Microlithic industries have been known from the Pennines for several generations, and their stratigraphical position at the base of the peat was established by Dr H. Colley March in the Marsden area as long ago as 1883. Although many collections have been made, however, it must be confessed that much less scientific information has been gained from detailed observation than might have been. An outstanding exception to the general rule was the work of Francis Buckley of Greenfield on upland sites, mainly between 1250–1500 feet above sea level on the high ground west of Marsden, during the years immediately following the first world war. Of special relevance to the subject of the present paper was his recognition of concentrations of microlithic material in conjunction with remains of fire-places and his distinction of a basic typological division between ‘Broad-Blade’ and ‘Narrow-Blade’ microlithic industries in the Pennines. The first part of the present paper is concerned with the excavation of a settlement structure and with the description of the flint industry associated with it and the second deals specifically with the affinities of the Broad-Blade industry.

The site (National Grid Reference 3X584622) stands on a westward spur of the Penn Beacon ridge near the southern edge of Dartmoor. As is common throughout the moor the underlying rock is granite and in the neighbourhood of Cholwichtown this has altered to ‘china’ clay. There are a number of outcrops, but in most places the granite has a light covering of soil on which a thin layer of black raw humus, peat-like in appearance, has formed. This now produces coarse grass. From the evidence provided by the small dumps of upcast at socket no. 72 it appears that only a very thin layer of humus, about an inch in thickness, covered the soil at that point when the monument was constructed.

Excavation has shown that the structure consisted of an alignment 235 yards long and having originally at least ninety-one uprights and a circle 16 feet in diameter that originally had eight orthostats. Dr Simmons has shown (Appendix) that the monument was built in a clearing, then either grassland or heathland, among the woodland and scrub, but as he points out the pollen analysis does not give any indication of date: it is not known if these clearances were made by the people who constructed the alignment and circle or if the structure was built on land cleared at an earlier date.

The monument is not situated in a conspicuous position but, nevertheless, commands a reasonably extensive view, especially towards the south and south-west.

In May 1955 Professor Grahame Clark noticed a stone axe from Langwood Fen in the collection of Mr F. Walker of Manea. Its exotic character stood out among well known Fenland flint types and he asked me to arrange a petrological examination and to describe the implement.

The axe (fig. 1) is dark brown in colour with much of the polished surfaces roughened through oxidization, probably from underlying peat. The blue-grey, fine-grained nature of the stone shows through in fresh scars on both surfaces, which suggest its recent use as a whetstone, and in a modern chip at the butt. It is 10⅞ inches long, with a maximum width of 3 inches. The convex cutting edge is slightly asymetrical and 3⅛ inches wide, while the maximum thickness is 1¾ inches. There is a distinct waisting, or constriction, toward the butt which is rather square and 1¾ inches wide. Both edges have been ground into lateral facets ⅜ inch wide about the middle of the implement, tapering toward the butt and cutting edge. In its present state the axe weighs 3½ lbs.

In my article published in the Proceedings for 1950, I mentioned the settlement at Nowosiółka Kostiukowa in West Podolia belonging to the final period of the Tripolye culture. Recently, during my visit to Poland, I was able to recover some of my pre-war notes which escaped destruction, thanks to Professor R. Jamka, Cracow; among these was also a short report on investigation of the settlement above and a sketch plan.

A field known as ‘Petrynskie’ lay c. 3 kilometres east of the village of Nowosiółka Kostiukowa, over 4 kilometres from the river Seret, a tributary of the Dniester, in the valley of a small stream which ultimately joins the river. On the southern slopes of this valley, north of a narrow lane cut deep in the loess and on the surface of the field lay a large mass of potsherds, lumps of fired clay plaster (of ‘ploščadka’ huts), stones, flints, etc. This was mostly Tripolyan painted ware of Koszyłowce type, belonging to T. S. Passek's period C-1, although wrongly considered to be of period C-2. However, many black, highly polished potsherds were also found, of what is known as the ‘Thracian Hallstatt’ ware, mainly in the lower part of the field. All these remains formed small concentrations marking the sites of ancient huts situated at a small distance from each other.

The majority of scientists hold the opinion that mankind first knew metal in the form of native copper. In particular, at this period the malleability of native copper was realized, and its brittleness when cold worked, as well as the need of annealing to cold forge the necessary tools. The melting of copper was discovered later when native copper was met with in association with ores.

These opinions are shared by H. H. Coghlan and H. Otto and W. Witter, though the first mentioned also pointed out that in some regions artifacts made from copper alloys existed in early periods while artifacts made of pure copper might be met with in the latest periods.

V. I. Vernadski also had some doubt about the unconditional validity of this theory. However, he did not deny that where native copper was distributed it was the first metal replacing (although only partly) stone and bone for making tools. In certain cases such an assertion has been supported by old and unreliable analyses of ancient artifacts, as well as by some mistakes in the determination of their age.

