., 121 illustrations), by M. E. Foss, edited by A. J. Briusov.

The former publication, which includes a detailed report by Briusov on the sites in the Vologda region, dated by stratigraphic evidence and pollen analysis, and the well presented studies by Gurina on the culture in the Lake Onega region and on the Kola Peninsula in the extreme north, is both a prelude and a supplement to the latter which embraces the entire northern part of the USSR.

Through the kindness of Dr J. Waechter I have been able to study the deposits of Gorham's Cave on the spot, to investigate the evidence for fluctuations of the sea-level afforded by the Rock of Gibraltar and to identify the fauna. The material thus obtained suggests a chronology for the prehistoric industries of Gorham's Cave which is of more than local interest. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr Waechter for allowing me to do this work on his excavation and for his constant and efficient co-operation. This became particularly important during the last season (Spring 1954) when I was unable to re-visit the site, so that he had to make certain observations for me. I also wish to acknowledge the help I received from Dr I. W. Cornwall in the analyses of samples from the strata, and from Mr Antony Sutcliffe with the identification of the osteological material. The latter will be published in full in Dr Waechter's final report but a preliminary list is here included since some of the palaeontological evidence supports the results obtained in the laboratory. A contribution towards the expenses incurred in carrying out the field work was received from the Central Research Fund of London University and is herewith gratefully acknowledged.

The material here described was found in the Hadhramaut by Elinor Gardner and myself between November 1937 and March 1938. My personal investigation of the Palaeolithic Age was limited by pre-Islamic excavations, and I am therefore indebted to her for the gathering of most of the specimens in situ in terrace gravels, and to her detailed study of their positions.

The collection consists mainly of groups from four fairly widely separated localities; the physiography of these has already been outlined in a comprehensive paper published in the Geographical Journal. Whenever appropriate to the purpose of this account, which is to place for the first time on illustrated record all we observed about the palaeoliths, I have reused in this different context illustrations of Quaternary environment which appeared in that Journal. With thanks I acknowledge the permission of the Royal Geographical Society to do so.