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

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

Stratigraphic and typological analysis tends to confirm the two-fold division of the Zarzian suggested by Dorothy Garrod, while palaeobotanical data indicate that a very dry steppe prevailed throughout the sequence. Both the low carrying capacity of the contemporary vegetation then and at present in winter, and the resultant winter migration to warmer areas of wild game at present (and presumably in the past) suggest cyclical short distance movements by hunter-gatherers and fishers within two ecological zones: 1, the mountainous area which must have been occupied from spring to autumn; 2, the winter camping grounds in the upper plains along the foothills region of the Zagros Mountains.

Rainsborough is 1 mile South of Charlton village, in the parish of Newbottle, S. Northants, 20 miles North of Oxford, (SP 526348). The camp lies at c. 480′ OD, and the area enclosed is c. 6·25 acres.

It lies on the edge of a plateau: the approaches to it are flat on the north-east, east, south and south-west, but a gentle slope to the north, north-west and west gives it a wide view across the Cherwell valley, towards Madmarston and Tadmarton (see map, fig. 1 and also pl. XXV). The defences are bivallate: the inner bank stands to 10 feet above the interior, and there is a drop of about 15 feet from the crest into the inner ditch; the second bank is very much lowered by ploughing, but still reaches a height of about 4 feet on the south side, where a hedge line has protected it; the outer ditch is nowhere visible on the surface, except on the west, when it carries a higher growth of weeds. The defences are covered with turf: the inner bank has also trees, bushes and the stumps of large beeches felled c. 1950. The bank is riddled with tree roots, and the sandy character of the core has attracted rabbits: recent attempts to dig and smoke out the warrens have slightly damaged the profile of the bank. A small dry stone wall is visible part way up the outer slope of the inner bank in several places.

Framed within an interpretive, humanistic ‘archaeology of inhabitance’, the study explores the means by which a social, intellectual order particular to time and place is embedded within the material universe. Through the mediation of the human body, natural and architectural space is considered to be a medium for the production and reproduction of social relations. The specific materiality of places inhabited in the past is explored in detail, focusing on possibilities for and constraints upon the body and the senses.

The phenomenon of monumentality at the Loughcrew passage tomb cemetery in east-central Ireland is considered in the context of changing narratives of place and biographies of person and landscape. In contrast to many previous studies, the focus is upon engagement with the exterior spaces of the complex: the more frequent and larger-scale involvement of the communal body in these ‘public’ spaces will have played a critical role in the validation of knowledges and claims to authority which a more restricted group will have articulated within the confines of tomb chambers and passages.

The earlier tombs draw out qualities latent within the landscape, placing particular emphasis on prior, natural boundaries. Through time, the regionalisation of the Loughcrew hills acquires increasing architectural definition, by means of which a series of interconnecting spaces emerge at a much more human scale. The latest architectural and spatial developments may well form part of material strategies through which were engendered particular structures of authority carrying the potential for substantially heightened individual prominence within increasingly exclusive kinship solidarities. Ultimately, mediation between the physical and metaphysical elements of existence may be controlled with reference to distinct lines of descent rather than to a more generalised ancestral community. At the same time, the range of hills is gradually transformed from a meaningful locus which conceals within it the human efforts of monumental construction, to a landscape that derives its significance from massive summit cairns visible from considerable distances. This appropriative transformation may be seen as a material strategy which moves communities' conceptions of existence from an integrated, cultural whole in which people and landscape are embedded in each other, towards a vision of individuals and places as increasingly separate and self-contained.

The ancient village of Carn Euny, formerly known as Chapel Euny, lies on a south-west slope just above the 500 foot contour in the parish of Sancreed in West Cornwall (fig. 1). The granite uplands of the region are rich in antiquities, as a glance at a recent survey shows (Russell 1971), not least those of the prehistoric period. The hill on which the site is situated is crowned by the circular Iron Age Fort of Caer Brane (pl. 27). Across the dry valley to the north-west rises the mass of Bartinny Down, with its barrows, while in the valley below the site near the hamlet of Brane is a small, well preserved entrance grave and other evidence of prehistoric activity. To the south-east about one mile away is the recently excavated village of Goldherring dating from the first few centuries of our era (Guthrie 1969). From later times, the holy well of St Uny and the former chapel which gave its name to the site, lie nearby to the west. The village contains a fine souterrain, locally known as a fogou, after a Cornish word meaning a cave (Thomas 1966, 79).

Nothing appears to have been known of the settlement or Fogou before the first half of the 19th century when the existence of an unexplored fogou at Chapel Uny is first mentioned by the Reverend John Buller (1842), shortly followed by Edmonds (1849) who described to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society an ‘Ancient Cave’ which had been discovered by miners prospecting for tin.

