An excavation at the Iron Age Promontory Fort at Embury Beacon is described. Most of the work was concentrated on the inner rampart, its entrance and the small remaining portion of the interior, where structures revealed by post holes were associated with Glastonbury style pottery. The outer rampart was also sectioned and areas within the wide intervallum space investigated.

This paper describes the results of two seasons of excavation and associated palaeoenvironmental analyses of a wetland site on Beccles Marshes, Beccles, Suffolk. The site has been identified as a triple post alignment of oak timbers (0.6–2.0 m long), over 100 m in length, and 3–4 m wide, running north-west to south-east towards the River Waveney. It was constructed in a single phase which has been dated dendrochronologically to 75 BC, although discrete brushwood features identified as possible short trackways have been dated by radiocarbon to both before and after the alignment was built. It is unclear if the posts ever supported a superstructure but notches (‘halving lap joints’) in some of the posts appear to have held timbers to support the posts and/or aid in their insertion. In addition, fragments of both Iron Age and Romano-British pottery were recovered. A substantial assemblage of worked wooden remains appears to reflect the construction of the post row itself and perhaps the on-site clearance of floodplain vegetation. This assemblage also contains waste material derived from the reduction splitting of timbers larger than the posts of the alignment, but which have not been recovered from the site. Environmental analyses indicate that the current landscape context of the site with respect to the River Waveney is probably similar to that which pertained in prehistory. The coleoptera (beetle) record illustrates a series of changes in the on-site vegetation in the period before, during and after the main phase of human activity which may be related to a range of factors including floodplain hydrology and anthropogenic utilisation of Beccles Marshes. The possible form and function of the site is discussed in relation to the later prehistoric period in Suffolk.

The point is sometimes made that in primitive trade psychological satisfaction is obtained rather by the exchange of gifts and enhancement of prestige than by any economic advantage to the traders. It is possible, I think, to lay too much stress on this aspect of primitive trade at the expense of the more prosaic motive of material economic gain, though I do not, of course, wish to belittle the non-economic factors involved and indeed propose to draw attention to some of them. Naturally I shall take instances from my own experience, and these are mostly in areas with regular land contacts where the non-economic aspects of trade are likely to be less prominent than they are in self-contained and self-sufficient island communities. At the same time the first case I wish to examine is one of the inter-island trade in the Nicobar Islands.

Few English deposits have aroused more disputation among geologists than the Crag beds of Norfolk and Suffolk, and on many of the points raised there is as yet no general agreement. This more particularly applies to the sands, gravels, and clays associated with the Norwich Crag, one school considering them part of the Crag formation and therefore Pliocene, and another believing them to be glacial and Pleistocene. Doubt on this matter has had an important bearing on the discovery of Sub-Crag implements in Norfolk, though I believe that the evidence is now incontrovertible. With regard to the basement-bed of the Crag, whether of the Coralline, Red, or Norwich Crag, which appear to have been successive deposits in the order given, the geological evidence as to position and antiquity—though not as to the conditions under which it was deposited—is not disputed. Mr. F. W. Harmer, F.G.S., says:—“In consequence of a combined movement of elevation iu the southern part of this region, and of subsidence towards the north, the whole Crag basin moving as on a pivot, its southern margin was gradually shifted, the sea retiring towards the north.

During the successive Glacial periods which seem to have occurred at regular intervals and of increasing or diminishing intensity, what were the climatic conditions in the present tropical regions?

This is dated from Southern India, where I am endeavouring to visualise and imagine some of the climatic conditions in which ancient man at some of these periods may have lived, and in which the implements, of which I am finding some beautiful examples, may have been made and used and subsequently abandoned, being now found in certain positions and horizons.

Cuddapah is the chief town of a district where I have found most of the implements of palæolithic type of which I have given series to, I suppose, more than a hundred museums. If I include African and Egyptian implements, then the number of museums and institutions is 246 in all. Cuddapah is pretty well searched out now as regards implements, as there is a native whom Mr. McLeod, the late Collector of Cuddapah, trained as a searcher, and who has usually been with me and who is with me on the present occasion, who has searched most of that district in my company. Dr. Sturge has very beautifully and clearly applied the Draysonian theory to certain questions in prehistorics. While man in Northern Europe was being driven backwards and forwards, and alternately scorched and frozen for thousands of years, alternating with long periods of comparative climatic repose such as we are now enjoying, what, I ask, was happening to his confrère in India? As far as I can ascertain from the evidential positions and surroundings of such palæolithic implements as I have myself picked up, the climate in this part of the world was devoid of those catastrophic floods and alternating Arctic and Tropical climates which must have made life so exciting in other latitudes.