No Sardinian domestic site has yet produced Beaker remains, but complete or fragmentary vessels have been found in eleven funerary deposits (fig. 1). Of these, San Bartolomeo in the extreme south of the island is a burial cave, and Nuraxinieddu is a trench grave. The remaining nine sites are all rock-cut tombs (domus de janas) and are grouped together in the zone of sedimentary rocks in the north-west of the island.

In a previous article in these Proceedings I raised some doubts about the current system of classifying the British pre-Roman Iron Age (Hodson 1962). My main criticisms were that the first stage of this classification into three divisions A, B and C did not reflect a clear threefold division within the material to be classified and also that this system did not deal satisfactorily with the British Iron Age as part of a wider European phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to look for steps towards a modified first classification that may overcome these objections. Following the four principles of classification suggested (Hodson 1962, p. 153) an attempt will be made to pick out the most distinctive characteristics or type-fossils within the pre-Roman Iron Age and to see whether these features recur together in definite groups in Europe as a whole. These groups should represent cultures in the archaeological sense and afterwards their interpretation should provide a general archaeological account of the early Iron Age in Britain.

Although attempting to put forward for discussion a provisional classification of some sort, the real purpose of this paper is to emphasize serious gaps in the available evidence. Until these gaps are filled, no classification can hope to be in any way definitive.

It is first necessary to establish some simple chronological system by which to inter-relate any cultures that may be established. A direct reference to absolute dates (or periods of, say, a hundred years) would be most convenient.

Evidence of contact between cultural groups is of great importance to the study of prehistory. Although the development of absolute dating methods has decreased our dependence on the discovery of such contacts for chronology, they are essential material when the origin and spread of culture is being studied. In the past, cultural contacts have generally been demonstrated by typological similarities of artifacts, but unfortunately many typological comparisons are open to discussion, and it can be exceedingly difficult to be certain of direct contact by this means alone.

The importance in this respect of the study of raw materials used in places far from their place of origin and presumably deliberately imported has long been realized. Recently more attention has been paid to the careful characterization of such materials; the detection, that is, of properties of the specimen under study which are characteristic of material from particular sources. By this means it is often possible to assign a source to a given specimen. The petrological identification of British neolithic stone axes is perhaps the most comprehensive archaeological characterization study yet undertaken. Demonstrations of trading links made by such methods, if based on a sure identification and a comprehensive survey of possible sources, are not open to the criticism and doubt which may be directed at typological similarities. The variety of techniques now available for the analysis and identification of materials makes this field a promising one for the archaeologist.

The burial chamber of the Clyde-Carlingford cairn at Beacharra, Kintyre, Argyll, was excavated in 1892 by members of the Kintyre Scientific Association. The finds, consisting of six pots, a jet slider or belt-fastener and a utilized flint flake, were placed in Campbeltown Museum. A newspaper account of the excavation appeared at the time, and with the aid of this and of information from Mr A. Gray, who had been in charge of the excavation, T. H. Bryce was able to compile the first proper report upon the excavation. This he incorporated in the first of two papers on the cairns of Arran. A sketch plan of the burial chamber, prepared in 1892 by Mr P. Mackay and now in the records of the Kintyre Antiquarian Society, is reproduced (fig. 1).

The importance of the pottery from Beacharra was fully recognized by Bryce, but it was not until 1929 that it was related by J. G. Callander to Scottish Neolithic pottery as a whole. Subsequently this evidence was analysed and placed in its British and European context by V. G. Childe and S. Piggott. In 1935 Childe introduced the term Beacharra to describe the pottery from sites of the Clyde-Carlingford culture in Scotland. The term was retained and the classification developed into Beacharra A, B and C by Piggott for the Clyde-Carlingford culture as a whole. More recently, and inadvisedly in the present state of knowledge, it has been suggested that the use of the term Beacharra, at least insofar as pottery from Ireland is concerned, should be discontinued.

In his monumental study of Greek Pins, Jacobsthal examined a number of pins from Jugoslavia. These he found to be very different from the Greek series and in the present paper some four hundred pins have been studied in the hope of providing an extension to his work. Since pins were in use before fibulae and were conservative in their forms, many in the period under review in Jugoslavia, the 8th–2nd centuries B.C., are survivals from or elaborations of Bronze Age types. In this they differ from the fibulae which are nearly all borrowings from contemporary southern and western neighbours and this gives the pins their particular interest.

The dating of objects, including pins, has been placed on a firm footing in recent years by the detailed study of some of the more important Iron Age cemeteries, and in this paper the periods distinguished at Vače (Slovenia), Glasinac (Bosnia) and Nin (Dalmatia) will normally be used in preference to the more distant and often unrelated East Alpine Hallstatt terminology.

