Non-invasive survey in the Stonehenge ‘Triangle’, Amesbury, Wiltshire, has highlighted a number of features that have a significant bearing on the interpretation of the site. Geophysical anomalies may signal the position of buried stones adding to the possibility of former stone arrangements, while laser scanning has provided detail on the manner in which the stones have been dressed; some subsequently carved with axe and dagger symbols. The probability that a lintelled bluestone trilithon formed an entrance in the north-east is signposted. This work has added detail that allows discussion on the question of whether the sarsen circle was a completed structure, although it is by no means conclusive in this respect. Instead, it is suggested that it was built as a façade, with other parts of the circuit added and with an entrance in the south.

The purpose of this paper is to give an account of the prehistoric fortifications (pa) of New Zealand, firstly by describing the cultural background as it is reconstructed by ethnographers for the period immediately preceding European contact, and then by presenting new information from two excavations which have yielded valuable results on the form and function of these sites.

The New Zealand fortifications, which are mainly of the earthwork type with timber superstructures, have long been on record, and were first described by James Cook for the year 1769 (the initial discovery of New Zealand, by Tasman in 1642, was not accompanied by a landing). Recent surveys indicate that there are about 4,000 pa in New Zealand, most distributed in coastal situations in the North Island and northern South Island, and this distribution correlates with that of prehistoric populations living by simple horticulture and the exploitation of marine and forest resources. In the southerly parts of the South Island, where climate was not favourable for horticulture and where population density was slight, there appear to be no fully prehistoric fortifications. From 1769 onwards increasing European contact introduced pigs, the white potato, muskets, metals and other items which, in combination, gave rise to radically different technological and economic patterns. This paper is concerned solely with prehistoric Maori culture.

Morphologically, New Zealand pa resemble the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age earthwork hillforts of north-western Europe, and many, by their size and strength, show clear evidence of engineering skill and the ability to organize large labour forces.

When ten years ago I discussed the absolute chronology of the European Bronze Age, I took the amber beads from Kakovatos as providing a terminus ante quem about 1450 B.C. for its ‘Early’ phase and accepted the appearance in the East Mediterranean area of cremation burial in urn-fields, cut-and-thrust swords (fig. 1), safety-pins (fig. 3), turban dishes and urns with ribbed or twisted handles as indicative of a similar limit about 1250 B.C. for the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. The first date has subsequently been confirmed and given precision in a satisfactory manner. In his paper on ‘The Early Bronze Age in Wessex’ Piggott showed how his Wessex culture could be cross-dated by Aegean contacts. On the one hand many Wessex graves contain segmented faience beads imported from the East Mediterranean and plausibly dated there about 1400 B.C.: on the other, graves of the same culture at Normanton and Manton were furnished with gold-bound amber discs identical in form and size with one from a L.M. II tomb at Knossos. Assuming the latter to be a British import, it gave 1450 as a terminus ante quem for the rise of the Wessex culture. At the same time British types in Central Europe and Unětician types in Wessex barrows, established a synchronism between the Wessex culture and the advanced phase of the Early Bronze Age cultures of the Danubian area (in typological terms Reinecke's phase A2), to which phase the Perjamos grave at Ószentivan, containing imported segmented faience beads, identical with those from Wessex and therefore also datable about 1400, should be assigned.

The excavation of a ‘Welwyn-type’ burial exposed during pipe-laying is described. The cremation, accompanied by a decorated mirror, was contained within a wooden box. Other grave goods included amphorae, flagons, a cup and an iron ring with associated timber. The grave is the most westerly of its type. It is suggested that the combination of grave goods indicates a synthesis between two elements in late Iron Age society, and a BC date for the burial is proposed. Specialist reports include a study of the decorative technique used on the mirror and of its composition, also of the ceramic, soils and bone, with appendices on conservation and on a possible amphora burial from Aston Clinton.

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 discussion and analysis of chevaux-de-frise in Britain have been limited both by the small number of extant examples and by the lack of detailed survey work at some of the known sites. Harbison (1971) discusses twelve sites from Britain and Ireland in some detail, and mentions another, then recently found by C. J. Houlder, that of Carn Alw. The purpose of this note is to describe the remains at this site, to indicate the potential of detailed survey of well-preserved examples, and to compare the evidence from Carn Alw with that from other sites including the nearby inland promontory fort of Castell Henllys (Mytum 1987) where excavation has recently revealed traces of another chevaux-de-frise.

