The small oval burial mound at Alfriston, East Sussex, being one of only twelve certain burial structures of the 3rd millennium bc in Sussex, was totally excavated in 1974 prior to its final obliteration by ploughing. The barrow was found to consist of a simple dump mound derived from material out of flanking ditches. It covered a single burial pit containing the crouched skeleton of a young female. Information concerning the post-Neolithic land use of Alfriston Down was obtained from the ditch silts and expanded by an intensive field survey.

This paper explores the interpretation of the deposition of artefacts in Ireland from c. 2500 to c. 800 bc, combining a contextual analysis with post-processual ideas about materiality, artefacts, and their biographies. Hoards, single and burial finds are shown to be complementary strands of the depositional record and the result of deliberate deposition. It is argued that both the symbolic value of these items as well as economic and practical rationales determine the depositional mode. The paper attempts to infer social practices and rules that determined the differential treatment of materials and object types. The main structuring factor in the depositional record is the type-specific meanings of individual artefacts, which embody social identities beyond the utilitarian function of the object. The act of deposition facilitates and legitimates the literal and symbolic transformation of artefacts and the concepts they embody. The need for a separation between ritual and profane interpretation is removed, as deposition is understood as the reflection of prehistoric concepts rather than labelled according to modern notions of functionality. It is also argued that both dry and wet places are meaningful contexts and that different forms of wet landscapes were conceptualised differently

This paper presents a selection of compositional analyses of Iron Age copper alloy artefacts from northern Britain. The results were obtained as part of a larger project which examined Iron Age and Roman copper alloys in northern Britain (the region from the Trent-Mersey to the Forth-Clyde). The quantitative analyses were carried out using EDXRF on drilled or polished samples. Comparisons are made with results from the late Bronze Age and early Roman period in northern Britain. The results are also compared with those already published from a range of Iron Age sites in southern England. The large total number of copper alloy analyses from the British Iron Age has made possible a synthesis of the data which has largely been assembled piecemeal. It is now clear that a tin bronze was the principal copper alloy for much of the Iron Age. The composition of this alloy is distinct from the alloys used in the Late Bronze Age and during the Roman period although there is considerable ‘blurring’ at the transitions. A brief outline of the analytical method employed and the analytical results are included.

When C. E. Moss (1907) first described the vegetation of the peat areas of the Somerset Levels, he referred to them as ‘moors’, a term offering no distinction from upland peats such as those of the Pennines or Dartmoor. It was not until much later that they were recognized as the remnants, much degraded and dissected by peat-cutting, of an extensive complex of raised bogs (Godwin 1941). This was a conclusion of considerable significance since raised bogs belong to the category of ombrogenous mires, that is to say, of peat structures built up in almost total dependence on rain and snow falling directly upon them, and drawing not at all upon ground water. Such bogs receive very little mineral supply and become very acidic and poor in plant nutrients, so that their vegetation is highly specialized and most characteristic, consisting very largely of species of the moss genus Sphagnum, various flowering plants of the order Ericales, cotton-grass, deer-grass (Trichophorum caespitosum) and a restricted number of other species of equally restricted range. It is the various assemblages of the remains of these plants that allow us to identify given peat samples as having formed in raised bog, and often permit us to relate them to given communities characteristic of different aspects of the vegetation of still-active raised bogs.

This is a very helpful circumstance, since the raised bogs are entities in such close dependence upon annual precipitation that they respond quickly to phases of increased or decreased wetness by altered surface vegetation. Thus in periods of dryness they become covered with ling (Calluna vulgaris), cotton-grass (Eriophorum vaginatum) and sometimes trees, chiefly birch (Betula verrucosa), and the peat then formed is very colloidal, dark and fully humified. By contrast, when it is continuously wet the bog surface is covered with actively-growing Sphagna (which form a matrix for the associated higher plants), and the peat formed in these conditions is pale, fibrous, and undecayed. An abrupt transition from the one peat type to the other, if consistent across a bog, is referred to as a recurrence-surface (RY is the familiar contraction from the Swedish word).

