During the excavation of Rego da Murta Dolmen I, a structure belonging to a megalithic cluster in central Portugal, a number of small sub-quadrangular quartzite stones were found embedded within a layer below that of the deepest orthostat. In this paper, we report on these findings and highlight three key features of these small stones, namely their location relative to the dolmen’s plan, the distances between them, and their orientations. We suggest the quartzite stones could have been markers used in the planning of this megalithic structure. In addition, we analyse the orientations of the two main structures of the cluster (Dolmen I & Dolmen II), which are reflected by the orientation of the quartzite stones. We tentatively suggest potential landscape and skyscape alignments for their orientations, including three hypotheses for the observed differences in orientation between the two.

At the time when the type-sites of the Dordogne were being explored French archaeologists were equally active further south in their country. From caves and surface sites in the Mediterranean provinces local landowners, doctors and clergy were collecting material which not only matched most of the palaeolithic tool forms being distinguished in the south-west of France, but was later to provide Déchelette with many of his illustrations for the neolithic and metal ages. It was not uncommon for flints, pottery and metal all to come from the same cave.

These old collections, or such of them as can be traced, are the basis of what is known about the prehistory of the south of France. Unfortunately, much of the material has come down to us with very little information, apart from provenance, and although some details of excavation were carefully recorded it seems generally to have been considered that plans of caves were more informative than sections through them.

Topographically the south of France consists largely of a narrow alluvial plain, stretching right round the Gulf of Lions between the Italian and Spanish frontiers and broadening out in the delta of the Rhône. Today the region is distinguished from the rest of France by its Mediterranean climate. East of the Rhône, in Provence, this coastal climate is soon modified to the north by the high mountains, but in the old province of Languedoc between the Rhône and the Pyrenees the typical Mediterranean vegetation is carried up onto the rocky limestone plateau, or Garrigue, until it reaches the barren Causses of the Massif Central. In France, the western limit of this climatic zone falls between Carcassonne and Toulouse, but eastward and to the south the Mediterranean conditions continue, so that the south French plain forms a climatic unit with the coastlands of Italy and Spain.

This plain, shut in to the north by high land, is most easily accessible from the sea or coastwise from adjacent Mediterranean countries. Easy communication with the rest of France is confined to the great river valleys of the Rhône and Aude which cut through the mountains to the north and west.

It is a commonplace that of all the mobile art-forms of prehistoric times pottery is the least mobile and the most domestic. It would be wrong to assert categorically that never before the Roman period or the years immediately preceding it was pottery the subject of trade and transport; but the traffic was at least on a limited scale. Unlike objects of metal, therefore, which may wander far from their place of origin in the course of trade or other movement, pottery closely reflects in its distribution the relationship between culture and geography.

Pot-making, too, is a comparatively lowly, if an expressive, craft. In a wealthy community, or in a community with varying levels of wealth, pottery takes second place to metal or (where it exists) glass: usually, therefore, pottery is the borrower both of form and of ornament. And while with an inventive people the result may in due course be something new and significant in itself, in less fortunate circumstances—as for instance under the mass-production methods of Roman times—the potter's debt becomes a lifeless imitation of, or a negative development from, the forms and motifs of the superior materials.

From their onset, the first radiocarbon dates gave a range of the absolute chronology to come, but in their detail, they opened more problems than they settled, chiefly because of the possible or unsuspected questions in relation to the reliability of the samples themselves (Delibrias and Giot, 1970). It is only with the experience of great numbers of dates, and the possibility of considering them so to speak statistically, that one can evaluate the real implications of the time scales provided by the method.

In Brittany, beginning with a few dates provided by the Groningen Laboratory under H. de Vries, we have been afterwards nearly totally supplied by the Centre des Faibles Radioactivités at Gif-sur-Yvette (Giot, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971; Coursaget and Le Run, 1968; Delibrias, Guillier and Labeyrie, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1969, 1970; Coppens, Durand and Guillet, 1968; Vogel and Waterbolk, 1963).

We now benefit with more than 200 radiocarbon dates for Brittany alone. We shall consider here about 140 of them, disregarding some duplicates, dates pertaining to periods older than the Neolithic cultures or on the contrary later than the Iron Age, and dates only concerning geological natural sites, though these can be full of interest by their information about the botanical scenery and the effects of cultivation or pasture.

The absence of earth-filled structural features or easily identifiable graves precluded any systematic sampling programme for environmental evidence. However, two samples for the analysis of carbonised plant remains were collected from each of the two insitu inhumations (SF55 and SF73). The samples consisted of the sediment associated with the burials which included the matrix of the overlying cairn (context 002), and were processed using manual flotation into an 0.5 mm mesh sieve. The sample sizes and results are given in Table 1.

The evidence was minimal: only three fragments were found, none of which could be adequately identified. In sample 1, one grass seed was found, but it was badly preserved and could not be identified to genus. In sample 2, one cereal grain was found, again too badly preserved to distinguish it as either wheat or barley. The Polygonumsp. seed from sample 4 again is too fragmented to allow an identification to species level.

This paper reflects critically on the use of the term ‘craft’ within prehistoric archaeology and its recent rise to prominence within a variety of analytical contexts. Having briefly evaluated the way in which prehistorians employ craft, it moves on to consider the potential value that Craft Theory, a growing interdisciplinary body of literature relating to practices of making, might hold for thinking about prehistoric material culture within an archaeological context. Three case studies originating from Mesolithic Britain and Ireland are used as a vehicle to explore some of this potential in practice, before a broader discussion reflects on these initial efforts and sketches out other areas of interest for future research. The picture which emerges from this discussion is one of promise, within which prehistorians simultaneously draw from, and contribute towards, the ongoing interdisciplinary debates on craft in contemporary society.