In 1922 Miss N. F. Layard gave as her presidential address an account of some prehistoric cooking-places, which she had discovered near a stream at Buckenham Tofts, Norfolk (Proc., P.S.E.A., Vol. III., Part IV.). One of the hearths excavated consisted of a triangular mass of calcined flints, up to two feet in depth, and covering an area of over 100 square yards. This was on one end of a mound rising about ten feet above the general level of the swamp bordering the stream. Amongst this material were found several flint implements, including knives typical of the Bronze Age. There were also found two sherds of pottery corresponding closely to a known Bronze Age type, though this also continued into the Early Iron Age.

Knowing nothing of Miss Layard's discoveries, in 1927 I came across similar deposits of pot-boilers, etc., at Hoe, near East Dereham. These are on either side of a small stream, which eventually runs into the River Wensum. Mr. Sainty and Mr. Newnham were good enough to come over and examine them, and Mr. Newnham subsequently gave a short account of them at the December meeting that year (Proc., P.S.E.A., Vol. V., Part III. page 311).

I was able to revisit the site in June this year (1931), and at one place where, however, there was hardly a mound at all, a layer of pot-boilers, 6 ins. deep, was found under about 6 ins. of turf and soil. Excavation of an area 12 feet by 8 feet produced nearly a pailful of pottery fragments, three dozen scrapers, and an implement of the bone-breaker type, besides numbers of flakes and cores.

By the very kind permission of the owners, I was enabled to carry out the excavation of some “floors” at Grime's Graves, in June and July, 1919, with some friends.

At the same time Mr. D. Richardson was clearing the remarkable site which he discovered in the North Field.

The centre of Floor 52 was fifty paces N.E. of the corner of the West Field, and fourteen from the edge of the cart track north of the wood. Twenty yards N.W. of the said centre was Floor 47, nearer to the cart track coming up out of the valley, and with comparatively small flakes and cores, of poor quality. The facets are short, deep, and wide, like those on an implement of the Chelles Period. The shapes of the cores differ from the true Grime's Graves type. At Floor 51 Mr. W. G. Clarke rightly pointed out that these traits were, in part, due to the fact that wall-stone was used. Only in part, however, for floor-stone was also used, as examination showed. The chipped flints in the outer part of Floor 47 lay in the lower part of the humus, 9 ins. below the surface.

From my title, you might think that this was to be a discourse on human origins and the story of early Man — about the fossil and genetic evidence for regarding Africa as the cradle of mankind such as the lecture to our Society by Mary Leakey four years ago. However, such is not my intention. My title is taken from a poem by A. E. Housman, the relevant portion of which reads:

‘Oh I will sit me down and weep For bones in Africa‘.

Housman (1956, 123) was uttering a threnody for a soldier who died in Africa, but I utter my lament on behalf of others.

But first, a brief look at aspects of the Prehistoric Society which show that it continues to flourish and grow. In these days of falling memberships, the Society has actually grown. We have made a modest increase in our Research Fund. The Proceedings and the maintenance of their high standard remain the Society's greatest contribution to prehistoric archaeology and justify the large proportion of our resources which we devote to them. This is in the realm of scholarship and research. In addition, we are moving into archaeological policy, with the intention of making the Society's voice heard in the councils of the nation as they affect prehistoric archaeology.

The large perforated stone axe-hammer, illustrated by fig. 1, was found in 1933 in a peat bog near Cwrt Farm, Llangeitho, Cardiganshire (6-in. O.S. Cards, XX, S.E.). It is described by W. F. Grimes (1935) as being ‘related typologically to other axes which can be dated to the Bronze Age’; he adds ‘a date within that period may be accepted as the most likely. The position and circumstances in which it was found favour such an early date without confirming it.’ The same circumstances suggested that the find might perhaps be dated by the method of pollen analysis. The object itself was examined, but it had already been cleaned thoroughly, and even scraping inside the socket yielded only the merest traces of peat, quite insufficient for analysis.