Mesopotamia is an elongated basin running from Syria south-eastwards to the Persian Gulf. It is bordered on the south-west by the Arabian massif, on the north by the mountains of Anatolia, and on the east by the Zagros range. Agriculture in this basin is controlled by climate to an extent unknown in Europe, particularly by water supply, which may come from rainfall or from rivers that flow out of the mountains. The modern boundary of rainfall sufficient for agriculture, which for practical purposes may be taken as 200 mm or 8 in reliable annual aggregate, runs across northern Mesopotamia from west to east and then turns south-east, following the foothills of the Zagros (fig. 1). We have at present no reason to think that this approximate boundary has shifted appreciably during the period with which we are concerned, although there were almost certainly marginal fluctuations. The limited palynological evidence, which comes from the mountainous regions north and east of Mesopotamia, suggests that after about 12000 bc both temperature and precipitation gradually increased and that by about 9000 bc oak and pistachio trees were beginning to reinvade the Zagros foothills, an area from which they had been eradicated during the cooler temperatures of the last glacial period (van Zeist and Wright 1963; Wright 1968; van Zeist 1969).

A survey and new perspectives of Celtic or La Tène art from Britain is presented. Following Spratling, Celtic art is defined as ‘ornament or pattern and animal/human/supernatural images in metal and other media’. Regional and temporal variations in the type and usage of decorated artefacts are summarised. Three case studies, made of different media, are presented: metal scabbards, bone and antler weaving combs, and pottery. By asking the question ‘why decorate?’ it is argued that the decision to decorate an artefact can affect its life history, marking it out from undecorated artefacts of the same type. Rather than serving a single function, decoration was employed to serve multiple social goals throughout the Iron Age. Different forms of social expression, such as feasting, elaborate display, or weaving, are significant at any one time or place. It is argued that decorated artefacts often played a significant role in these different social arenas. Contrary to many past discussions, decorated artefacts in media other than metal are demonstrated to have been important in negotiations of social power and cosmology.

This paper examines the relationship between the use of late Irish passage tombs and the development of the British and Irish Grooved Ware complex, including its Orcadian origins. The architectural forms of these passage tombs and their associated material culture, symbolic repertoires, and depositional practices in Ireland and Orkney indicate sustained connections between people in these places. It is argued that these interactions strongly influenced the development of Grooved Ware and its associated material culture in Orkney and beyond. The results of recent dating programmes are synthesised, and the character of depositional practices from 3300 to 2700 cal bc are reassessed to highlight continuities in traditions of practice and representation. Together, these indicate that the adoption of Grooved Ware in Ireland did not herald an era of large-scale social transformation and that the primary use of late passage tombs did not suddenly cease at the end of the 4th millennium bc. Instead they continued as foci for largely unchanged forms of ceremonial activity until 2450 cal bc as part of a series of ongoing social and cultural shifts in people’s material culture and practices. It is argued that the current periodisation of the late 4th–3rd millennia bc in Ireland unduly emphasises a disjuncture between the Irish Middle and Late Neolithic. An alternative view of social and cultural change that refocuses attention on social agency is proposed.

Detailed regional studies of dated alluvial formations in Greece confirm the Vita-Finzi alluviation cycle and favour climatic causation. A review of recent work in this field reveals substantial, if unexpected, support for the cycle, and archaeologists and geographers are urged to recognise its validity and concentrate on its very significant effects.

The Raised Beaches on the marine plain between Portsmouth and Brighton are well-known. With the lowest beach at Brighton we are not here concerned. The chief exposures of the so-called 100 ft. beach lie between Chichester and Arundel. In this area the rock platform of the marine plain consists of Chalk and Eocene, and these together with the overlying beach deposits are generally covered by Coombe Rock. The true beach consists of a shingle of varying degrees of coarseness, and though generally associated with a deposit of fine soft sand known locally as “lug sand,” the term “beach” will be used in this paper of the former deposit only.

