Major investigations were undertaken of the Ecton Copper Mines, Staffordshire, following the discovery of hammerstones and a red deer antler tool dating to the Early Bronze Age during surface and underground exploration in the 1990s. Ecton Hill was surveyed, the distribution of hammerstone tools examined, and two identified sites of potential prehistoric mining close to the summit of the hill excavated in 2008 & 2009. Excavations at Stone Quarry Mine revealed no in situ prehistoric mining activity, but hammerstones and Early Bronze Age bone mining tools from upcast suggest that an historic mine shaft had intersected Bronze Age workings at around 10–25 m depth. On The Lumb one trench revealed evidence for medieval lead mining, while another examined the lowest of four primitive mines associated with cave-like mine entrances along the base of a small cliff. Evidence for prehistoric mining was recorded within a shallow opencut formed by during extraction of malachite from a layer of mineralised dolomite. Traces of the imprint of at least 18 bone and stone tools could be seen and seven different types of working were identified. Most prehistoric mining debris appears to have been cleared out during the course of later, medieval–post-medieval prospection; some bone and stone tools were recovered from this spoil. The tip of a worn and worked (cut) antler tine point was the only such mining tool found in situ at this site but nine tools were radiocarbon dated to c. 1880–1640 cal bc. Bayesian modelling of the dates from both sites probably indicates mining over a much briefer period (perhaps 20–50 years) at 1800–1700 cal bc, with mining at Stone Quarry possibly beginning earlier and lasting longer than on The Lumb. A single date from The Lumb suggests possible renewed mining activity (or prospection?) during the Middle Bronze Age. The dating of this mining activity is consistent with the idea that mining and prospection moved eastwards from Ireland to Wales, then to central England, at the beginning of the 2nd millennium bc. At Ecton the extraction of secondary ores may have produced only a very small tonnage of copper metal. The mine workers may have been Early Bronze Age farmers who occupied this part of the Peak District seasonally in a transhumant or sustained way

This paper discusses the evidence for periodic human activity in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland from the late 9th millennium to the early 4th millennium cal bc. While contemporary paradigms for Mesolithic Europe acknowledge the significance of upland environments, the archaeological record for these areas is not yet as robust as that for the lowland zone. Results of excavation at Chest of Dee, along the headwaters of the River Dee, are set into a wider context with previously published excavations in the area. A variety of site types evidences a sophisticated relationship between people and a dynamic landscape through a period of changing climate. Archaeological benefits of the project include the ability to examine novel aspects of the archaeology leading to a more comprehensive understanding of Mesolithic lifeways. It also offers important lessons in site survival, archaeological investigation, and the management of the upland zone.

Initial compilation of a digital record of petrological thin-sections prepared from ceramics found in the United Kingdom, the English Heritage UKTS database, was completed in 1994. This paper was commissioned by English Heritage as one of a series of period studies designed to synthesise and review the contents of the database. From the total of c. 20,000 thin-sections recorded, c. 5500 (28%) relate to prehistoric pottery. Within the prehistoric entries, coverage varies both by period and by region. The main results are summarised by region, and a series of general discussion points is highlighted. The themes of technology, production, and exchange, the movement of pottery in the earlier prehistoric period, and the potential symbolic significance of inclusions such as rock, bone, and grog are all considered. Finally, recommendations for the minimum standardisation of petrological reports on prehistoric ceramics, and for further research, are outlined.

Anthropomorphic hiked short swords were a rare and specialised weapon whose size, style, and human symbolism altered little over some 300 years. A small proportion of these short swords are engraved or stamped with designs inlaid with gold or other metals which are suggested to represent different stages of the lunar cycle. The measurement of time in nights is evidenced by later Gallo-Latin calendars written in Gaulish and this is endorsed by literary evidence for Late Iron Age France which points to the association of this knowledge with a specialist religious class. It is suggested that the swords were used in practices or ceremonies associated with making and keeping the time by counting nights, and determining what was a propitious day.

The development of the three-age system in Scandinavia has been of great interest to historians of archaeology, but the system's spread to the British Isles has received little attention, leaving a false impression that its importance has always derived from the revolutionary methodology of C.J. Thomsen. It was not Thomsen's method of putting artefacts in a chronological series, however, that first appealed to British researchers in the mid 19th century. Instead, early British researchers, working mainly in the science of ethnology, used the system to establish a sequence of races for Britain's past based on cranial types. This initial use of the three-age system as a means of creating a racial sequence left a mark on British archaeology that outlasted even the craniological ethnology that formed its first scholarly context.

