Burnt mounds, or fulachtaí fiadh as they are known in Ireland, are probably the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland and Britain. Typically Middle–Late Bronze Age in age (although both earlier and later examples are known), they are artefact-poor and rarely associated with settlements. The function of these sites has been much debated with the most commonly cited uses being for cooking, as steam baths or saunas, for brewing, tanning, or textile processing. A number of major infrastructural development schemes in Ireland in the years 2002–2007 revealed remarkable numbers of these mounds often associated with wood-lined troughs, many of which were extremely well-preserved. This afforded an opportunity to investigate them as landscape features using environmental techniques – specifically plant macrofossils and charcoal, pollen, beetles, and multi-element analyses. This paper summarises the results from eight sites from Ireland and compares them with burnt mound sites in Great Britain. The fulachtaí fiadh which are generally in clusters, are all groundwater-fed by springs, along floodplains and at the bases of slopes. The sites are associated with the clearance of wet woodland for fuel; most had evidence of nearby agriculture and all revealed low levels of grazing. Multi-element analysis at two sites revealed elevated heavy metal concentrations suggesting that off-site soil, ash or urine had been used in the trough. Overall the evidence suggests that the most likely function for these sites is textile production involving both cleaning and/or dyeing of wool and/or natural plant fibres and as a functionally related activity to hide cleaning and tanning. Whilst further research is clearly needed to confirm if fulachtaí fiadh are part of the ‘textile revolution’ we should also recognise their important role in the rapid deforestation of the wetter parts of primary woodland and the expansion of agriculture into marginal areas during the Irish and British Bronze Ages.

Excavations between 1954 and 1967 in the West Mouth, Niah Cave (Sarawak) uncovered the largest Neolithic cemetery in South-east Asia with over 150 burials. Subsequent work at the site in the 1970s and most recently by the Niah Caves Project (2000–2004) brought the total to 170, comprising 89 primary burials and 79 secondary burials, and two ‘multiple’ burials. The size of cemetery and the scale of the archaeological data are unprecedented in South-east Asian Neolithic archaeology and offer a unique opportunity to investigate the cemetery's origins, development, and history in detail. Analysis of the demographic structure of discrete spatial burial groups within the cemetery and their short term burial sequences are combined to interpret the history of changing burial practice in terms of different social/settlement groups using the cave as a communal place of burial. A new suite of radiocarbon dates are used to date the West Mouth Neolithic cemetery to between 1500 and 200 bc. Six phases of burial are defined and the associated transitions of ritual practices are discussed. In particular, a transition from primary to secondary burial occurred around c. 1000 bc, which subsequently intensified into the practice of cremation. This process was likely associated/fuelled by an intensification of economic activity to support more elaborate secondary burial funerals. Two further cycles of primary and secondary burial followed, before the main cemetery ceased c. 200 bc. A Post-Neolithic phase of possibly 14 burials (five primary flexed burials and nine secondary burials) is proposed to follow, which while continuing aspects of Neolithic mortuary behaviour, is considered on isotopic data to represent a group of hunter-gatherers living in a closed-canopy environment

Lunulae are commonly considered to be Early Bronze Age gold sheet collars produced solely in Ireland in imitation of jet and amber spacer-plate necklaces found elsewhere in the British Isles. Decorated with a distinctive style of incised geometric designs, they are more carefully and intricately ornamented than Beaker gold sheet-work, but less sophisticated than the superior Wessex gold objects. The term lunula has come to distinguish the Early Bronze Age gold crescent collar from the term Halskragen, a probably distantly-related type of copper crescent collar found in north-west Germany.

Excavations at Knossos have uncovered faunal and archaeobotanical archives spanning the Neolithic and Bronze Age (7th–2nd millennia bce), during which one of Europe’s earliest known farming settlements developed into its first major urban settlement and centre of one of its oldest regional states. Through stable isotope (δ13C, δ15N) analysis of seeds and bones (as evidence for the growing conditions of cereal and pulse crops and for the types of forage consumed by livestock), land use and, ultimately, political economy are explored. Changing husbandry conditions overwrite any effects of long-term aridification. Early (7th–6th millennium bce) Knossian farmers grew intensively managed cereals and pulses (probably in rotation) that were closely integrated (as manured sources of forage) with livestock. Through the later Neolithic and Bronze Age, settlement growth accompanied more extensive cultivation (eventually with cereals and pulses not in rotation) and greater use of rough graze and, by goats, browse. Pasture on cultivated land remained central, however, to the maintenance of sheep, cattle, and pigs. Variable diet of early sheep suggests management at the household level, while thereafter progressive dietary divergence of sheep and goats implies their separate herding. Until the Old Palace phase (early 2nd millennium bce), urban growth was matched by increasingly extensive and probably distant cultivation and herding but somewhat more intensive conditions during the New and Final Palace phases (mid-2nd millennium bce) perhaps reflect greater reliance on surplus from prime land of previously rival centres that now came under Knossian control.