The implements here described have been obtained from four different beach exposures. Those at Pear Tree Knapp, East Hampnett, and in Aldingbourne Park clearly form part of a single beach, the surface of which ranges from 80 to 90 ft. above O.D. The fourth exposure in Slindon Park, where the beach reaches 135 ft. will be described separately (see Fig. 1). From this pit in 1912, Dr. Eliot Curwen obtained an Acheulean hand-axe, whilst Mr. Fowler has more recently described ten artefacts from the same site, though non e was found in situ.

The first palaeoliths to be described from this country were found in the south of England, particularly from the Thames Valley and East Anglia. In 1880 Boyd Dawkins wrote that tools of Drift Man were ‘conspicuous by their absence from the gravels north-west of a line passing through the Midland counties from Bristol to the Wash’. In 1897 John Evans (Evans 1897, 580), in the light of the Saltley find from the Birmingham district, questioned the view then current that their absence was due to glacial conditions prevailing north of the Severn—Wash ‘imaginary’ line, and held out hope for future finds in that northern area.

Though hand axes had earlier been described from Chester (Stone 1908, 25) and Bridlington (Evans 1897, 572) it was not until the 1920's that Sir John Evans's hopes began to be realized. Randall Davies brought attention to a hand axe found in railway ballast gravel from Skellingthorpe in Lincolnshire in 1920.

In the West Midlands numerous isolated finds were described from 1920 onwards by Burkitt (1920), Jack, Smith, Shotton and Clifford, the last two authors having in recent years (Shotton 1934 and 1953, Clifford 1954) provided a fairly comprehensive account and bibliography of the Lower and Middle palaeolithic finds from the West Midlands. In the East Midlands the story of discovery has been slower and very little of the material found has been published. In 1922 R. A. Smith published two flake implements from Leicestershire, though these cannot now be accepted (Posnansky 1955, 31).

The deposits with which I propose to deal in my address are those laid down by the Thames in that part of its course that lies between Maidenhead and the sea.

These deposits rest at three principal levels above mean tide, while a fourth series infills the buried channel of the ancient river.

Perhaps the most completely explored series is that of the so-called 100-ft. terrace at Swanscombe, in Kent. Specimens from the great gravel pit at Milton Street have enriched the collections of amateurs for upwards of fifty years, but they lacked scientific value because their exact provenance was unknown, the collectors being merely desirous of possessing fine specimens. When the value of Palæolithic implements as ‘geological time indicators’ became recognized in France, the demand for more precise information about the English Palæoliths spread among observers on this side of the Channel, and among others, influenced Worthington Smith. His accurate work has not received the acknowledgment it deserves from either geologists or archæologists, but it may be said that in the light of present knowledge it is of outstanding importance. He dealt more with the deposits of the Lea than with those of the main river, but his observations show how fully alive he was to the importance of truly recording the locality and site of each find, and the characteristics of the deposit in which it occurred. In the writer's opinion, Smith's book on “Man, the Primeval Savage” is destined to be recognized as one of the great books on prehistory in the English language.

This paper is an attempt to bring together the rather scanty evidence for prehistoric textiles in the British Isles, whether in the form of surviving fragments, impressions on bronze corrosion, or implements associated with spinning and weaving. While the material cannot compare with the rich series from Scandinavia or Switzerland, it has, nevertheless, considerable points of interest in its own right.

Surviving woven textiles are first discussed, with such evidence of spinning and weaving techniques as can be deduced from the fragments. The archaeological material representing weaving appliances (e.g. spindle whorls, loom-weights, weaving combs, etc.) is then reviewed, with a special note on the curious technique of tablet-weaving, and finally there is a consideration of the evidence for basketry and allied fabrics. The material discussed is listed with references in a series of tabular appendices at the end of the paper.

