A survey of Ingleborough was undertaken by RCHME in the summer of 1988 at the request of the Yorkshire Dales National Park who are concerned by the considerable erosion and damage occurring on the Peak as a result of the popularity of the Three Peaks footpath. This is affecting not only the natural surface of the hill but also the archaeological remains.

The summit of Ingleborough, one of the Three Peaks of the Yorkshire Dales, is a gritstone cap overlying the sandstone, shale and limestone beds of the Yoredale Series which, in turn, overlie the Great Scar Limestone. This formation gives Ingleborough its distinctive stepped profile, created by differential weathering, except where glacial drift forms smoother slopes on the flanks (Crutchley 1981, 41–44). The coarse gritstone forms a roughly triangular, plateau-like summit with only a slight rise from the rim to the highest point, at 723 m OD, now occupied by a triangulation pillar and cruciform walkers's shelter.

This paper offers a summary of our present archaeological knowledge of the modern county of Norfolk, a large and geographically diverse tract of northern East Anglia, during the 5th–2nd millennia BC. It concludes by listing some topics deserving of future research.

The Inland Niger Delta in Mali is scattered with thousands of tell-like dwelling mounds that testify to the rich archaeological heritage of this attractive occupation area. The results of archaeological research suggest an occupation history of more than two millennia in which large urban settlements such as Djenné-Djeno and Dia play a central role. Regional surveys have revealed primary information on the vast rural hinterland of these extensive cities, but little is known about the structure and evolution of this considerable settlement system. The aim of the re-examination of 128 sites in the southern part of the Niger alluvial plain was to obtain an understanding of intersite relations based on sites' chronological, functional, socio-economic, and hierarchical differentiation and their participation in different trade networks. For the research it was crucial to find a method to date the last occupation period of the sites using surface remains. The results of the study emphasise the former occupants' preference for the most elevated landscape units close to fertile pastures, good cultivation grounds, and extensive fishing potential for their settlement sites. The occupants' ability to distribute and exchange agricultural surplus for luxury goods – imported via regional, inter-regional and trans-Saharan trade networks – is impressive, showing that they were able to compete with occupants of the large urban centres. Although the rural sites were much smaller than Djenné-Djeno and Dia, they were well connected. The rural hinterland apparently played an important role in most of the great West African empires. Population densities of the Inland Niger Delta were high for a long time, until the trade routes changed in the 15th century AD and the region became socio-politically unstable. This led to the abandonment of settlements, first around the urban settlements, and later also in the rural hinterland. The present-day occupation of the region is only a poor reflection of its impressive past.

Our knowledge of the Belgian Bronze Age is still very partial. Most of the bronze objects of this period — and I am not the only one to say they are important — remain unpublished. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that a great many bronzes have been, or still are, part of private collections. Objects fundamental to our understanding of Bronze Age economics have remained inaccessible for years; moreover, some of these, probably in consequence of this regrettable situation, have been stigmatised by this or that scholar's doubts about their authenticity. It is true that they have been traded by not always very scrupulous dealers.

Many scholars have been discouraged by the doubtful quality of part of the material, but too many scholars have therefore lost interest in its totality. A few important hoards, though in public collections, have thus been neglected, and remained unpublished for more than a century (Warmenbol forthcoming a and b). The largest collections, those of Edouard Bernays (Antwerp), George Hasse (Antwerp), J. Moens (Ghent) and J. Maertens de Noordhout (Ghent), were all greatly expanded through the acquisition of objects found during the extensive dredging carried out in the 1910s and 1920s, mainly in the Schelde, but also in other rivers. Great quantities of bronzes were found at places such as Melle, Wetteren, Wichelen and Schoonaarde. All these objects got on the market, and assuredly some dealers improved their stocks by enriching them with objects certainly found elsewhere.

In a recent number of these Proceedings, the present writer defined a type of megalithic burial chamber which was there called the transepted gallery grave, and discussed the distribution of this type in southern Britain. The transepted gallery grave (sometimes called the cruciform gallery grave, or the cruciform allée couverte) consists, as was pointed out, of a central gallery grave or allée couverte with one or two pairs of small rectangular side-chambers: in plan this type of monument resembles either a Latin or a Lorraine cross. Sometimes the gallery extends beyond the last pair of side-chambers, at others it stops flush with them. It will be remembered that we listed eight tombs of this type in England and Wales: Pare le Breos Cwm and Penmaen Burrows in Glamorgan, Nempnett Thrubwell and Stoney Littleton in Somerset, Wayland's Smithy in Berkshire, and three Gloucestershire sites—Uley, Nympsfield, and Notgrove. From the distribution of these chambers it was suggested that some of them formed the primary settlement on the shores of the Bristol Channel of a culture which subsequently spread over south-east Wales, the south-west Midlands, Wiltshire and Somerset, and which we called the Severn-Cotswold culture.