Before proceeding to give a description of the silted-up lake of Hoxne, and its contained flint implements, I would wish to express my thanks to Miss Dorothy Garrod, Professor P. G. H. Boswell, Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S., Dr. O. Erdtman, Professor Henri Breuil, Mr. Alfred S. Barnes, Mr. Reginald Smith, and to Mr. Guy Maynard, for the help they have given me in my researches during 1924–6 at this spot. I am also especially indebted to the British Association, the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund, and to Mr. Henry Balfour, F.R.S. for providing the funds to pay for the labour employed. The work of excavation was carried out under my supervision, by my trained digger, John Baxter, assisted by one of the men employed in the brickfield at Hoxne, and every care was taken to obtain a trustworthy record of the exact position each humanly flaked flint, or other specimen, occupied in the geological sequence.

The implementiferous deposits of Hoxne are justly famous throughout the archæological world. In the year 1797, there was living at, or near, this place, one, John Frere, who evidently took a keen, and remarkably astute interest in the question of the antiquity of man. There is no doubt that then, as now, a brickfield existed at Hoxne, and Frere's attention was drawn to a quantity of flaked flints which were being turned out by the workmen, at a certain level below the brickearth. To realise the significance of what follows, it is necessary to grasp the fact that, in 1797, next to nothing was known regarding ancient flint implements of any kind, and least of all about those which we now know were made by Lower Palæolithic man.

The first report of the Sub-Committee of the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries on the petrological identification of stone axes was published in the Proceedings for 1941, vol. VII, 50–72. Appreciative comments concerning it were published in Museums Journal, vol. 42, 34, and Nature, 1942, 149, 275.

Membership of the Sub-Committee remains unchanged apart from the withdrawal of Dr R. Churchill Blackie and the addition of Mrs D. P. Dobson, LITT.D., M.A., F.S.A. (1945), Messrs C. K. Croft Andrew, F.S.A. and A. G. Madan, and Dr J. F. S. Stone (Honorary Secretary from 1946).

The activities of the Sub-Committee were naturally greatly restricted during the war, but a few axes were submitted and, although procedure was protracted, eventually examined.

Recently the Council for British Archaeology has received a report concerning cooperation of petrologists and archaeologists urging that the identification of stone axes should be raised from the regional to national level. The existing museum federations seemed admirably suited for implementing this policy and their co-operation has accordingly been secured. In future, therefore, the petrological activities of the South-Western Group will be strictly regional instead of embracing the whole of Britain.

The moment for this change seemed an appropriate one for the Sub-Committee to publish a second report briefly summarizing their work and also bringing to a close the first decade of its labours.

Once again thanks are extended to those private owners and trustees of public institutions who have willingly allowed the material in their possession or charge to be sectioned and so made these results possible. The Committee is again deepjy indebted to Mr E. D. Evens whose enthusiasm for, and interest in, the work has never waned and to whose meticulous examination of each thin section they owe much.

The Perak River rises on the Siamese border and flows southward to meet the sea near Teluk Anson in Perak. At Chenderoh, 70 miles north of the estuary, the valley has been dammed since 1930 and a large lake formed upstream. The Kota Tampan estate lies in the main valley about 4 miles north of the northern end of Chenderoh Lake (fig. 4 inset).

At Kota Tampan (fig. 1) the Perak River is incised in the bottom of a valley between two and three miles wide, the floor of which lies between the 200- and 250-foot contours. The surfaces of the narrow modern flood terraces lie just below the 200-foot contour. Small hills of granite, rising to about 330 feet m.s.l., project above the general level of the valley floor which is also cut by steep-sided ravines running out into the modern river. These ravines are usually dry, or slightly swampy, except at the mouths where the artificial raising of the water-level by the Chenderoh dam has flooded them. The residual parts of the valley floor form long, almost flat-topped, ridges between the ravines and the hills, covered by a skin of soil washed from the neighbouring higher land.

