The majority of scientists hold the opinion that mankind first knew metal in the form of native copper. In particular, at this period the malleability of native copper was realized, and its brittleness when cold worked, as well as the need of annealing to cold forge the necessary tools. The melting of copper was discovered later when native copper was met with in association with ores.

These opinions are shared by H. H. Coghlan and H. Otto and W. Witter, though the first mentioned also pointed out that in some regions artifacts made from copper alloys existed in early periods while artifacts made of pure copper might be met with in the latest periods.

V. I. Vernadski also had some doubt about the unconditional validity of this theory. However, he did not deny that where native copper was distributed it was the first metal replacing (although only partly) stone and bone for making tools. In certain cases such an assertion has been supported by old and unreliable analyses of ancient artifacts, as well as by some mistakes in the determination of their age.

Summary. Excavations at Bury Hill dated a small, continuously-ditched enclosure to the early Neolithic. The interior of the enclosure, c. 1 ha in extent, was sampled by two trial cuttings, 9 m wide, running across the enclosure at right angles to one another. No Neolithic features were found. Sampling the ditch produced early Neolithic pottery, flintwork and animal bone. Though continuous, the ditch had a ‘beaded’ appearance, with a single entrance. No corresponding bank survived, though aerial photographs indicated its existence on the inside of the ditch.

The Presidency of the Prehistoric Society to which you have done me the great honour of calling me, differs from that of some other societies in that, though the period of office is four years the President is only required to deliver one Address. No doubt we owe this mercy to the fact that our customs have taken shape during an age, which it would be tempting providence to call more humane, but which is at any rate less tolerant of some forms of avoidable boredom than some previous ones. Yet even in these less rigorous times I suppose we should feel uneasy if we allowed our Presidents, or ourselves, to escape scot free: one year in four we must undergo the rite and trust that in some obscure way it will help us to avoid the evil eye and ensure at the cost of an hour's suffering a further spell of prosperity and well-being for the Society.

The barrow is situated on the eastern fringe of the township of Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire, in the south-western corner of a recreation ground, adjacent to Folly Farm (fig. 1). It is some 190 feet in diameter and 7 feet in height; the grassy slopes (pl. XII, 1) have provided, for many years, a tumbling ground for the local children. At the end of 1953, the Parish Council planned to level the barrow, and lay out a football pitch. In the face of this impending destruction, excavations were undertaken by the Ministry of Works, under the directorship of the writer. He was assisted in this task by Miss D. G. Duckett (Mrs J. G. Hurst), who during the latter part of the operation was in charge of all day-to-day activities. Her good management and shrewd observation, in conditions which were often adverse, ensured the measure of success with which the labours were crowned.

One of Piggott's Young Turks, C.W. Phillips (1987, 48), wrote in his autobiography, ‘By 1935, I was to be part-author of a revolution in the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia and become Hon. Secretary of the national Prehistoric Society conjured from its ashes.’

To this day, the transition of the regional Prehistoric Society of East Anglia to the national Prehistoric Society is remembered as a well planned coup. The story of an abrupt and resisted occupation of this key institution stands vividly in collective archaeological memory. In a recent interview, Thurstan Shaw, who took a First in the Cambridge Archaeology and Anthropology Tripos in 1936, clearly remembered his very young teacher, Grahame Clark, ‘referring to the take-over with considerable satisfaction’ (Shaw, in conversation with the author, 1996). Another of Clark's students, Jack Golson, who graduated in '51, maintains that Phillips, Clark, Hawkes, and Piggott took the Society out of an ‘East Anglia frame to a national level … They stacked it!’ (Golson, in conversation with the author, 1996).

Excavation of the surviving half of a barrow, identified from aerial photographs as having three concentric ditches, revealed a sequence of at least six major alterations. The site may originally have been a Class I henge monument subsequently adapted for use as a barrow. Features of all phases were mainly in the central area of the barrow and included two inhumations in coffins, one accompanied by a Yorkshire-type food vessel. A cremation in a Primary Series collared urn was accompanied by a bronze razor/knife and two flint plano-convex knives. A further cremation in a collared urn was found in the middle ditch. The barrow lay close to a settlement; early Bronze Age flintwork and pottery, including Grooved Ware and Beaker, were recovered from the several phases of mound make-up.

Fossil human remains which can be attributed to the Lower Palaeolithic period are so rare that it is important to investigate thoroughly all finds for which such claims have been made. Almost all the human skulls discovered in Pleistocene deposits in Britain have proved to belong to Homo sapiens. Where the deposits are older than Upper Palaeolithic it is more than likely that such remains are not contemporaneous but represent later intrusive burials. However, the confirmation of the Lower Palaeolithic (Acheulian) age of the Swanscombe skull which, in so far as it is preserved, is not distinguishable from Homo sapiens, has revived interest in other human remains of modern type which have been reported from early deposits but laid aside as being of doubtful antiquity. Unfortunately some of these finds are now lost (e.g. Foxhall jaw). Outstanding among those which have survived are the Galley Hill skeleton and the Bury St. Edmunds skull. By application of the fluorine-dating method the former has been shown to be a comparatively recent intrusive burial (Oakley and Montagu, 1949).