Star Carr, North Yorkshire, has the largest deposition of Mesolithic antler barbed points in the country; in fact it accounts for roughly 97% of all Early Mesolithic barbed points known in Britain. There has been much debate about whether barbed point manufacture occurred at the site or elsewhere within the landscape but the process of manufacturing has never been examined in great detail. This paper presents a new evaluation based on analysis of museum collections, recent excavations and experimental work and concludes that there is evidence to suggest that the full manufacturing process took place at Star Carr.

This paper describes and discusses a group of five hoards of metal-work and coins found in 1948–50 by ploughing supplemented by excavation at Ken Hill, Snettisham, in north-west Norfolk. On account of the large quantity of precious metals included the find has been termed collectively ‘The Snettisham Treasure.’ Its principal contents are as follows:—Hoard A (p. 36) contained the remains of four gold tubular torcs. Hoard B contained three staters, four quarter-staters of the Bellovaci; four staters and one quarter-stater of the Gaulish Atrebates, all of gold (p. 59): Hoard C contained at least 145 speculum (tin) coins of Allen's Class I (p. 72) and three buffer terminal bronze torcs (p. 52). From Hoards B and C came at least 48 loop terminal torcs of gold alloy, bronze and tin (p. 46); 17 ‘ingot-bracelets’ of bronze and tin (p. 52) 14 rings of gold alloy, bronze and tin (p. 54); U-shaped bronze binding (p. 56); fragment of a bronze bridle bit (p. 57); two dome-shaped bronze rivets (p. 57); 10 iron nails (p. 58) and miscellaneous fragments of sheet-bronze and ‘cake’ of gold alloy and tin (pp. 57–58). Hoard D consisted of a gold loop terminal torc (p. 46) with securing ring of gold (p. 54). Hoard E contained the following gold objects: ring terminal torc (p. 63) with quarter-stater of Gaulish Atrebates (p. 59); bracelet (p. 66) and large buffer terminal torc (p. 67).

The famous assemblage of finery excavated by Edward Cunnington from Clandon Barrow, Dorset, in 1882 is usually held to be archetypal of the ‘Wessex culture’ and rich graves. Meticulous examination of the six artefacts and re-appraisal of comparative material casts a new light on the significance of the group. It does not represent a definable cultural package and instead points to a complex set of inter-relationships with ‘foreign’ lands achieved, above all, by plying varied maritime networks. Connections are shown to have run up the east coast of Britain, west towards the Irish Sea, and across the Channel to both Armorica and the Frisian coast. By contrast, links with inland Wessex were rather insubstantial. Questions are raised about the utility of the ‘Wessex’ label.

Although uncertain whether it was a grave group or some other ritual deposit, the assemblage can be seen in a positive light as a record of great exploits in distant travel. The material assembled came to stand for the success of the south Dorset community and its key personages as judged against the prime concerns of Early Bronze Age society. Its paramount importance is emphasised by the choice of site – a focally positioned, yet relatively isolated barrow within a dense monumental landscape and, moreover, a barrow that saw recurrent rejuvenation as part of a cycle of remembrance.

Circumpolar culture theory has been a persistent unifying theme in northern anthropology, playing a formative role in the development of general anthropological theory and stimulating numerous archaeological and ethnological studies of high latitude regions. One of the most important contributions to this field was Gutorm Gjessing's Circumpolar Stone Age (1944). Today this work is known as a timely synthesis in which ethnological and archaeological data were marshalled in support of an hypothesis of northern diffusion through the Arctic and Taiga zones from Scandinavia to northeastern North America. The principal elements in this proposed diffusion chain included toggling harpoons, large skin boats, oil lamps, ulu-type knives, ground slate tools, the curved-back adze or gouge, and cord-marked pottery. Later additions to this circumpolar adaptive complex included parallels in social structure, religion, and mythology (Gjessing 1953; Nordland 1968).

