In 1924 at the invitation of Dr. Garson, the official delegate of the British Association, I attended the French Congress for the Advancement of Science, which was being held at Liège, and at his request took over for exhibition a large number of flint implements from various parts of East Anglia. I was much struck by the great interest taken in the exhibits, many of these English examples being apparently new to the audience. A desire was expressed by more than one of the professors present that they could oftener have the opportunity of examining typical tools from this country.

While at Liège I paid a visit to the Archaeological Museum, and also to M. Hamel Nandrin's private collection, with its stores of Neolithic specimens from the ateliers of Sainte-Gertrude, Holland, and this impressed me with the necessity of having examples of tools from Continental sites more conveniently at hand in England for reference and comparison than they are at present. I therefore determined to make an effort to secure for home study, some of the abundant spoil from the Sainte-Gertrude workshops.

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.

It is the object of this paper to examine the evidence for the relative and absolute chronology of the Passage-Graves of the British Isles. The title of the paper as well as this bald statement of purpose begs the immediate question of what exactly the authors mean by Passage-Graves.

We define a Passage-Grave as a prehistoric chamber tomb consisting of a passage leading to a round, polygonal, or square chamber, in which the collective burials were normally made. This type of monument may be walled with orthostats and roofed trabeate-wise by capstones, or it may be dry-walled with small stones laid horizontally and roofed by a false or corbelled vault, or again there may be present a combination of these techniques. On the other hand this type of monument may be wholly or partly cut in the rock or again there may be a combination of surface and rock-cut features in its construction. In almost all cases the surface forms of Passage-Grave are incorporated in a barrow or cairn of earth or stones. The constructional variety of the tomb does not affect its classification in a morphological category; the rock-cut tombs of Alcaide and Palmella are as much Passage-Graves as the corbel-vaulted tombs of He Longue and Alcalá, or the capstoneroofed tombs of Kercado and Bryn Celli Ddu.

In 1906 I described a “Cissbury type” station at Ringland, Norfolk, the implements lying abundantly on the surface of two fields and covering an area of about 440 yards in length by 90 yards in width. The fields are at the foot of a steep tree-clad ridge known as Cobb's Hills, and slope gently to the river Wensum which is but a few yards distant from the lower part of the fields and is here about 34 feet above O.D. Some of the implements were described and figured in our “Proceedings,” and the site has yielded about 900 implements and several thousand flakes.

This floor, No. 46, was situated in the open field close to the North border of the plantation, about 50 yards N.E. of Pit 1. Excavations carried out by Mrs. Richardson and myself revealed the presence of a filled-in pit, of which there was no surface indication, the field having been levelled down for cultivation. The hole dug measured about 11 ft. each way, with a maximum depth of 5 ft. At the bottom on one side was a great tip of hard tabular chalk blocks, shot in from the N.E.; on the other side was a tip of sand shot in from the S.W.; and in the V-shaped depression between these two was a mass of flints without any matrix, most of them of great size, the majority covered with a fungus-like coating of carbonate of lime redeposited from solution. This layer reached a thickness of 3½ ft. in one part, thinning out gradually towards the E. side, where it was only a few inches thick. It was almost entirely sealed in by a small tip of chalk blocks and rubble shot in from the N.E., overlain in its turn by a thin layer of flints, which in one or two places rested directly on the main flint layer.

The discovery of a large hand-axe of the Chelles period in the bed of the river Nidd at Goyden Pot Hole in 1922 has, after eight years careful work, established the fact by the results obtained, that Palæolithıc man lived in Yorkshire from the earliest times. This paper concerns only the upper part of Nidderdale, from Pateley Bridge to the source of the Nidd on Great Whernside. For the privilege of examining this large tract of country my thanks are due to the late Mr. T. E. Yorke, Col. C. J. Huskinson, Mr. H. A. Ramsden, Mr. W. Nicholson, and Mr. L. Mitchell.

As the nature of the country in which the implements have been found is so different from all other sites where implements of the same periods exist in England, a short description of it will not be out of place.

Nidderdale, like all the other Yorkshire dales, has been carved out by the glaciers of the Pleistocene period, and the course which the river follows is the same as that of the glaciers. The Nidd rises in Great Whernside at the height of over 2,000 ft., and by the time it reaches Pateley Bridge, some 15 miles from its source, it is only 383 ft. above sea. The fall of the hills corresponds more or less with this, the top of Great Whernside being 2,310 ft. O.D., and the moors at Pateley Bridge being 1,100-ft. to 1,050 ft. O.D. All down the dale on both sides many streams flow into the river: these have cut out deep narrow valleys, known locally as gills, and in doing so have exposed the lateral moraines which exist there.