The human skull fragment found near Bury St. Edmunds in 1882 has been preserved in the Moyse's Hall Museum at Bury, and is especially worthy of re-investigation as it Was claimed to be in a fossilized condition, and to have been found in a deposit which contained remains of mammoth and Acheulian implements. A Committee under Section H of the British Association was appointed in 1949 to re-investigate this discovery, and to try to find out (1) the geological age of the deposit from which the skull had been reported and (2) whether the skull was contemporaneous with this deposit. The work and conclusions of this Committee are described in the present report.

In 1917 the work at Grime's Graves was carried out by Mr. and Mrs. E. T. Lingwood and myself, and was limited to sections and floors, as the war prevented us from obtaining outside labour. For permission to excavate, we are again much indebted to the Trustees of the Weeting Estate, Mrs. T. S. Hall and Mr. C. Cockburn. The following paper gives the results of the work, and in it are figured some of the new implements.

The Grime's Graves culture shows a wide variety of forms, and I think it is important to illustrate as many of these as possible. This vast factory must have sent out implements far beyond the present boundaries of Britain, and no doubt many implements found on the Continent will be traced to this source. Very few industries have been sufficiently illustrated in the past, and this has led to erroneous conclusions when collections are not accessible.

In 1931 I described two newly-discovered stone age industries of post-glacial age situated in north-east Ireland which had been made by myself and worked in conjunction with my friend C. Blake Whelan: the one from the Lower Estuarine Clay on Islandmagee, and the other from what is probably a fluviatile gravel intercalated between the Upper and Lower Estuarine Clays in the raised-beach formation at Cushendun.

The former of these cultures has its counterpart in the blade industry beneath alluvium in the Orwell Estuary at Ipswich, Suffolk; whilst the latter finds its parallel in the raised-beach at Campbeltown in Argyllshire, Scotland. Adopting the familiar culture-sequence of Central Europe I had previously designated these two groups as phases of the Magdalenian period, but, in order to avoid confusion between the time-periods and the nomenclature of continental cultures, I have decided to base my chronology of the north Irish industries upon the natural changes of climate revealed by a study of the deposits in which they were found. The industries to be described below were contemporary with the Mesolithic Forest Cultures distinguished by Childe and Clark over the plain of northern Europe.

These implements and flakes were collected during the past two years from the ploughed fields of Beer Head and the immediate vicinity.

The white cliffs at Beer Head, S.E. Devon, are the last of the Chalk Cliffs to westward on the South Coast, but cretaceous beds appear inland further west at Haldon and Bovey Tracy.

The cliff section shows greensand at the base, and chalk, with a thin capping of “clay with flints and chert,” above.

The highest point of the Head is 475 ft. O.D. Early in last century gun-flints were made on this site. Occasional flakes from this factory are met with and are easily distinguished by their dull surface. The fields in which the implements were found are near the coastguard station, and from about 200 to 600 yards from the cliffs.

During the seasons 1926-8 excavations have been undertaken in this cavern by a party of members of the Torquay Natural History Society, co-operating with a sub-committee of Section H of the British Association. A trench 60 feet long has been carried along the northern wall of the chambers known as the Vestibule and the N.E. Gallery so as to pass directly beneath the original position of the Black Band, a prehistoric hearth of very late Magdalenian age discovered in 1866 by William Pengelly. The Black Band adhered to the base of the upper or Granular Stalagmite, and at a depth of 4 feet lower in the Cave-earth, Pengelly had collected a couple of rostrate scrapers, an end-scraper with opposed point, and a bone pin, identified by Miss Garrod in 1926 as belonging to an industry of Middle Aurignacian type.

In the autumn of 1913, Mr. T. C. Cantrill, F.G.S., of the Geological Survey, drew the writer's attention to the possibility of finding flint artefacts in the surface soils of Hinckley and neigh-bourhood wherever the chalky boulder clays and gravels were in evidence. During his survey of the drift in this district in that and the following year, he himself found a lozenge-shaped scraper (No. 163, Plate LXVIII) in a field at Sapcote, and also five spalls of unmistakable human origin in other neighbouring localities.

In the winter of that year, Mr. F. C. Grimes and I began a systematic search which by the following spring had resulted in sufficient material to encourage us to further efforts, and the following notes are the result of a by no means exhaustive survey during that and the two following winters.