Over 40 years of archaeological investigations along the south coast of Papua New Guinea has identified a rapid succession of cultural changes during the late Holocene. The so-called ‘Papuan Hiccup’ (c. 1200–800 cal bp) is a poorly understood period of socio-economic upheaval along the coast, identified mainly from changes in archaeological ceramic styles and settlement patterns. During this period, the region-wide Early Papuan Pottery (EPP) tradition diverges into separate, localised ceramic sequences that have generic associations with local ethnographic wares. A correspondence between the timing of the Papuan Hiccup and a period of peak El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activity implies a link between cultural and climate change. This paper explores this relationship further by examining changes in interaction networks along the south coast of Papua New Guinea, specifically focusing on chert artefacts. Chemical characterisation (portable X-Ray Fluorescence; pXRF) and technological analysis are used to map changes in lithic technology over time, including access to raw materials and technological organisation, at the site of Taurama, a prehistoric coastal village site that was occupied both prior to and after the Papuan Hiccup. Although the sample sizes are small and the interpretations necessarily circumscribed, it is argued that changes in the number of chert sources being exploited and in the intensity of core reduction at Taurama may be related to climate change in the region.

The northern world, from the wide expanses of North America across the even wider spread of Asia and Europe, was subjected to the effects of the Pleistoceneice for centuries after areas to the south had been released from nature's grip. But as conditions eased the north, and open landscapes were newly created, plants and animals began to colonize and humans were not far behind. Across enormous territories of the Old and New Worlds, hunters, gatherers and fishers began to explore the resources of the virgin lands, and from before 8000 BP for at least five millennia their societies were seemingly in balance with nature's gifts. Settlements from all around the vast northern latitudes demonstrate a reliance upon wild resources that were abundant, varied and easily exploited. In such circumstances, the opportunities existed for the development and elaboration of systems of belief concerned with the principles of existence. Such systems in all likelihood took many forms of expression, only a few of which have survived today. Burials, tools and weapons, settlement organization and territorial exploitation are capable of demonstrating the systems for survivaldeveloped by these communities of people, and rock carvings and paintings add other possibilities for those who seek to understand the social scenes of the past.

The Perthshire stone circle of Croft Moraig was excavated 40 years ago and is usually taken to illustrate the classic sequence at such monuments in Britain. A timber setting, accompanied by a shallow ditch, was replaced by two successive stone settings. The pottery associated with the earliest construction was dated to the Neolithic period. A new analysis of the excavated material suggests that, in fact, most of the ceramics are Middle or Late Bronze Age. They provide a terminus post quern for at least one of the stone settings on the site. Further study of the evidence suggests an alternative sequence of construction at Croft Moraig, involving a change in the axis of the monument. It seems possible that other stone and timber circles were equally late in date and that their period of use in Britain and Ireland may have been longer than is generally supposed.

In 1947 C. J. Becker, in his fundamental classifying work on the Early Neolithic phase of the socalled ‘Funnel-Beaker Culture’, described this set of phenomena within a frame of reference which can at best be termed ‘tribal’ (Becker 1947). For instance, in the late period of the Early Neolithic, Period C of the sequence, he observes certain differences, primarily of the type of decoration, in the pottery of respectively Northern Jutland and Southern Denmark. This result is connected with the differential patterns of distribution for other cultural features including forms of burial. Accordingly, the southern complex is baptized ‘The South Danish Megalithic Group’, the northern one ‘The North Jutland Non-Megalithic Group’. In Southern Denmark simple—‘earth’—graves are very few, while a much higher number of dolmens with Early Neolithic C pottery is known. In North Jutland the number of earth graves is considerable, but the picture is blurred by a relatively high number of dolmens too.

Each of these assemblages, and a few minor ones not to be mentioned here, is seen as referring to a ‘tribe’ or ‘a group of tribes’ sharing the said types of graves, decorations on pottery, and, for instance, specific types of weapons. No clear-cut borderlines can, however, be drawn between the complexes as the geographical differences of the distributions consist of statistical concentrations of one or another trait in one area rather than of mutual exclusions. Only the type of decoration on the North Jutland pottery does not seem to occur outside this zone, while the reverse is not the case.