It was, moreover, suggested that the origin of the transepted gallery grave in Britain, and therefore of the Cotswold-Severn culture, must be sought for outside the British Isles, and we agreed with Fleure, Forde, and Le Rouzic in deriving these early settlers on the shores of the Bristol Channel from Brittany. In 1936, when the article was written, I knew of only about half-a-dozen transepted gallery graves in France: but in the following year I discovered among the Lukis MSS. at St. Peter Port a number of plans of other transepted gallery graves in western France.

This paper evaluates traditional and current interpretations of the Dorsey, a large earthwork and timber piled enclosure in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland. It casts doubt on the interpretation of the site as a frontier defence and, on the basis of parallels with other Irish sites such as Navan Fort, suggests that it may have been a focus of ritual activity. Although concentrating on a single site, specific features are identified which may, with further analysis, provide an alternative and enhanced understanding of a range of Iron Age sites in Ireland.

In giving an account of the humanly-fashioned flints found during the excavations at High Lodge, it is proposed to deal with those discovered in exposing section A, and to proceed to describe the specimens recovered in the other diggings, which will be dealt with in their alphabetical order.

Section A. A small twisted, ovate palæolithic implement, flatter on one face than on the other, and referable, it seems, to Late Acheulean times, was found associated with the thin seam of gravel occurring under the turf at section A. This specimen, which exhibits only small signs of abrasion, is of a yellowish colour, except where areas of hardness in the flint have resisted the agent of discolouration. These areas are either of a dark coffee shade, or coloured a light brown. The specimen measures in greatest length ins.; in greatest width 2 ins.; and greatest thickness ins.

I am exhibiting a number of flakes and implements, which appear to be of Le Moustier date, from Acton on the Taplow Terrace, and West Drayton and Iver on the Boyn Hill Terrace.

The Acton specimens are from the immediate vicinity of the working floor discovered by the late Mr. Allen Brown some forty years ago. During recent excavations in Creffield Road, I picked out of the brick-earth, thrown up from a depth of 4 to 6½ feet, seventy humanly struck flints. Forty-six are unpatinated, fresh-looking and unabraded, twenty have a bluey-white patination, amongst which are several with slightly dulled edges, and four are light-ochreous. The freshness of the cortex on several of the unpatinated flints suggests that some of the raw material was derived directly from the chalk. The majority are simple flakes and spalls. The remainder consists of eighteen small Levallois flakes, varying in size from 2 by 1½ to 3½ by 2¼ inches, one small tortoise core, a small flattish core with flaking on one face at right angles to that on the other, a flint pebble which has been used as a hammerstone, one small point and two exceptional pieces. One of these is a fairly typical graver (bee de flûte) with bluey-white patination (Fig. 1); the other may be described as a busked graver, it is made from a thickish external flake and is unpatinated (Fig. 2). A few of the flakes shew slight signs of use.

It is admitted by all workers in prehistory that the human implements which are found upon the surface do not all belong to the Neolithic period, although, until recently, they have always been called Neolithic. It therefore seems better to define them clearly as a Surface Series, without prejudice to their date.

Beyond this point of general agreement, differences of opinion are strongly marked. Some workers would boldly place the majority of the Surface Series in the Later Palæolithic period, or “Cave Age,” while others are unable to accept this view.

It must be admitted that we have very little knowledge of remains belonging to a strictly-defined Neolithic period. We know that “Neolithic” implements continued to be extensively used during the Early Bronze Age, and even in later times.

Hackpen Hill, 888-ft., is the highest ridge of the Marlborough Downs properly so called, and has already been described in my paper on the Palæoliths found on its summit. The southern hills, overlooking the Pewsey Valley, rise to 965-ft. The top of the hill, hough narrow, is flat, and bears pockets of Tertiary remains, the ub-soil being of a clayey nature almost throughout.

Until recently, five large fields were tilled, and seventeen years ago a sixth was still under the plough. The space covered by these was 1½ miles in length; and on an average, about ⅓ mile in width, two of the fields stretching a little way down the dip slope of the hill.

The excavations which, with the flint implements and other relics discovered, it is the purpose of this paper to describe, commenced towards the end of February, 1919, and continued until July, 1920. The money to pay for the wages of the excavator, Baxter, was most generously supplied by the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund, and I wish to record my thanks for their invaluable help.