Some recent literature on the problem of hoards is reviewed, dealing particularly with the distinction between votive deposits and stores of objects. An alternative approach is developed, considering the long-term variations in the nature of intentional deposits in European prehistory. Three stages are suggested. In the initial stage, a unitary system of deposits prevailed, especially of food and selected artefacts, including metal when available. In the developed stage, characteristic of the Bronze Age, a dual system allowed both votive deposition and accumulation and recycling, especially of non-local metal. The final stage, in the later Iron Age, saw renewed emphasis on votive deposits, especially on the borders of emerging polities.

In 1951 Dr Werner Kissling, who for many years has been studying and collecting specimens of the old folk culture of the Outer Hebrides, asked me to undertake the excavation of some site on South Uist (fig. 1) to encourage the local people to take an interest in their antiquities. The site chosen was a large midden among the dunes in the Kilpheder machair (sandy coastal plain). Five hundred yards to the northward a midden with a few stones is all that remains of a wheel-house, known as Bruthach an Tigh Tallan (the brae of the buried house), which was completely removed some years ago. Half a mile to the north of this another wheel-house, Sithean a Phiobaire (the piper's fairy hill), was removed to build a wall round a nearby grave-yard. The middens of both these wheel-houses have produced ring-headed bronze or iron pins similar to ones found in the North Uist wheel-houses and approximately dated at Traprain Law in Haddingtonshire to between A.D. 100–200. To the south-west of our site, one about 150 yards distant, the other some 200 yards further on, are two more middens with traces of building stones. One of these produced a specimen of the well-known long-handled weaving comb. Yet another midden of the same period, two hundred yards to the south east, is now completely buried. It will be seen that this was once a highly populated area. I have not enumerated all the sites which are known to exist.

The long barrow on Willerby Wold, 7 miles south of Scarborough, was dug into about the middle of the 19th century by the Rev. Canon William Greenwell. The results of this excavation are described in his book British Barrows and show the mound to be one of the crematorium long barrows peculiar to Yorkshire.

In September 1958 the present excavations began with the sectioning of the south ditch in search of any evidence of occupation so frequently found in long barrow ditches. Further work in 1959 included sections of the mound and as these showed Greenwell's excavations to be of only limited extent a more extensive programme of work was undertaken during 1960 to clear the whole of the eastern end of the mound.

The moorland south of Penmaenmawr in Caernarvonshire, extending from the great outcrop of Penmaenmawr-Graig Lwyd rock, well-known for its group of stone-axe factories, as far south as Foel Lwyd and Tal-y-fan, and averaging 1,200–1,400 feet in height above O.D., bears a rich concentration of prehistoric monuments. The best known of these is probably the stone circle known as the Druids' Circle, but nearby are many other circles and cairns (fig. 1) which will be referred to in this text by the serial numbers used in the Caernarvonshire Inventory of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. In the present paper an account will be given of the excavation of the Druids' Circle (no. 277) and also of a tiny ring of five large stones (no. 275) to the north-east and of a small embanked circle (no. 278) to the south-west. Apart from other circles (nos. 271a and 279) and cairns (nos. 271b and c, 273 and 274) there is a large mound of stones with an encircling ditch and bank (no. 425), approximating in form to the Wessex bell-barrows. To the south of these, on the summit of Moelfre, is another small cairn (no. 419), and in the featureless moor-land south of Moelfre, known as Bryniau Bugeilydd, is a large cairn cemetery including at least two examples (nos. 418 and 429a) of flat barrows with stone kerbs and central cists, suggesting a Highland Zone version of the Wessex disc-barrow.

Plumpton plain is situated on the top of the South Downs, roughly 600 feet above sea level, six miles north-east of Brighton and four miles north-west of Lewes (fig. 1). From its western end a broad spur slopes gently southwards from the northern escarpment of the Downs, lying between Moustone Valley on the south-east and Faulkners Bottom on the west. Most of this Downland is covered with a dense scrub of gorse, thorn and bramble, and with large patches of bracken and heather. A series of broad paths running roughly at right angles with one another has been cut through this vegetation to facilitate the preservation of game. Along the main ridge of the spur running north and south is a broad gallop which, at a height of 600 feet O.D., passes through a group of earthworks situated 1500 feet from the north edge of the Downs and 2300 feet east of Streathill Farm. This group was the primary object of bur investigations and will be referred to as Site A (fig. 2).