In 1982 investigations were resumed at the Kapova Cave in the Urals, which was already widely known for its rock paintings dating from the Upper Palaeolithic period. It is, to date, the only authentic site of its kind in Eastern Europe.

The cave is situated on the western slopes of the southern Urals in the valley of the Belaya River 200 km south of the city of Ufa (fig. 1). It is a cave of a karst type that evolved in limestones of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The enormous entrance to the cave facing south-east is in the narrow gorge of the canyon of a U-shaped valley at a distance of 150 m from the Belaya River at a height of 7–8 m above its low-water level (pl. 31). The total length of the cave's passages investigated is 2 km (fig. 2).

The currently accepted divisions of the south Italian Neolithic are based on typological studies of ceramic styles, interpreted with the aid of stratigraphical information derived from a few key excavations. On the basis of this material a number of authorities have divided the Neolithic into a series of chronological phases. It is my belief that the evidence for constructing this neat relative chronological framework does not in fact exist and that the scheme generally favoured today is oversimplified and in parts inaccurate. In this paper I shall first summarize three important typological studies of south Italian Neolithic pottery: R. B. K. Stevenson's pioneer study of museum material, mainly from the Materano, published in 1947 (Stevenson, 1947); L. Bernabò Brea's scheme, based primarily on the stratigraphical sequence obtained from his excavations on the island of Lipari, published in various forms and admirably summarized in a paper presented to the Primo Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia in 1961 (Bernabò Brea, 1962) and, finally, R. Peroni's recent study of the Apulian material (Peroni, 1967). The second part of my paper will consist of a critical examination of these three studies and the final section will be devoted to a description of the known Neolithic wares, with an assessment of their relationships and relative chronological positions.

It is hardly necessary to point out that birch was one of the common trees of the younger stone age and that its wood was much used for technical purposes. This must have been even more the case in mesolithic times and during the upper palaeolithic period, when during a certain period this tree dominated the landscape to such an extent that we can even speak of a Birch period.

The use of birch wood soon made men acquainted with its own special properties. If at present we are first able to demonstrate a knowledge of these for the neolithic and later stages, it is not to be doubted that this merely represented a continuation of a mesolithic accomplishment. There are two properties of birch which are particularly well exhibited by the pile-dwelling finds. The bark can be detached from the tree in thin layers, is extraordinarily easily worked and can be sewn like fine leather. But, secondly, it is possible to obtain a pitch from the bark, which after correct preparation makes a particularly useful glue. The pitch occurs especially in the bark and allows rolled up pieces of this to burn with a clear flame. These so-called birch-bark tapers, which even in modern times played an important part in illumination, are found not uncommonly in the Swiss pile-dwellings.

My initial Australian fieldwork was still a year ahead when, surprisingly, I featured anonymously on a verbal distribution map confidently sketched by the Disney Professor. I was the ‘Australia’ reference of his Inaugural lecture, thereby illustrating his proposition (Clark, 1954, 33), that ‘the geographical field of Cambridge prehistorians has been … the whole world’. My Cambridge contemporaries, Sieveking and Golson, respectively represented ‘Malaya’ and ‘New Zealand’.

We were indeed the forerunners of a sizeable band of hunter-diggers which ventured into the Pacific world and which numbers Cambridge amongst its totemic centres. Such incipient, though benevolent imperialism, has not gone unchallenged. A participant in an Australian archaeological congress recently deplored what he judged to be the errors and dogmatism of the ‘Cambridge school’. He erred in affixing this label, because there is no such implicit cohesion within the ranks; diversity is already a healthy characteristic of Pacific research.

What was relevant about Cambridge training, but no more so than of any sound methodological discipline, was that it encouraged respect for, and critical evaluation of, evidence. What was intellectually satisfying to the student were the concepts of universality and interdependence in past human affairs. Such is the message from Miles Burkitt's Prehistory to Grahame Clark's World Prehistory.

