During 1926 and 1927 my researches under the auspices of the Percy Sladen Trustees were continued upon the Cromer coast of Norfolk, and a quantity of additional evidence relating to the archæological contents of the Forest Bed obtained. The remarkable spreads of flints exposed at low tide upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham were again examined, while the Estuarine Beds and the Upper Freshwater Bed of the Forest Bed Series received also some amount of attention.

I have to record my thanks to Messrs. J. P. T. Burchell, H. H. Halls, Guy Maynard, and J. E. Sainty for valuable help during these researches.

The further examination of the large spreads of flint present upon the foreshore at Cromer, East Runton, West Runton, and Sheringham has yielded many new and interesting facts regarding them. These spreads all rest upon the chalk, which along the coast-line between Cromer and Sheringham is exposed in places at low tide. Moreover, though differing in extent, they all present, to the casual observer, a very similar appearance, and are without doubt at the present time being subjected to closely similar physical conditions.

During the year 1924 I made some observations on the North Kent coast between Swalecliffe and Reculver for the purpose of locating the cultural horizon of the Thames pick, an implement which has been found in plenty upon the beach and sea floor in that locality, but which has not yet been indisputably classified by archæologists.

The finds made up to November, 1924, were shown by me to the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, but the paper must be considered unsatisfactory since the pivot on which any conclusions from those finds had to turn was the date of the prehistoric pottery. On this question I found there were differences of opinion. On the one hand I was advised that the pottery was of the Early Iron Age, on the other that it was Neolithic. Having made a careful study of all the comparative evidence I could trace, I found myself unable to disregard either opinion. The apparent association of flint implements with the pottery, led me to adopt a Neolithic date, as at the time I had no evidence that Iron Age Man fashioned flint implements.

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.

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.

The existence of two prehistoric sites close on the south-west side of Salisbury was first demonstrated by Mr O. G. S. Crawford, F.S.A., from a chance air-photograph taken by Pilot-Officer Jonas, R.A.F. (Antiquity, III, 452). They are now called Woodbury I and II from a field name. The smaller of the two sites, Woodbury II, was selected for excavation by the Prehistoric Society because its size (diameter 150 m.) made its complete examination financially feasible and its clear markings promised good results. The site lies in the parish of Britford on high ground overlooking the Avon valley from the south-west, one mile west-south-west of Britford parish church. The ground is flat about 280 feet above sea level, and the site is set well back from the edge of the descent into the water meadows of the valley.

It was tested in March 1938 by Mr C. W. Phillips, F.S.A., who proved that the dark band of the enclosure revealed by the air-photograph (pl. LVII) was a ditch of V-shaped section. His discovery of Iron Age ‘A’ pottery in the silting suggested that the site belonged to this culture.

The aim of the Prehistoric Society in undertaking the investigation of this site has been to excavate it in its entirety. Such a work might be expected to fulfil two objects:

(a) by excavating the site completely many problems raised by the numerous partial excavations of analogous sites might be solved. In particular, profiting by previous experience in Germany, it was hoped to reveal something of the nature of such settlements and of the social organisation which they imply.

(b) the investigation might be expected to throw some fresh light on the interpretation of markings on air-photographs.

The restricted area of the site and the shallowness of the surface soil revealed by Mr Phillips's test made it particularly favourable for this kind of work, while the strong probability of building development in the near future lent urgency to the task.

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.

Within recent years, much attention has been focused on the earliest objects of harness which have long been noticed in the archaeological record. They are a matter of some importance in the perception of social structure from extant remains; Kossack (1954) presented strong arguments in favour of interpreting, in this manner, the early Hallstatt (Ha C) horse harness from Bavarian graves. Other major publications have since added to the picture of widespread, supposedly aristocratic adoption of harness and wagons in association with burial rite (northern and central Italy in the Early Iron Age, von Hase 1969; the Iberian peninsula in the same period, Schüle 1969; the Middle Danube to the Russian Steppes and to the Asian hinterland, Potratz 1966). Nor has the thesis of Gallus and Horvath (1939) been ignored, and the activities of ‘Thraco-Cimmerian’ cavalry still play a large part in the interpretation of west European horse harness. Already in 1954, however, Kossack observed the continuing elements of native, western Urnfield Europe in the entirely new combinations of grave-goods in Ha C and he indicated that the cheekpieces, while being modelled closely on the lines of preceding types found in the region of the Middle Danube, were, in fact, local variants chiefly concentrated in the graves of Bohemia and Bavaria. That western Europe had long had its own forms of cheekpiece was demonstrated by Thrane in 1963, yet the mouthpieces themselves have received no consolidated attention. This paper is an attempt to redress the balance, by gathering together the earliest metal bits in Europe west of Slovakia and Hungary, in order to see what light they throw on the problems of continuity and transition at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

In the summer and autumn of 1910 Postinspektor Schild found a small cemetery of the Middle La Tène Period (Reinecke, Phase C) on his property at Munich—Obermenzing, Upper Bavaria. Eight graves were discovered by him; one, if not two of them were cremation burials. A number of the graves yielded no goods or were at best but meagrely furnished and had either previously been disturbed or had belonged to poor people. Later, in 1913 and in 1914, G. von Merhart (on what must have been one of his earliest excavations) continued work there with the aid of Schild. Nine more graves were discovered, two being cremation, the others inhumation burials. It is of interest that the three richest burials all housed cremations. Apart from two graves found by Merhart, this cemetery is as yet unpublished, though references to it have appeared in various periodicals.

The material from the site is in the possession of the Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Staatssammlung, Munich, and I am more than indebted to its director, Doktor O. Kunkel, for his kindness in allowing me to publish the grave from this cemetery which forms the theme of this paper. My thanks are also due to two other friends, Doktor W. Krämer and Doktor H. Müller-Karpe for help on a number of points and for placing the respective records of the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege and of the Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Staatssammlung at my disposal.