In 1973, excavations were carried out in a rockshelter called River Rockshelter in Laikipia District, Kenya (the results will be published in AZANIA). The archaeological deposit was c 80 cm thick and contained an abundant lithic material belonging to a Late Stone Age industry. The deposit was excavated in seven layers each 5–15 cm thick. The stratigraphy was as follows (fig. 1):

1. 0–10 cm, brown, loose fine-grained earth;

2. 10–35 cm, brown, hard, medium-grained soil with stone slabs;

3. 35–50 cm, greyish brown, hard gravel with small stone slabs;

4. 50 cm + grey, hard gravel.

Stratigraphical layers, radiocarbon dates and excavated layers from River Rockshelter. Vertical scale 1/10.

This note draws attention to similar sequences of archaeology and environment in three long barrow ditches on the Chalk of southern and eastern England. Although the data have already been, or will shortly be, published in individual site reports, the events warrant consideration as a group because they are of regional importance. They are significant specifically for the later Neolithic use of long barrows and more generally for the identification of areas of arable, pasture and abandoned land in the later Neolithic and Bronze Age. The state of the Bronze Age soils has implications for their later use.

To start, the basic lithopedostratigraphy of a large ditch infilling on chalk (Evans 1972.) is iterated. There are four main stages:

(1) Primary fill. Coarse rubble with finer layers and turves derived from the contemporary soil. Formed by high energy, but seasonally intermittent, processes of physical weathering and gravity.

(2) Secondary fill. Loam, generally fining upwards and becoming increasingly humic as chemical weathering supersedes deposition. Formed by low energy processes of soil creep, rainwash of earthworm casts and others subsumed under the term colluviation; the details are unknown because such deposits have never been observed forming.

(3) Soil. Formation of soil profile after the natural depositional processes have ceased. Essentially this involves the increasing humification and weathering of the deposits as infilling slows down and ultimately ceases, so there is a merging boundary between the secondary fill and the soil.

The aim of this paper is to establish an absolute chronology for the prehistoric entities and sites of the Balearic islands. We begin with the human settlement of each island and continue with the temporalities of the most important entities and materials of the Pretalayotic period: the Beaker phenomenon, megalithic tombs, artificial burial caves, naviforms, and navetas. Then we define the chronological limits of the Talayotic period, giving special attention to its internal sequence and to the chronology of its distinctive monuments — the talayots, sanctuaries, and taulas. Finally we suggest the chronological limits of the material and sites ascribed to the Post-talayotic period. The approach adopted here is based on a detailed analysis of the radiocarbon dates corresponding to the main archaeological periods mentioned above. The information potential of each date has been evaluated critically in terms of the archaeological contexts from which samples were obtained.

This paper examines whether there really are fundamental differences between a Celtic model of social organisation and the observations made by J.D. Hill about PRIA social organisation in southern England. Hill's alternative model, which in his opinion seems to be fundamentally at odds with what can be learned from Celtic sources, is characterised by the importance of three main factors. These are the essentially ideological, east-facing orientation of Iron Age houses and enclosed settlements, the ideological boundedness of individual homesteads, and the household as the centre of production. Yet, an examination of the medieval Irish andWelsh literature reveals that these three fundamental characteristics also seem to define the societies described in the Celtic texts. However, while the household is the central independent social and economic unit, the medieval texts also put great emphasis on kinship, with kin-groups fulfilling important, complementary roles for the individual households. It is examined whether a kind of society that is not dominated by either households or kinship, but by both households and kinship, can successfully explain all the archaeological phenomena observable in PRIA Britain, including different ‘hillforts’ possibly fulfilling several different functions. The striking similarities that can be found between the kinds of societies proposed by Hill as inhabiting PRIA Britain and those described in the medieval Irish and Welsh sources force us to consider whether the Celtic should not better be returned to PRIA Britain, and whether the ‘different Iron Ages’ were not that different after all.

It is probably well known that the Japanese compelled Allied prisoners of war to work on the Bangkok-Moulmein railway, which was constructed during the war through the jungles of Siam and Burma. The author, who was captured in Java, arrived at the base camp of Nom-Pladuk on the 9th of February, 1943, and was sent at once to Taroewa, a village situated some 8 miles up-country. Being a member of the so-called ‘nail-shift,’ I started from this camp whenever opportunities presented themselves to study the entire region of the railway and the immediate surroundings as far north as the ‘Three Pagodas Pass’ on the Siam-Burma frontier, where the connection with the Burma section of the railway was accomplished. The total distance involved is somewhat over 140 miles, and the course of the river, the Mei Fingnoi, or Meklong, was always followed. Since all my discoveries were made along the first 75 miles of the railway, the remaining part need hardly be mentioned.

From the outset, I was constantly on the alert for prehistoric remains, this being possible since much ground was removed during the construction of the railway, but methodical investigations were naturally out of the question, while much of the material collected was subsequently lost again. All my scientific notes were taken from me by the Japanese.