This study of iron currency bars began as a note, prepared at the request of the late Professor Sir Ian Richmond, for inclusion in his publication of the British Museum excavations at Hod Hill. It was intended to accompany a similar account of the Celtic coins found at Hod Hill, for which he had previously asked. Hod Hill is the only site where coins and bars have been found in comparable numbers. However, as one thing led to another, the original note grew out of scale for a contribution to an excavation report; hence this separate paper. A summary will be included in Mr J. W. Brailsford's volume on Hod Hill.

The term ‘iron currency bar’ has long been in use to describe certain elongated iron objects found in late iron age sites in Britain. The earliest records are of a hoard found at Meon Hill, Warwickshire, in 1824. Bars became well known after the discovery of an important hoard at Salmonsbury, Gloucestershire, in 1860. The first serious study was made by Charles Roach Smith, when in 1864 he published an earlier hoard of bars from Hod Hill. The classical account of them was given by Reginald Smith in 1905 and developed in a number of subsequent articles, which have been the basis of nearly all that has been written since. It is the theories of Reginald Smith which require reconsideration today.

Between 1,100 and 1,500 iron bars relevant to this study have been found at more than 20 sites in Britain. Whether they are all iron currency bars depends on the definition of currency bar adopted. The first task was to trace as many bars as possible; I have found examples in more than 30 collections and there are, no doubt, more which I have failed to find. What has come to light, however, summarized in the Appendix, has been enough to show that the surviving material needs to be analyzed on fresh lines.

In order to prepare an address calculated to be of general interest to my fellow archæologists, it is essential that it be composed of a variety of ingredients. Now, it so happens that the results I have been obtaining during the course of my investigations in the last few years not only embrace a large number of culture phases, but, when arranged in proper sequence, they form a consecutive narrative. Furthermore, the greater part of the researches I have undertaken relates to those periods in British prehistory concerning which we know least. I refer to the so-called ‘Upper Palæolithic’ and ‘Early Neolithic’ times.

It is not my intention to deal in this paper with those inter-glacial and cultural phases which antedate the formation of the Lower Purple Boulder Clay of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and the Lower Chalky Boulder Clay of East Anglia, though I would mention I have recently discovered in the glacial deposits of north-east Ireland specimens similar to those which have been found beneath the Cromer Forest Bed of Norfolk and in the Sub-Crag Detritus Bed of Norfolk and Suffolk. These specimens will be fully described and illustrated in our “Proceedings” at a later date.

Radiocarbon dates have been obtained from a log-coffin burial excavated in 1864 by Canon William Greenwell from a ditched round barrow at Scale House, near Rylstone, North Yorkshire. The oak tree-trunk coffin had contained an extended body wrapped in a wool textile. The body had entirely decayed and there were no other extant grave goods. In the absence of other grave goods, Greenwell attributed the burial to the Bronze Age because it lay under a ditched round barrow and had similarities with log-coffin burials from Britain and Denmark. This attribution has not been questioned since 1864 despite a number of early medieval log-coffin burials subsequently being found in northern Britain. Crucially, the example excavated near Quernmore, Lancashire in 1973, was published as Bronze Age but subsequently radiocarbon dated to ad 430–970. The Rylstone coffin and textile were radiocarbon dated to confirm that the burial was Early Bronze Age and not an early medieval coffin inserted into an earlier funerary monument. Unexpectedly, the dates were neither Early Bronze Age nor early medieval but c. 800 bc, the cusp of the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in Britain. The burial at Rylstone is, therefore, one of only two sites in Britain, and is unparalleled elsewhere in north-western Europe at a time when disposal of the dead was primarily through dispersed cremated or unburnt disarticulated remains.

The perforated stone battle-axes and axe-hammers of Early Bronze Age Britain have been used either to interpret the status of individuals they were buried with or have been overlooked; this is especially the case with axe-hammers. Previous understandings have assumed battle-axes were purely ceremonial, while the rougher axe-hammers were neither functional nor prestigious, being too large and too crude to be prestige items. Studies of the 20th century were focused on creating a typology and understanding the manufacture and petrological sources of the stone, concluding that haphazard exploitation of stone was used to create a variety of different shapes of both implements. This paper revisits the question of how these artefacts were used. It presents the results of the first large-scale application of use-wear analysis to British Early Bronze Age battle-axes and axe-hammers, from northern Britain and the Isle of Man. Combining the results of the wear analysis with experimental archaeology and contextual analysis, it is argued that these objects were functional tools, some of which saw prolonged use that might have spanned multiple users. The evidence shows that the few implements found in burial contexts were both functional and symbolic; their inclusion in burial contexts drawing upon relational links which developed through the itineraries of these objects. It is also apparent that use and treatment were similar across all types of battle-axe and axe-hammer, with some regional variation in the deposition of axe-hammers in south-west Scotland. It is concluded that battle-axes and axe-hammers had varied and multiple roles and significances and that it is possible to discover what each artefact was used for by deploying a use-wear analysis methodology.

