It is doubly appropriate that the Prehistoric Society should celebrate its jubilee in Norwich. The Society was born in the Castle on 23 February 1935 of a parent conceived improbably enough in the Public Library at a meeting held on 26 October 1908 to inaugurate an East Anglian Society ‘for the study of all matters appertaining to prehistoric man’. The question I want you to consider in this address is how the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia developed so rapidly to the point at which it achieved national status as The Prehistoric Society. Let me begin by removing one misapprehension. My hands are not dripping with East Anglian blood nor have I just wiped them clean. The Prehistoric Society was not the outcome of a revolutionary putsch. It stemmed from nothing more dramatic than a recognition that the Prehistoric Society had long ceased to be East Anglian. When we met at Norwich Castle for our Annual General Meeting in 1935 and passed the resolution which eliminated the words ‘of East Anglia’ from our title we were merely recognizing a fact, that we had long ceased to be East Anglian in anything but name. There were no dissentient votes.

The two men who between them set the Prehistoric Society on its feet came from different but complementary backgrounds. W. G. Clarke was Norfolk born and bred and earned his living as a working journalist in Norwich, while cultivating a wide-ranging interest in natural history and prehistoric archaeology.

Fabric categories.

Fabric 1 : flint tendered (28%)

Inclusions; medium size calcined flint temper of medium abundance (approximately 1000 grains per 1 gm of sherd) with a negligible backing of medium grade sand quartz natural to the clay.

Example of analysed sherd: flint temper (99%0; G - 0.9%, VC - 8#5%, C - 26.8%, M - 39.4%, F - 24.4% quartz sand (1%); M - 11 grains per gram of sherd

Firing and surface finish; surfaces and core are generally reduced but patches of buff, brown and orange exist. Exterior and some internal surfaces show signs of horizontal burnishing.

Sherd wall thickness; 4 - 8 mm

Technology; handmade with evidence of coil construction and subsequent drawing up (Rye 1981, 67-73).

Towards the beginning of her novel Excellent Women Barbara Pym recounts a telephone conversation of more than passing relevance to our meeting today.

I dialled the number fearfully and heard it ring. ‘Hello, hello, who is that?’ a querulous elderly woman's voice answered. I was completely taken aback, but before I could speak the voice went on, ‘If it's Miss Jessop I can only hope you are ringing up to apologize’. I stammered out an explanation. I was not Miss Jessop. Was Mr Everard Bone there? ‘My son is at a meeting of the Prehistoric Society’, said the voice. ‘Oh, I see. I'm so sorry to have bothered you’, I said. ‘People are always bothering me — I never wanted to have the telephone put in at all’.

After a further apology I hung up the receiver shaken and mystified but at the same time relieved. Everard Bone was at a meeting of the Prehistoric Society. It sounded like a joke. (1952, 29–30)

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, if this is a typical reaction to the Prehistoric Society, then on 23 February we become a fifty-year-old joke! If we allow for the history of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, then we reach well and truly back into the days of the Music Hall joke.

Investigations into the ceramic typology of the southern Italian neolithic have helped little in the understanding of neolithic origins there. In this paper the evidence of the radiocarbon chronology is used to demonstrate the antiquity of the southern Italian neolithic. There are now sufficient sixth millennium bc dates to suggest that the appearance there of a neolithic with mixed impressed and red-painted wares was contemporary with the earliest neolithic of both Greece and the West Mediterranean, while the penetration of those traits further north into Italy seems to have been delayed.

Models of population and resource pressure to explain developments such as technological innovation, increasing cultural complexity and competition and warfare, have been commonly used in studies of the earlier neolithic (Bandkeramik and early TRB) of Central Europe, in the fifth and fourth millennia bc. The usefulness of such models is questioned for this period, with reference in particular to Central Germany. After initial colonization, there was no simple pattern of continuous settlement expansion; rather, initially widespread settlement developed generally into a more aggregated pattern, with a contraction of the settlement area and virtually no internal or external expansion of settlement. Models of environmental change or resource exhaustion to explain these developments are also challenged, and emphasis placed on social and subsistence changes which provided the impetus for the dynamics of the settlement pattern. Changes in settlement, with the emergence of larger villages and enclosures, culminating in the appearance of major enclosure sites and a break in settlement continuity in the early TRB, are linked with other developments; the regionalization of culture, changes in material culture and burial types, and social organization. The origins of the settlement and social patterns in this period can be seen, not in the changes forced by external factors, but in the internal developments of the neolithic groups themselves.

Four small fragments of Roman tile were recovered from trench E. All of these are flat fragments, their approximate thicknesses being: 25 nm (context 1); 28 mm (context 35); 37 mm (context 1); and 40 mm (context 56). The two thinest fragments fall within the range of values known for tegulae, but could also possibly be from thin ‘Flat’ tiles. The two thicker fragments are from ‘Flat’ tiles/bricks.

This paper is an exploration of the chronological development of a series of elaborate and architecturally distinctive chambered tombs on the Islands of Orkney. It begins with a short critique of the present views of the Orcadian Neolithic and highlights a failure to understand chronological developments as the most significant problem. Thus after a brief classification of the monuments there is a detailed discussion of the chronological evidence which consciously avoids typological assumptions. This is followed by an examination of the various uses the tombs were put to and involves an assessment of the location and architectural visibility of the monuments and the remains found in the chamber. When combined with the chronological evidence a series of changes in monument size, type, location and use can be hypothesized for the neolithic period. This culminates in a shift away from burial monuments to physically defined spaces, presumably used for ceremonial purposes. These changes can be interpreted as deliberate manipulation by groups within that society to change the ideological concepts which defined the role of the individual in relation to the other members of the society.

Five sherds were submitted for study: three from trench A, context 1; and two from trench E, context 1. Those from trench A include: 1 sherd of orange ware with internal mottled green glaze; 1 sherd of orange ware with intelai orange-brown glaze; and 1 sherd of Staffordshire combed ware. Of the Merds from trench E, 1 is of pale orange/buff ware with internal mottled green glaze; and the other is of orange ware with partial external light green glaze and internal green glaze above applied, raised decoration in the form of pellets and lines.

In the Secondary Products Revolution model advanced by Sherratt it was predicted that increased use of animals for labour and dairy products would be visible archaeologically in animal bone collections. Published faunal data from Spain and Portugal for the period 5000–1000 bc show that horses, traction animals and dairy products all became more important after 2000 bc. An historical-geographical analogy from pre-industrial Spain suggests that by 1500 bc there was a degree of specialization in stockraising which could be understood best if sites were integrated economically over a wide region. This is the ‘policultivo ganadero’ of Spanish geographers, and the title is selected deliberately to compare with the Mediterranean polyculture based on plants.

Excavation of the surviving half of a barrow, identified from aerial photographs as having three concentric ditches, revealed a sequence of at least six major alterations. The site may originally have been a Class I henge monument subsequently adapted for use as a barrow. Features of all phases were mainly in the central area of the barrow and included two inhumations in coffins, one accompanied by a Yorkshire-type food vessel. A cremation in a Primary Series collared urn was accompanied by a bronze razor/knife and two flint plano-convex knives. A further cremation in a collared urn was found in the middle ditch. The barrow lay close to a settlement; early Bronze Age flintwork and pottery, including Grooved Ware and Beaker, were recovered from the several phases of mound make-up.