To be the President of the Prehistoric Society is an honour that has a particular personal appeal to me. When the Society was founded in 1908, with a title that identified it with East Anglia, I was resident in Ipswich, the very place that was to become the Mecca of students of the Old Stone Age. My pride in being an early adherent of the Society is tinged with regret that I was not one of the small group of founder-members. Only one circumstance prevented me from so participating, and that was my impression that my close attachment to geology was not an appropriate qualification for membership. This is in itself a significant sidelight on the gap that then lay between the study of later geological history—the Pliocene and Pleistocene (in which I was especially interested)—and investigations relating to the traces of Early Man.

In the quarter of a century that has elapsed since the founding of the Society, the gap between the two lines of approach has closed in a remarkable manner: geologists and archæologists now work side by side, and the effects of even the warmest arguments are merely transitory. The story of this interweaving of the sciences is now familiar to us all, and reference to some of the earlier phases of the rapprochement need only be incidental.

The unique discovery in Scotland of a cache of five flint axeheads and other flint artefacts is described and the contents analysed in detail. It is concluded that the cache represents artefacts imported from the north of Ireland during the Neolithic period. Two earlier finds of caches of flint artefacts from south-west Scotland are also described.

The first detailed investigation of the human remains from the Carrowkeel passage tomb complex since their excavation in 1911 has revealed several new and important insights about life, death, and mortuary practice in Neolithic Ireland. Osteological analysis provides the first conclusive proof for the occurrence of dismemberment of the dead at Irish passage tombs, practised contemporarily with cremation as one of a suite of funerary treatments. The research also highlights changes in burial tradition at the complex over the course of the Neolithic. Providing a chronology for these changes allows them to be linked to wider trends in monument construction, which may relate to changes in both land use and climate during the period. Multi-isotope analysis hints at the presence of non-local individuals among the interred and the possible existence of different food sourcing areas at the onset of the later Neolithic period. Preliminary results from ancient DNA sequencing of six individuals from Carrowkeel provide evidence for the genetic ancestry of Irish Neolithic populations, demonstrating their Anatolian origins and links along the Atlantic façade.

Bivalve bronze moulds were used for casting bronze and lead objects – mainly axes – during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. These remarkable artefacts, which were sometimes beautifully decorated, have been surprisingly little studied. This paper discusses the bronze moulds from Britain, outlining the range of possibilities that existed for the life courses of these objects during the three broad stages of manufacture, use, and deposition. Two points will be emphasised. First, it will be shown that the biographical pathways available to bronze moulds differed significantly from those of moulds made from stone or clay, which may relate to the differing properties and conceptual associations of these three materials. Secondly, the relationships between the life courses of bronze moulds and the artefacts cast in them will be explored, focusing particularly on cases in which moulds and their castings were deposited together in the same hoard. It will be suggested that the ‘genealogical’ link between a mould and its ‘offspring’ could have formed a significant element of the biography of both objects.

Detailed topographical surveys and geophysical examinations of the Penrith ‘henges’ were undertaken in order to assess the present state of the monuments for management purposes. At Mayburgh geophysical prospection was designed to assess the validity of the early reports of the presence of two concentric settings of stones. Some possible parallels in Ireland are noted. The nearby site of King Arthur's Round Table was also sampled by geophysical techniques, but was found to be too disturbed for the recovery of any further information as to its original form. The ‘cremation trench’ discovered in pre-War excavations at this site was relocated. The position of the enigmatic Little Round Table was re-established by both topographical and geophysical methods, and its north entrance firmly located. The classification of Mayburgh and of the Little Round Table is considered. The apparent disunity of these three distinctly different monuments within one complex is emphasised—all are traditionally classified as ‘henge-related’, yet the structure and orientation of each site is markedly different. Contemporary topographical considerations are now difficult to reconstruct.

Following the Medway northward as it leaves the Weald at the opening of the funnel-shaped gorge in the Chalk, near Snodland, it takes a general N.E. course as far as Rochester, (Fig. 1.)

Less than half a mile below Rochester bridge it is turned eastward, perhaps by some hard beds in the chalk; then a S.E. course is followed for a mile, when turning again, opposite Chatham, it runs due N. for another two miles. Reaching the London Clay hills at Upnor it is again deflected, and finally, meandering in an easterly direction through the low alluvial plains, reaches the Thames estuary.