I have to acknowledge also, with gratitude the assistance given me in my researches by Sir Ray Lankester, K.C.B., F.R.S., Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S., Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., Professor J. E. Marr, F.R.S., Dr. Smith Woodard, F.R.S., Dr. Charles Andrews, F.R.S., Mr. Reginald Smith, and the owners of the various properties upon which the diggings were conducted.

The drawings which illustrate this paper are reproduced from work executed by Mr. E. T. Lingwood, to whom the science of prehistoric archæology is greatly indebted for his continued and invaluable help in the matter of illustrations.

The type of flint implement which we are investigating here was first distinguished by the late Sir John Evans in his Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain as long ago as 1872. Out of a total of 52 specimens noted in this paper, 12 were mentioned by Evans in his 2nd edition, 12 have been published elsewhere, and 28 are here recorded for the first time. Outlines of 50 and a photograph of another are given in Figs. 1-3,7 and 8.

They consist of long narrow blades carefully flaked over both faces, which are of roughly equal convexity, to produce two cutting edges. In plan the tip and the butt are usually defined by the more tapering character of the former, while the general outline is asymmetric. The type as thus defined is quite distinct from any other, though it differs only by its asymmetry from certain leaf-shaped blades flaked over both faces. There is, however, a further characteristic, namely a varying extent and degree of concavity of one cutting edge, which further defines our type and marks it off still more from other flint forms. We mention in this paper two examples showing asymmetry of form (Nos. 28 and 29), but lacking any degree of concavity in either cutting-edge, as they may be related to the true sickle form.

In March 1949, work was carried out at The Bull Ring, Dove Holes, Derbyshire, by members of the Oxford University Archaeological Society, as part of the general survey of ‘henge“ monuments, undertaken by Mr R. J. C. Atkinson. The site was surveyed and was found to be of the ‘double-entrance’ class of Henge Monument. No stone-holes were found, but it is known from an 18th century account that the monument once had a stone setting similar to that at Arbor Low, Derbyshire. Trenches revealed the form of the ditch and bank, but the dating evidence was confined to two fragments of pottery, one of them a rim sherd, probably related to Beaker fabric.

The English Midlands (fig. 1) as a natural region, and for the purposes of environmental archaeology, form a more restricted area than that to which the term is usually applied in modern geography. Fox (1943, 68) has written of ‘… the great triangle of forest lands which form the Midlands …’ and reference to the maps in the same work shows this triangle as roughly lying between the Dee estuary at Chester, the confluence of the Severn and the Avon at Tewkesbury, and a point in the vicinity of the watershed between the Trent and the rivers of the Wash. For convenience of reference it is suggested that the approximate eastern point should be represented by the site of Belvoir Castle for here the plain has narrowed between the southern tip of the Pennines, and the uplands of Leicestershire, to the effective basin of the Trent. This river in its course below Nottingham flows through ancient forest lands, but it is no longer Midland country.

The most uniform frontier of the Midlands, as here defined, is that provided to the south and east by the great sweep of the Jurassic uplands from the Cotswolds to Lincoln Edge. To the west, the Severn and the hill country of the Welsh borderlands form a zone which provides natural communications north and south and into the Welsh massif, but which, as it were, turns its back to the east. The northern confines of the Midlands are altogether less definite, but may be said to creep round the edges of the southern Pennines from the south bank of the Mersey to the middle course of the Trent.

Since the studies of Vignard brought the micro-burin, the presence of which Siret had already noted at El Garcel, into fashion as an Upper Palaeolithic tool of unknown purpose, there has been much discussion of this tiny and enigmatic object.

I confess that I paid little attention to it when I visited the collection of M. Vignard in Paris 25 years ago. He showed me his micro-burins from the Sebilian and, after hearing my account of the finds at Parpalló, predicted that I should find examples among the flints from that site, which I was then in process of classifying. And, in fact, a few months later I found the first example, a very fine and characteristic one, in the third Magdalenian level. Other examples followed from similar levels, and later, when we were classifying the flint from the Solutrean levels, we discovered to our surprise that they were also present there. Since then they have continued to appear on other sites, so that it seems worth while to summarize here the data which we now possess about them.

Let us look at the situation in the deposits which I have studied.

In the cave of Parpalló they are found in appreciable numbers at two points in the typological evolution. From a depth of 5.25 m. upwards, that is during the phases which I have named Upper Solutrean and final Solutreo-gravettian, they are relatively abundant (about 50 examples).