Further excavations on Floor 85, at the end of July, 1922, increased the total area of this important floor, carefully dug over and examined, to 109 square yards. Previous observations have been confirmed and a further series of implements recovered, including engraved pieces of flint crust and pieces bearing incised lines, similar in character, though of minor importance, to those described in the “Proceedings,” Vol. 3, p. 434 and 548.

Dr. R. V. Favell again co-operated and the work was principally concentrated upon the S., SE., and E. sides of the previous excavation.

Upon the S. side Floor A was absent, Floors B and C well marked, though Floor C proved to be thin in places and towards the termination of the dig showed signs of giving out, whereas Floor B was becoming thicker. The sterile layer separating B from C, latterly became so thin that the B floor in places was resting immediately upon the red sand layer and almost indistinguishable from Floor C, except by the most careful observation.

I think all agree that arrow tips would first have been made of (a) hard wood or bone ground to a sharp point (as used to-day in East Africa), later by (b) sharp-pointed unworked splinters or flakes of stone or flint, followed by (c) flakes worked diagonally at one end to a sharp point, and the other end inserted in the arrow shaft.

As the worker's skill improved, these worked flake arrow tips would be superseded by (d) the beautifully flaked barbed and leaf arrows of the Neolithic and Bronze periods.

The whole prehistoric world would obviously not have been at any one time in the same stage of culture. At all periods, and in all districts, tribes would have existed side by side in various stages of culture, the work of the “᾽prentice” hand alongside that of the “master worker.”

It is therefore highly dangerous to assign an age to a worked flint solely by roughness of workmanship.

This communication is to record a prehistoric workshop site at Two-Mile-Bottom Common, near Thetford, Norfolk, containing worked flake tools of a very definite culture.

The following sites were discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Milton and myself during the summer and autumn of 1926, while I was excavating the Devil's Tower Cave at Gibraltar.

(i) Llanos de la Horadada. This is a surface site, lying on rising ground to the west of the road from San Roque to the Rio Guadiaro, near the seventh kilometre-stone out of San Roque. The Llanos de la Horadada is a group of low hills forming a southern extension of the Sierra del Arco; it takes its name from a tunnel-like cave, the Cueva de la Horadada, which runs through an outcrop of Eocene sandstone about 1 km. to the west of the road.

In a recently-ploughed field lying immediately above the road we found a small number of flint and quartzite implements, two of which, a small disc and a chopper, were unmistakably Mousterian (Fig. II, Nos. 1 and 2). The implements and flakes were all slightly abraded, and those which were made of flint were deeply patinated, some being white and others light brown.

In a recent number of The Antiquaries Journal (Vol. II., No. 2, pp. 114-117), I described four flint blades of Solutré type found in various parts of East Suffolk, and it is now my purpose to figure and to give an account of seven similar, but more remarkable implements found, with one exception, in the same county. The specimens, to which this note refers, are in the possession of Mr. W. Wells, of South Benfleet, who suggested that I should describe them, and has kindly sent the implements to me for examination.

For the details of the provenance of these blades Mr. Wells is responsible, but I am confident that he has taken all reasonable care in getting together the information which he has forwarded to me for publication. There can be no doubt but that the specimens now to be described constitute one of the finest series of flint blades yet found in this country, and it is gratifying that such specimens have been drawn by Mr. E. T. Lingwood.

It is now close upon twenty-five years since the first flints from beneath the Red Crag of Suffolk—and claimed to have been flaked by man—were placed before the scientific world. During the period of time which has elapsed since 1907, a great deal of careful excavation, carried out by means of generous financial support given by the Royal Society, the Percy Sladen Fund, the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, the Field Museum of Chicago and other Institutions, has been undertaken, and in consequence, a very considerable body of knowledge regarding the archaeological, and other contents of the Suffolk Bone Bed, has been accumulated.

I propose, therefore, to take as the subject of my Presidential Address, “The Culture of Pliocene Man;” to place before you the evidence which makes it possible to use such a title in describing the sub-Red Crag artefacts, and to draw your attention to certain remarkable facts and conclusions relating to these specimens which must now be faced and considered. But it is necessary, first of all, to give a brief account of the Red Crag and the Suffolk Bone Bed (sometimes also called the Detritus Bed or the Nodule Bed) which underlies it, and in which the relics of man have been found.

In January, 1916, we discovered the east end of a “Cissbury type,” station at Great Melton, Norfolk, on the south bank of the River Yare, and at the same time Mr. J. E. Sainty, B.Sc., discovered the west end, including a pit in which flakes were exposed in a layer about a foot from the surface, resting on a stiff loam into which the flakes had sunk in some places. The layer was not continuous, but at one place there was a solid mass of cores and flakes, the latter ranging in size from huge specimens to quite minute pieces. The flakes, with which were mingled several potboilers, varied in colour from blue to white, and were so tightly packed together as only to be extracted with difficulty. In a very few cases the striking platforms were facetted.

Some objects defy archaeologists to understand their function. Two gold rod-like fragments from the Kerivoa hoard, Côtes-du-Nord, and one from Plouarzel, Finistère (Briard, 1965, fig. 21, 2), are the only gold objects on the Continent with broadened terminals similar to the ‘neck-ring’ from Arlon, Belgium. Three similar rings in copper exist in Britain. These six objects, their function, and their relationship to other prehistoric objects, form the nucleus of this article.

The two Kerivoa fragments (pl. XVI, B), with rod-like body and broadened ends, fit together to form a complete object like that from Arlon. They were a part of the Kerivoa hoard which also contained three gold lunulae with a fragment of sheet gold broken into four pieces. These were found near Bourbriac, Côte-du-Nord, France, in 1932, surrounded by a dark mass, which has been interpreted as a disintegrated wooden box. The fragments with broadened terminals and their association with lunulae are critical to this paper.