Sometime after the last retreat of the ice in the Quaternary ice age, the Scandinavian peninsula was separated on the south from the north German plain and Denmark. Later, England was cut off by the Channel from the continental land mass. An estimation of the times at which these two events happened is interesting to archaeologists, botanists and zoologists alike, because the communities with which they are concerned are affected by the barrier of an intervening arm of the sea.

So far most of the evidence about the times of separation comes from botanical and archaeological sources, from pollen analysis and the investigation of cultural sites. In this paper the distribution and physiology of certain freshwater animals are used to provide argument that the separation of Scandinavia and of England could only have taken place at times of particular climatic conditions. The climatic definition of the times of separation makes it possible to fit them in to the absolute geochronological scale which has been established by Scandinavian workers.

A combination of on- and off-site palaeo-environmental and archaeological investigations of the upper Allen valley of Dorset conducted in 1998–2000 has begun to reveal a different model of landscape development than those previously put forward. A combination of off-site geoarchaeological and aerial photographic survey and palynological analyses of two relict palaeochannel systems, and sample investigations of four Bronze Age round barrows and a Neolithic enclosure, have been combined with inter-regional summaries of the archaeological and molluscan records to re-examine the prehistoric landscape dynamics in the study area. Preliminary results suggest that woodland development in the earlier Holocene appears to have been more patchy than the presumed model of full climax deciduous woodland. With open areas still present in the Mesolithic, the area witnessed its first exploitation of the chalk downs, thus slowing and altering soil development of the downlands. Consequently, many areas perhaps never developed thick, well structured, clay-enriched soils (or argillic brown earths), but rather thin brown earths. By the later Neolithic these under-developed soils had become thin rendzinas, largely as a consequence of human exploitation. The presence of thinner and less well-developed soils over large areas of downland removes the necessity for envisaging extensive soil erosion and thick aggraded deposits in the valley bottom in later prehistory. The investigations have suggested that, if there were major changes in vegetation and soil complexes, these had already occurred by the Neolithic rather than in the Bronze Age as suggested by previous researchers, and the area has remained relatively stable since.

Cunliffe's excavations at Danebury have revealed an Iron Age settlement in extraordinary detail. Its inhabitants have come to represent, in the popular literature at least, the idealised hillfort community of warriors, craftsmen, farmers, and their families in a hierarchically ordered settlement system. This model has been vigorously challenged, although largely from a theoretical perspective, and there has been little contextual re-analysis of the dataset. This paper seeks to re-examine the Danebury structural assemblage and question why Iron Age people came together in this place, and how those that did come perceived their place within wider group identities. By examining patterns of activity within the interior of Danebury this paper demonstrates that the nature of the community that resided in the hillfort changed considerably over the course of the Early and Middle Iron Age. In particular, it is argued that Danebury was occupied by a permanent population. The organisation of domestic space, however, was tightly managed. In the early period occupation was characterised by single round-houses of individual household units emphasising their distinctiveness by spatial isolation and variability in round-house design. A dramatic change in the nature and intensity of occupation came in the late period. A large number of ‘identikit’ round-houses were tightly packed into the quarry hollows in the lee of the ramparts. This probably represents households from the surrounding settlements moving into the hillfort. It is also argued that the communal construction and maintenance of Danebury's defences would have been a way for a dispersed population to have reproduced a sense of community. Participation may also have been a mechanism of maintaining networks and relationships with other households in the long term

The well-known brick-earth deposits of Crayford, in Kent (forming part of the so-called 50-ft., or middle terrace of the Thames), have for many years yielded flint implements of Mousterian type, and more recently (1910-12) I have succeeded in finding the cores from which such implements were struck.

In the closing decades of the last century long, slender knives of fine quality flint were abundant, but since the writer first came to have the pits under observation (in 1903) implements of all kinds have been rare, and many winters go by with only the discovery of a few simple flakes.