A collapsed rockshelter site, WHS 784 X (Yutil al-Hasa), in the Wadi Hasa drainage in west-central Jordan was tested in 1984. Technological and typological analyses of the stone artifact assemblages suggest that it pertains to the latest phases of the Levantine Upper Paleolithic ‘Ahmarian Tradition’. Excellent faunal preservation allowed the identification of several ungulate species, as well as other taxa. These data and the topographic setting of the site indicated that WHS 784 X was probably a hunting camp used in part to monitor the (seasonal?) movements of herds of equids and gazelles. Dating at 19,000 uncal BP, the occupations fall at the Upper Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic transition as conventionally defined, and represent one of the first well-documented occurrences of an Ahmarian limited activity site. Work at WHS 784 X contributes to the rapidly improving state of Levantine Upper Paleolithic systematics and provides a fuller understanding of life at the end of the Upper Paleolithic in the southern Levant.

The results of a two-year field survey in Calabria are described. A number of specially designed ‘intensive’ field survey methods were devised and tested, and the results quantified.

Through typological and fabric analysis of the pottery material recovered on the survey, some indication of the changing patterns of settlement in the region are detectable, and these have a number of implications relating to the questions of internal settlement organization and exchange patterns of neolithic and later prehistoric societies in Southern Italy.

An open-area excavation conducted in advance of development at Marne Barracks, Catterick, in 2004 identified a relatively rare Late Neolithic ‘palisaded’ enclosure and other features. Approximately 55% of the enclosure was exposed. It consisted of two concentric sub-circular palisades with diameters up to 175 m and 200 m respectively. Each palisade consisted of a double circuit of posts, with the posts being c. 1 m apart from centre to centre. Many of the posts on the western side of the monument had been sufficiently carbonised for the remains of individual posts to be identifiable. Twenty-one radiocarbon ages were determined and Bayesian modelling has produced a date estimate of 2530–2310 cal BC for the start of construction of the monument. This date matches well with new dates for the construction of Silbury Hill, the appearance of Beaker pottery in graves, the Amesbury Archer, and the timber circles at Durrington Walls, for example.

The Marne Barracks monument exhibits significant differences to other known examples of this type, and is in some respects unique. In particular the ‘paired post’ arrangement of a double circuit of posts in each palisade is unparalleled in any other known example. The apparent width of the entrances to the Marne enclosure is also at variance with other known sites, though this may in part be an artefact of post-depositional survival. The monument sits in a ritual landscape and, like a few others of its type, is close to water and a hill or large mound from where the activities taking place within the enclosure might have been observed. Do the nearby hill, the entrances, and the arrangement of the uprights all relate to control of physical and visual access into, or out of, the monument?

A number of broadly contemporary monuments, all within 5 km of Marne Barracks, contribute to a significant Neolithic ritual focus on the River Swale gravels. The complex of cursus and henge monuments at Thornborough and the henges at Nunwick, Hutton Moor, and Cana Barn all lie less than 25 km to the south, in the Swale-Ure interfluve.

The number of Mesolithic structures known in Britain has significantly increased since 2000, providing new opportunities for economic and social interpretations of this period. We describe a further structure, represented by features from the Mesolithic site of Criet Dubh, Isle of Mull. We compare the inferred Criet Dubh structure to other Mesolithic structures from Britain, notably those described as ‘pit-houses’. We then consider the implications of the radiocarbon dates from such structures for the tempo of occupation and past settlement patterns. While the use of Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates has encouraged interpretations of prolonged occupation and sedentism, we propose alternative interpretations with patterns of intermittent occupation for Criet Dubh and the pit-houses, involving their re-use after extended periods of abandonment within a sparsely populated landscape. The ability to debate such interpretations reflects the transformation in Mesolithic research made possible by the discovery of such structures, the use of multiple radiocarbon determinations, the application of Bayesian analysis, and the exploration of associations between cultural and environmental change. These developments have made the Mesolithic a particularly innovative period of study.

The recorded occurrences of Lower Palæolithic implements in the English Midlands are extremely few, and the only specimen hitherto recorded from Warwickshire is a quartzite hand-axe found by the late Mr. Joseph Landon at Saltley, near Birmingham. The object of the present paper is to describe and discuss several artifacts which have been found recently in inter-gjacial gravels at Baginton, a village 2½ miles south of Coventry, and one from fluvioglacial gravels at Kenilworth, five miles south of the same city. In searching the deposits of the districts I have received invaluable assistance from certain members of the Coventry Natural History and Scientific Society—from Mr. J. H. Edwards in particular, and also from Messrs. W. Berry, H. Plumb, P. E. Wilks and J. Wright—and to them I would express my appreciation of their help in a search which, from its very nature, could but seldom be rewarded with success.

