The Presidency of the Prehistoric Society to which you have done me the great honour of calling me, differs from that of some other societies in that, though the period of office is four years the President is only required to deliver one Address. No doubt we owe this mercy to the fact that our customs have taken shape during an age, which it would be tempting providence to call more humane, but which is at any rate less tolerant of some forms of avoidable boredom than some previous ones. Yet even in these less rigorous times I suppose we should feel uneasy if we allowed our Presidents, or ourselves, to escape scot free: one year in four we must undergo the rite and trust that in some obscure way it will help us to avoid the evil eye and ensure at the cost of an hour's suffering a further spell of prosperity and well-being for the Society.

The excavation of the long barrow at Nutbane, Penton Grafton, Hants, took place from August to October 1957, covering a period of nine weeks, and was carried out by the writer on behalf of the Andover History Group. The barrow, which was not included in the Ordnance Survey's Map of Neolithic Wessex (1932), had only been discovered at the end of 1955 when the attention of Ordnance Survey Officers was drawn to its presence by Mr North of Penton Mewsey. Describing the barrow to Mr W. Woodhouse of the Ordnance Survey on 10 December 1955, Mr North stated: ‘In this field is a mound which, when ploughed, shows as an oval area of chalk. Black marks can be seen on either side. I dug a pit about 5 feet deep in the mound and the chalk was loose and easy to dig. I found nothing’. Mr Woodhouse reported that it was a typical long barrow of Wessex type. Later an air photograph provided confirmation and indicated the flanking ditches.

In order to discuss the origin of the Michelsberg culture, a question which has been the subject of much debate during the last five years, a closer definition of the culture is first necessary. This paper begins by reviewing the theories as to origins which have been offered during the last half century, a detailed description of the elements making up the various subdivisions of the culture is then attempted, together with some observations on the internal chronology of the material; and in conclusion a return is made to the question of origin.

We owe to Schumacher the first identification of the culture by name, though it was Reinecke's contribution two years later which proposed its attachment to a ‘western’ neolithic family in an article written, as usual, with an insight years ahead of its time. Schumacher had thought that the culture was a late phase of Bandkeramik (Danubian I) influenced by Schnurkeramik (Corded Ware).

Later, Reinecke modified his views somewhat and noted the close connection between the material of the Swiss lake dwelling cultures and the mesolithic of Scandinavia and, in two short papers, laid the basis for the second of the principal theories as to origins. It is interesting that the same man was responsible for two major trends in archaeological thought on the question.

Unavoidable delay in preparing a comprehensive report on the nature and distribution of stone implements in the West Midlands has coincided with rapid progress in the examination of axes in some of the more northern counties. As a result, certain new petrological groups which it has been convenient to establish in the West Midland survey, are becoming increasingly relevant to the other areas under investigation, though no published definition of these groups is available. This paper is intended simply to remedy this omission without attempting to discuss questions of typology and distribution. The numbers assigned to the groups is by arrangement with Dr F. S. Wallis and Professor Grimes so as to prevent duplication with work in other areas.

Two articles published in recent years have drawn attention to distinctive bronzes which are found concentrated in Somerset. Sir Cyril Fox showed in 1941 that sickles cast with an elongated terminal knob for hafting, or pair of conical knobs, are in England entirely confined to the county; and in 1949 Mrs C. M. Piggott discussed types of bronze ornament also commonly found in Somerset, and often in association with such sickles, though distribution of these extends to other parts of southern England as well. As these authors demonstrated, the sickles and some of the ornaments must alike derive from foreign prototypes. The interest of the Somerset hoards in which they occur lies in their combination of other, peculiarly British, bronzes with these foreign-paralleled types, which may serve to link the developments of British industry with the established chronological sequences of Continental Europe.

Somerset hoards of this class are characteristically composed of several types of ornament together with a few bronze implements from a restricted number of forms. Fewer than half the ornaments seem to have been deposited in a pristine condition, and of those damaged some are in fragments. Most often, however, the associated tools are usable, and some (especially sickles) are still untrimmed from the mould.

Metallurgical analysis of prehistoric material has hitherto been concentrated on examination of early artifacts, presumably made from newly-won metal, which may therefore contain trace elements to indicate the sources and trade-routes of contemporary metal supply. The present study was undertaken to discover whether bronze artifacts from the British Middle and Late Bronze Age, when an important component of the bronzes produced must have been re-used metal, show nonetheless perceptible variations in metal composition, which might correlate with changes of bronze types, or with the successive industries of the archaeological sequence.

Analyses were made at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology in the University of Oxford, using an optical emission spectrometer. Samples of the bronzes studied were examined for the elements copper (Cu), tin (Sn), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), antimony (Sb), nickel (Ni), bismuth (Bi), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), silver (Ag), gold (Au) and magnesium (Mg), the only elements found in the bronzes in appreciable quantities.

The investigations described in the present report owe a main part of their interest to the fact that they help to fill a gap in the prehistory of Wessex, a region which though ranking as the richest in Britain for traces of the later prehistoric cultures based on farming, has hitherto been markedly deficient in evidence for mesolithic settlement. Their other claim to interest is the addition they have made to our very scanty evidence for artificial shelters associated with mesolithic communities in Britain.

Traces of Upper Palaeolithic settlement in Britain have up to the present been confined very largely to the limestone caves of the highland zone. Recent work in Holland, north Germany and Denmark during the last twenty or thirty years by Rust, Mathiassen, Schwabedissen, Bohmers and others suggests that indications of open settlement ought to occur in lowland England. Until the present investigations these were confined to surface industries from East Anglia and north Kent and to the recovery in association with remains of three horses of a small shouldered backed blade and of another without retouch from a deposit of Allerød age at Flixton (site 2) in East Yorkshire.

During the Easter and Summer of 1958 a programme of investigations into British Upper Palaeolithic cave deposits was initiated on behalf of the Prehistoric Society, with the aid of a grant from the Research Fund. The work was further supported by the Crowther Beynon Fund of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Cambridge. Labour in the field was provided by students in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University, with notable assistance from several members of the Society in different areas.

The prime objectives of the work, which is still in progress, are to define more precisely the character of the different stages in the British Upper Palaeolithic, and to study them against their chronological and environmental background. In this way it is hoped to throw light on wider problems of the relation of British finds to the rapidly emerging picture of the Late Glacial hunting communities of Central Europe and the Low Countries.

Thanks are due to all who contributed the following notes and particularly to Prof. M. O'Kelly; the Council for British Archaeology and the Ministry of Works; Mr E. M. Jope; Mr J. G. Scott; and Dr H. Savory.