In the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia (Vol. III., Part III., pp. 389–430) I gave an account of the discoveries made at the 16-ft. level in the Pliocene Red Crag at Foxhall, near Ipswich, and in the detritus-bed beneath the decalcified Red Crag in Pits Nos. 1 and 2 at Bramford. During 1922 further excavations were conducted at Foxhall, and a number of humanly-flaked flints recovered from the floor occurring at the 16-foot level. The Bramford pits were also again investigated, and it is the purpose of this paper to figure and describe some of the specimens found at the sites mentioned. Full details were given in the paper quoted above of the Foxhall and Bramford Sections, and there is no need to again describe them here, especially as the recent diggings exposed no new geological features. The money to pay for the wages of the workmen engaged in the diggings was very kindly subscribed by the Percy Sladen Fund, the American Museum of Natural History, Sir John Ganzoni, M.P., and by Messrs. F. H. Barclay, A. S. Barnes, M. C. Burkitt, Henry Coates, Frank Corner, Vernon Favell, Robert Gurney, C. Hartley, J. J. Lister, W. M. Newton, W. B. Nichols, R. A. Smith, and F. S. Stevenson. The illustrations for this paper are produced from drawings by Mr. E. T. Lingwood, who, once again, has given valuable help to the cause of science by the free gift of his great artistic powers.

Since reading a paper before the Archæological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in February, 1913, on the two factory sites at Peppard, Oxon, we have carried out further excavations, and I propose to give a brief account of the new implements found there, and to discuss the evidence as to the date arrived at as a result of the whole work. Sections of the sites and a map showing their position were given in that paper, and 28 of the implements illustrated.

The deeper site (Site 1) was re-opened by Mr. Reginald Smith, F.S.A., of the British Museum, in October, 1913, and some of the problems connected with it cleared up. This site was then found to be an open pit, similar to a modern chalk pit, with a pathway leading into it from the lowest level, 8 ft. across and 7½ ft. long. The floor of this adit formed a gently inclined plane to the bottom of the pit, being covered at the entrance with 2½ ft. of rainwash. This method of approach to the mine is what one would expect from its situation on the slope of a hill. It differs thus from the mines at Cissbury and Grime's Graves, where the circular cups were much deeper (40 ft.) and must have been entered by some form of ladder, such as a tree trunk with the branches cut short to form steps or a rope made of hide.

The particular area dealt with in this paper is the extreme S.W. corner of the County, embracing roughly a triangle having its base of 14 miles along the high moors W. of Sheffield, viz., from Langsett (N.) to Fox House (S.), the apex at Mexboro', and the ridges on the right of the Don Valley forming one side.

From its varied character, including as it does the extremes of bleak upland impossible of cultivation, and sheltered valley and lowland, it is in many respects an ideal area for study.

Unfortunately, flint, for reasons explained later, is scarce, hence it is only by the cumulative results of patient search extending over a period of years that any conclusion can be arrived at touching the culture of the implements found.

The base-line of the area under consideration follows in general the Yorkshire–Derbyshire boundary, and traverses a wide moorland country of considerable altitude, consisting of glacier-sculptured heights, seamed with deep, frequently precipitous ravines.

Excavations at Grime's Graves during September, 1920, resulted in several interesting discoveries, notably the location of a new chipping and occupation zone, situated near the S.E. margin of the mining area immediately west of the Tumulus Pit, a locality which previous excavations had proved to be rich in occupation sites. Here, upon a living level immediately overlying glacial sand, two pieces of engraved flint crust were discovered associated with a series of flint implements of Mousterian type, bone tools and pottery.

Engraving upon flint crust was first noticed at Grime's Graves in 1915, upon Floor 16, a piece bearing incised lines of indeterminate character being found (Fig. A, 10) which was described and figured in the Proceedings, Vol. II., Part III., by Dr. Peake. Since then numerous similar examples have been discovered upon other floors, which, together with the occurrence of gravers, the discovery of chalk carving in the round, and of chalk balls by Mr. D. Richardson, and by the President, pointed to the hope of definite engravings being ultimately forthcoming if systematically searched for. This hope was further stimulated by Dr. Peake finding a few days prior to our visit a piece of crust bearing an engraved outline suggesting portions of the human figure (Fig. A, 11) and resulted in the careful scrutiny of every fragment of crust turned up during the subsequent excavations, which was finally rewarded by the discovery of two fine engravings (Fig. E).

At a Meeting of the “Prehistoric Society of East Anglia” held recently at Norwich, I heard a summary read of a paper by Mr. F. N. Haward on the Norwich Test Specimen. It is perhaps needless to say that Mr. Haward's paper purported to show that this specimen of a rostro-carinate flint implement owes its present form to certain natural agencies, and not to the purposeful blows of a human being. It is not, however, within my province to attempt a defence of the humanity of this well-known flaked flint. Sir Ray Lankester has described and illustrated the specimen in a paper published some little time ago (“Description of the Test Specimen of the Rostro-Carinate Industry found beneath the Norwich Crag,” Roy. Anth. Inst. Occasional Papers, No. 4), and prehistorians can choose whether they prefer to accept the opinion expressed in that paper, or the view of Mr. Haward. The latter gentleman's opposition, however, to the idea of the human origin of the flaking upon the Sub-Crag flints does not cease with the Norwich Test Specimen, but includes all the other specimens found in the Norwich Stone Bed.