The standard recent authorities on the history of archaeology date the invention of a specific word for prehistory to 1833, saying that Paul Tournal of Narbonne used the adjective préhistorique (‘prehistoric’ in the English translation in Heizer 1969, 91; and in Daniel 1967, 25, following Heizer 1962) or the noun préhistoire (Daniel 1981,48) in an article about French bone-caves.

This is not true. The word Tournal used was antéhistorique (Tournal 1833, 175), and the mistake has arisen from working with an idiomatic translation into English, which rendered ‘anté-historique’ as ‘prehistoric’ (Tournal [1959]) instead of the original French. (Grayson 1983, 102., however, quotes Tournal's original French correctly.) The earliest use of ‘prehistoric’ seems to be Daniel Wilson's of 1851 in The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland (1851), as the older histories of archaeology say (eg Daniel 1950, 86 (reprinted in Daniel 1975, 86); Daniel 1962, 9), before the error about Tournal began to circulate.

Six of the twenty-five British implement petrology groups (Clough and Cummins 1979, 127)—Group I (Penzance, Cornwall), Group IV (Callington, Cornwall), Group VI (Langdale, Lake District), Group VII (Penmaenmawr, North Wales), Group VIII (South-west Wales), and Group XVI (Camborne, Cornwall)—account for almost half of all the stone axes so far examined from England and Wales. In every part for the country, one or other of these six is the most abundant individual group. On the basis of stone axe distribution studies (Cummins 1979), the country seems to fall naturally into three major provinces (fig. 1), which might possibly be interpreted as Neolithic tribal territories. Northern and Central England, the largest of these provinces, is dominated by Group VI axes which, though originating in the Lake District, seem to have been distributed from a secondary centre in Humberside. Wales, including Herefordshire and part of Shropshire, forms another province and is dominated by Welsh axes, Group VII in the north, and Group VIII in the south. Southern England, the third province, is dominated by Cornish ‘greenstone’ axes, mainly Group I but locally, in the south-west, Groups IV and XVI.

Cumulative percentages of all axes belonging to each group plotted against distance from its distribution centre (Cummins 1979, figs. 4–9) give an indication of absolute frequency variation in relation to that centre. The shape of the plots is controlled by two variables, (i) the cumulative increase of area with distance from the centre, and (ii) the variation in average frequency of the grouped axes (per unit area) with distance from the centre.

Before proceeding to consider the special features of the Hampshire Basin, and their bearing on palæolithic problems, I should like to say a few words on more general subjects. It is very well known, but perhaps not always remembered, that scarcely one of our commonly accepted conclusions regarding the geological position of the early palæoliths rests on a secure foundation; in almost every case we have to content ourselves, not with a sound logical deduction, but with the most probable of several possible inferences from inadequate and conflicting data. And as an example of what I mean, let us glance at some points in the history of river terraces. First of all the word terrace usually connotes two distinct structures, a basal rock-shelf, and a series of deposits resting on it; and although it is generally assumed that the two are so intimately bound together as to be practically contemporaneous, yet that is not a sure inference, since it is equally possible that there may have been, in some cases at least, a long interval between them. The importance of this possibility to archæologists will be evident when I remind you of the contention of several eminent authorities that the different human cultures of the Pleistocene belong rather to such intervals than to the period of accumulation of the drift to which they are generally referred.

The prehistoric structure described in this paper is only one of a large series of wooden roads and trackways that run into and across the Somerset Levels. The Levels themselves consist of a number of wide expanses of moorland separated by ‘islands’ of rock and sand, the whole covering a region in Somerset of about 200 square miles. In the northern part of the Levels, the peats of the valley of the River Brue have for long been subjected to hand-cutting and machine-cutting by a number of individuals and peat-companies. Through their activities, many prehistoric discoveries have been made and these have been reported at intervals in these Proceedings and elsewhere. In 1973, the Somerset Levels Project was formed to organize and conduct fieldwork and excavations in the Levels, and, through co-operation with both the Department of the Environment and the many peat interests in the Levels, the Project has been able to undertake many more investigations of prehistoric remains than had previously been possible; about 15 reports relating to recent works have been published, and those relevant to the present paper are listed in the References.

The wooden trackway described here has been known to exist for almost 90 years, but so far as we are aware it has never before been fully examined, nor has it had the benefit of specialist studies dealing with dendrochronology and with fossil coleoptera associated with the trackway. These, allied to extensive wood identifications and pollen analyses, allow a more closely defined description and interpretation of the trackway which appear to us to alter the original concepts as published previously.