Site B (fig. 3) lies a quarter of a mile to the south-east of Site A on a small lateral spur jutting between the twin heads of Moustone Bottom. The only visible evidence of prehistoric occupation was a quantity of coarse gritty sherds and calcined flints on the surface to the south-east of a low bank and ditch which runs across the spur.

Several groups of lynchets enclosing square Celtic fields are to be seen in the neighbourhood of these two sites. They lie principally to the south-east of Site A and to the south of Site B.

It is widely accepted that between the beginning of the Early Neolithic period and the end of the Early Bronze Age different regions of Britain were connected to one another by sea, but little is known about the nature of maritime contacts before plank-built boats developed during the 2nd millennium bc. This paper considers a series of coastal sites, some of which were first settled from Mesolithic times. From the early 4th millennium they were also associated with artefact production and the use of imported objects and raw materials. Their distribution focuses on the region of isostatic uplift in northern Britain where the ancient shoreline still survives. It is considered in relation to a new model of coastal change which suggests that these locations were characterised by natural havens sheltered behind islands or bars. The sites can be compared with the ‘landing places’ and ‘beach markets’ discussed by historical archaeologists in recent years.

This paper seeks to re-examine the long-held view that the Celtic language developed somewhere in west central Europe and was carried westwards to the Atlantic zone, eventually reaching Ireland. An overview of the archaeological evidence for Atlantic connectivity illustrates the longue durée of community interactions along the seaways, beginning around 9000 BC, to the second quarter of the 3rd millennium. At this time mobility increased dramatically and it has been shown clearly that the Maritime Bell Beaker package spread eastwards to impact on and interact with the Battle Axe/Corded Ware tradition. Connectivity was at its most intense during the subsequent Atlantic Bronze Age until, from the 8th century BC, what had been a unified zone began to fragment into a series of regional systems. This broad archaeological scenario, with its firm chronological framework, receives more support from recent DNA studies than does the previous view, which drew heavily on ancient and (now) antiquarian views of Celticness and invasion hypotheses. It is posited that the Celtic language could in fact have emerged in the Atlantic zone and spread eastwards.

This paper presents a systematic study of later Bronze Age practices at round barrows – features that are typically seen as emblematic of the Early Bronze Age in Britain. Examining the evidence from 87 excavated round barrows in the east of England, it adds subtlety and empirical detail to previous discussions about the changing role of funerary monuments over the course of the 2nd millennium bc. A wide variety of activities was undertaken at existing round barrows in the later Bronze Age. Burials were added, the monuments themselves were augmented and replicated, they were often actively built into land boundary systems, and settlements were located close to them. The findings not only attest to the continued (if shifting) significance of round barrows in the later Bronze Age, they also contribute substantially to wider debates about the character of life during this period in lowland Britain – the shifting relationship between ‘ritual’ and ‘everyday’ practices, and the processes by which mobile communities began to settle down. More broadly, this investigation adds to a growing body of work that explores the multi-temporal qualities of later prehistoric landscapes.

For many years a programme of examining stone implements has been organized by the Council for British Archaeology's Sub-Committee for Implement Petrology. The East Anglian aspect of this programme, covering the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, has long been active, being administered from Norwich Castle Museum under the auspices of the CBA, first by the late R. Rainbird Clarke and more recently by the authors of this report. The petrological work has been very largely undertaken by Dr F. S. Wallis and Mr E. D. Evens in co-operation with the Geological Department of Bristol University. The results embodied in this report, with those for Yorkshire recently published (Keen & Radley, 1971) and other identifications noted in the CBA's Annual Reports, and with the Fifth Report on south-western implements which appears elsewhere in these Proceedings (Evens, Smith & Wallis, 1972), may be taken together as a measure of the debt which prehistorians owe to Dr. Wallis and Mr Evens—the ‘Evens and self’ of much correspondence.

The excavations to be described were carried out in the autumn and winter of 1941–42, and a total of fifteen barrows was examined. Of these, ten were on Beaulieu Heath, to the south of the Brockenhurst–Hatchet Gate road, and the remaining five near Stoney Cross to the north-west of the New Forest. All the barrows were about to be destroyed in the course of building operations, and it was due to the urgency of the situation that none of the barrows could be more fully excavated. The time of year, and, in the case of Beaulieu Heath, the lowness of the site, made the undertaking in wet weather at least, an extremely difficult one. It is therefore with full knowledge of its incompleteness that I must present this report.