References up till 1889 are given in the “Geology of London,” and, in 1905, Messrs. Hinton and Kennard brought them up to date in their paper on “The Relative Ages of the Stone Implements of the Lower Thames Valley,” This valuable paper was the first to attribute the characteristic Crayford implement to the Mousterian period, on account of the similarity in workmanship to those from Le Moustier.

In the post-war years, the palaeolithic of Japan has become one of the best documented areas of Stone Age studies. In terms of both quantity and quality, the Japanese palaeolithic record has no equal in East Asia. This paper is an up-to-date review of the western language literature, identifying new trends of research in this important area. It first examines the chronological development of research into the Japanese palaeolithic in relation to the broader palaeolithic perspective. Then regional variability is described, and attention in particular is drawn to postglacial transitions, lithic technology, behavioural archaeology, and the peopling of the New World.

For many years past Mr Mogridge, of the Winchester Museum, has been indefatigable in collecting Lower Palaeolithic flint implements from a number of gravel pits lying between the villages of Warsash and Hook, in the district of the Lower Hamble river, Hampshire. From time to time he has brought up selected specimens to meetings of the Prehistoric Society in London, and exhibited them to members at the conclusion of the formal lectures. These Warsash finds are extremely numerous, show very fine workmanship, and exhibit certain special features which make them of exceptional importance to all students of Lower Palaeolithic cultures in England. Some time ago I suggested to Mr Mogridge that his valuable finds ought to be placed more permanently on record. He at once consented to the writing of a joint article for our Proceedings, and placed all his information at my disposal. Together we visited the sites, examined the sections, and talked to the workmen, from whom, of course, most of the implements are in the first instance obtained. I also consulted with my former pupil, and now colleague, Mr T. T. Paterson, and he very kindly consented himself to study the Quaternary geology on the spot, and to write a brief account. The drawings are from my wife's pen.

This paper is based on the 2009 Europa lecture which concentrated on the issues surrounding the Early Holocene colonisation of Ireland and placed it both in a broader European context as well as asking why the initial settlement of Ireland should take place so late. It also reconsidered the reasons why there was a significant change in technology within the Irish Mesolithic. This paper suggests that over-emphasis has been placed on the Irish ‘Early’–Later Mesolithic change which had been thought to take place at a very specific point in time. Instead it is suggested that changes began to take place soon after settlement began in Ireland and that many of the classic Mesolithic type fossils, most notably microliths, began to vanish, perhaps around or just after 9000 years cal bp. It seems preferable to redefine the chronology of the Irish Mesolithic into two main phases the EARLIER and LATER Mesolithic with an, as yet undefined, chronological boundary between 8800 and 8600 cal bp. At the same time it recognises that there are significant changes (facies) within each of the major phases, some of which could even be regional. It should also be noted that not all of the facies need necessarily be associated with a distinct range of obvious type fossils.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the presence of gold and bronze ornaments in Britain during the centuries c. 1400-1100 cal BC constitutes an ‘ornament horizon’ and to analyse the roles that these objects played in prehistoric communities. To achieve this, a comprehensive ornament database was compiled and the evidence for ornament production, forms, distribution, modes of adornment, and depositional practices was analysed. This revealed the existence of an earlier bronze ornament tradition concentrated in the coastal areas and along the major rivers of southern and eastern England and a later gold ornament tradition throughout Britain. The ornaments were designed to adorn the neck, wrist, and fingers and, with the exception of a quantity of elaborate bronze pins, are not thought to relate to clothing. These were high visibility objects that would have been widely recognised by the networks of communities participating in the intensive movement of objects, people and practices that occurred throughout northwest Europe and beyond. The ornaments were probably worn for substantial periods of an individual's life before being separated from their wearers. Though the ornaments were circulated, repaired, and probably recycled, there does not appear to have been a substantial delay in their deposition. The excavation of the ornaments in diverse and frequently elaborate arrangements such as in ditches and in settlements, on hills and in rivers, and accompanying cremation burials or other metal objects implies localised reworkings of the more widespread practices of structured deposition.

The excavation of a multi-tumped oval barrow led to the discovery of a post-barrow flint industry, which utilized flint nodules incorporated in the mounds, thus damaging the original profile of the monument. 16,030 pieces of worked flint were recovered, 10,539 from the industrial levels. The material was analyzed by computer making use of programmes already developed for daily use by the M3 Archaeological Rescue Committee.