Thus the course of the Medway opposite Rochester takes the form of a V-shaped bend, and the land flanking the river within the bend forms a promonitory of chalk jutting southward, the surface of which rises from the edge of the marshes on either side to a height above 100-ft. O.D. (Fig. 2.)

Two late prehistoric circular enclosure settlements near Harlech, Gwynedd were excavated by the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust in 1980–81 in advance of upland pasture improvements. Both produced evidence for the change from timber to mainly stone as a building material, commonplace in upland Britain at this time. At Moel y Gerddi there was some evidence for earlier activity in the Neolithic period, but the principal occupation occurred in the mid-first millennium BC, and comprised a roughly circular timber palisade enclosing a fairly substantial timber roundhouse. As these structures deteriorated, they were consolidated and embanked with stone, but despite this the occupation did not last very long and the site was abandoned. Erw-wen a short distance away produced similar evidence but there was no Neolithic phase and the site was re-used in the Medieval period. The principal late prehistoric settlement there comprised a single large roundhouse standing within an imposing enclosure wall but whether or not this had been preceded by a timber palisade is not known. It was clear, however, that the stone roundhouse was a replacement for an earlier timber counterpart and, quite unlike Moel y Gerddi, the occupation lasted a considerable period of time, possibly two or even three centuries. Dating evidence from either site was poor, and acid soil conditions mitigated against the preservation of most finds. The sites were apparently aceramic and probably relied on pastoralism rather than arable farming. The environmental setting and background has been considered in some detail in the preceding paper with particular reference to soil pollen studies and a bog core dug near Moel y Gerddi. Typologically the sites belong to the Gwynedd stone-built hut-circle settlements and it is argued that they could mark the first appearance of these monuments in the landscape. But in any case, the use of timber as witnessed here, was far more commonplace than has previously been supposed on these sites.

Military service during the 1942–43 campaign in Libya provided an opportunity for myself and a few friends to make a preliminary reconnaissance of stone age remains along the 1200 miles of coast between Alexandria and Tripoli. Under the circumstances many of our observations were necessarily of a very incomplete and cursory nature. I have nevertheless thought it worth while presenting them as a whole, since they do at least provide a first estimate of the culture-sequence in this interesting and little-studied area. One cave and a few vaguely described, or very scanty, surface finds appear to make up the sum total of previously published discoveries.

When Dr Campbell Smith published and compiled his first account and catalogue of British jade implements he did not think, he tells us, that many more would be found. For this reason he adopted a numbering system based on counties, as is done for all other stone implements, but with numbers running consecutively through the English, Scottish and Irish counties. When new finds came to light it was difficult to assign to them numbers in the county system and the problem was resolved by numbering them 17b, 32a etc. New discoveries of jade implements are being made at an accelerating rate. In Campbell Smith's Second Supplement (1972) he records nine new finds during the previous six years, but since 1972 we have become aware of a further 24 implements. Partly because of this, and partly as a result of typological and mineralogical studies we have been making, it seemed to us that it would be useful to bring the catalogue up to date, whilst at the same time taking the opportunity of simplifying the numbering system. Although still taking a very positive interest Dr Campbell Smith is no longer actively engaged in work on jade implements. However, for the sake of continuity it was deemed useful to call this report the ‘Third Supplement’ even though the present authors were not involved with Dr Campbell Smith's original Catalogue and Supplements.

Palaeolithic artifacts were recorded from a terrace on the Great Ouse, near St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, in 1927, the chief source being a group of pits dug in what was formerly part of Paxton Park, on the left bank of the river in the parish of Little Paxton. Mr Tebbutt has since recovered many more artifacts from this site. Taken together, the material constitutes a working industry, which will be described in this paper.

A twelve-foot section, fig. 1, shows a basal layer (1) of boulders and large pebbles resting upon undisturbed Oxford Clay. One boulder of limestone measured two feet in length, and many other erratics showed the derivation of this layer from drift deposits of a preceding glacial stage. Bones and teeth of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros antiquitatis, Rangifer tarandus, and Equus caballus were found here. This basal bed is not a solifluxion level in place, though it may represent a solifluxion layer which has been re-washed and sorted. Certainly the Oxford Clay has not been caught up into it, and the elements are uniformly water-laid, passing up, without break, into nine feet of compact, well-bedded, fluviatile gravels.