Six men were employed at both sites, with Mr Rogers as foreman. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his very willing co-operation. Other helpers included Messrs Richard Atkinson, Philip Suggett, L. V. Grinsell and Aubrey Parke, Miss Jocelyn Morris and Miss B. de Cardi, and Mr and Mrs Maxwell-Hyslop. I am most grateful to all of them, and more especially to Miss Jocelyn Morris and Mr Atkinson, to whose skill and patience is largely due the recovery of rhe remains of the mortuary-house in Barrow II. Mr B. H. St. J. O'Neil visited both sites several times. Thanks are also due to Dr F. E. Zeuner for his remarks on the soil specimens, to my husband for a note on the Barrow II mortuary-house and to Sir Cyril Fox for his pottery report.

For many years archaeologists interested in the study of the Palaeolithic in North Africa and Eurasia have been using cumulative percentage frequency graphs for the comparison of prehistoric artefact assemblages. For examples we refer to the references at the foot of this text. However, it is perhaps time to carefully review this technique and its future utility.

Statistical techniques and mathematical models are slowly infiltrating and reshaping the discipline of archaeology—increasing the power and depth of both analysis and synthesis. It is perhaps already possible to distinguish the cumulative advance of these techniques in archaeology from the initial role of demonstrative aids and methods of data display towards an increasingly powerful analytical role with a capacity for predictive inference. In the ranks of the first generation we have the early use of graphs, frequency polygons and histograms for mapping severely limited numbers of percentages or attribute ratios. In the second generation of statistical techniques the impact of the computer is felt for the first time and archaeology is developing an array of exploratory attempts to integrate the probing capacity of such methods as factor analysis, matrix analysis and principal component analysis.

Skomer is an island off the west coast of Dyfed, the archaeology of which, consisting of fields, small enclosures, cairns, huts and dams, is well preserved. The broad outline and much detail was recorded by W. F. Grimes in 1950 and it was demonstrated that about two-thirds of the island is covered in a more or less undisturbed prehistoric landscape, preservation being due to the absence of Medieval and later settlement. The fieldwork described in the present paper was designed to record in detail small enclosures, or pounds, and habitation sites, mainly at a scale of 1:100 which was not done by Grimes. In addition two sets of air photographs were used to make a map of the fields. The work was done as a student exercise and is accordingly largely descriptive. However, analysis at two spatial levels has been attempted, one for huts and pounds and one for settlement complexes as a whole. But beyond the island itself there has been no comparative survey. The remains could be of any age from the Neolithic to early Roman period.

This paper is dedicated to John Evans, environmental archaeologist extraordinaire, who died 14 June 2005, while this paper was in press. He continually reminded us that environmental data should address questions of people and landscape and be relevant to the understanding of Prehistory by our archaeological colleagues.

The Beaker period in north-west Europe is abound with objects, burials, and monuments, but evidence of settlement and domestic life is often absent or less easily found, and England is no exception. Despite the thousands of barrows with rich artefacts assemblages (eg, Amesbury Archer) and the numerous pits with non-domestic assemblages of placed items, evidence for houses and settlement are sparse despite the indication of increased agriculture and sedentism. This paper explores this problem on the chalklands of southern England that are rich in Beaker finds, and which are generally recognised as one of the best studied and well understood landscapes in Europe. From this study it is suggested that Beaker domestic sites are present, but are often in low lying positions on the chalk downs and have subsequently been buried by variable depths of hillwash, making them invisible to normal archaeological survey and reconnaissance.

A wealth of cave sites makes southern Belgium the most important area for understanding the north-western European Early Upper Palaeolithic. However, despite their abundance, the interpretation of many assemblages remains problematic. Here we present a new study of lithic material from layer B of Trou du Renard (Furfooz, Namur Province) and consider its place in the Belgian Aurignacian. The assemblage is typical of Late Aurignacian assemblages found across western Europe, underscoring the contrast between the Aurignacian and the periods that pre- and post-date it, when we instead see profound differences between north and south. The assemblage is apparently unmixed, distinguishing Trou du Renard from other key Belgian Aurignacian cave sites. A large proportion of the site’s lithic assemblage documents the production of small bladelets from carinated/busqué burin cores, suggesting that Trou du Renard served as a short-term hunting camp. Radiocarbon dating cannot pinpoint the assemblage’s age, though here it is argued to be c. 32–33,000 bp (c. 36–37,000 cal bp) on the basis of its similarity to the well-dated Aurignacian assemblage from Maisières Canal (Atelier de Taille de la Berge Nord-Est area). For the same reason a third assemblage – Trou Walou layer CI-1 – is also argued to be contemporaneous. Trou du Renard, Maisières Canal and Trou Walou may represent three points in the same Late Aurignacian landscape. Differences between their lithic assemblages can be explained by the acquisition and transport of flint, and by a desire to produce small bladelets of highly standardised form irrespective of the size and shape of available blanks.