Distinctive Bronze Age pin series come from neighbouring Greece, Hungary, Austria, and Italy and their relative influence in Jugoslavia can be assessed. In the Late Bronze Age, East Alpine types were found throughout Jugoslavia, and Hungarian influence was strong in the inland river basins of the Lower Save, Drave and Danube; it also penetrated into Bosnia.

On the 29th October, 1963, a group of bronze objects was ploughed up in the ‘Old Road Field’, Pyotdykes farm, near Dundee, Angus (Nat. Grid Ref. NO 345348). The objects recovered were a bronze spearhead and two bronze swords (fig. 1). After news of the find had been communicated to the Museum and Art Gallery, Dundee, the area around the original find-spot was excavated by museum staff, and this yielded three additional pieces of bronze wire rivets from sword (2), but no other objects. Before the bronzes were revealed by ploughing, they must have been lying about 30 centimetres below the surface, just above a hard-pan layer which forms the subsoil in that part of the field.

Cleaning and treatment of the bronzes was carried out at the museum, when a plug of material was extracted from inside the spearhead socket (see App. I). This was sent to Dr M. L. Ryder for examination along with two pieces of wood and leather which the farmer had found adhering to sword (2) (see Part III). Subsequently the wooden fragments were examined in the Sub-department of Quaternary Research, University of Cambridge (see App. II).

This paper is the result of a survey of a part of Macedonia and Epirus carried out in 1962 and sponsored by the British School of Archaeology at Athens. In 1963 under the aegis of S. I. Dakaris, ephor of Epirus, excavations were carried out to confirm some of the hypotheses resulting from the earlier survey. The cost of the work was defrayed partly by the British Academy and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, and partly by the members of the expeditions themselves. In this paper it is proposed to place on record some of the findings of these expeditions. A more detailed consideration of them will be published after further information has been acquired in 1964.

Prior to 1962 little was known of the Stone Age industries of Greece. In contrast with the industrial successions established in Western Europe, Central Europe, Russia and the Levant, Greece had remained virtually a blank on the Palaeolithic map. As late as 1923 Jardé had written that not a single palaeolithic tool was known from Greek soil. Apart from three pieces of uncertain provenance attributed by Breuil to the Upper Palaeolithic, and one from Saloniki noted by Obermaier, no further progress seems to have been made until the German and Italian occupation of Greece and Albania. In 1941 Stampfuss dug the cave of Seidi between Thebes and Levadia. He discovered an industry which contained backed-blades, burins, shouldered points and thick scrapers. It is undated, but is a Gravettoid industry, possibly at a fully developed or even later stage. Mustilli also reported in 1941 the finding of a Middle Palaeolithic industry in Albania. Since that time Servais has noted the presence of apparently early flints in the Peloponnese, a fact subsequently investigated by Leroi-Gourhan in 1962. Byelor has also reported some flakes of Levallois type. The most important work, however, has been that of Milojčić, published in 1958, and arising out of the work in previous years of the German Thessaly Expedition.

This is an interim report on a Cambridge Research Thesis which has been in progress for three years, and which will eventually cover the major part of the British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. The whole project may be divided into four phases:

• 1. Collection and examination of all the available material;

• 2. Selection of those groups of implements appropriate for study;

• 3. Application of objective methods of study, mainly in the field of metrical and statistical analysis;

• 4. Interpretation of the results.

The present paper gives some account of what has so far been done under the first three of these headings. It is still too early to attempt any major conclusions, although it is perhaps fair to indicate the lines along which it can be hoped they will take shape.

The term ‘Later Bronze Age’ is being used in this paper to cover that period of the Bronze Age in Ireland that started around 1200 B.C. and continued on until supplanted by iron-using cultures during the second half of the first millennium B.C. This term provides a means of escaping from the nomenclature that is applied to the period covering the last two centuries of the second millennium B.C. and the beginning of the first millennium B.C., a phase considered by some as a late Middle Bronze Age and by others as an early Late Bronze Age. Here both terms are being avoided and the period is called the ‘Bishopsland Phase’. This is followed by the ‘Roscommon Phase’ of roughly the 9th and a large part of the 8th centuries B.C. Finally comes the ‘Dowris Phase’. It is hoped that this new terminology will allow the Irish material to be more readily incorporated in any future overall scheme for the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. The Middle Bronze Age in Ireland is here restricted to cover approximately the 14th and 13th centuries B.C.

This discovery was made as a result of rescue excavation in advance of road improvements by the Dorset County Council in the autumn of 1962. The site (NGR SY/99789918) now lies in the north verge of the A31 trunk road, 500 feet towards Wimborne Minster from the new Lake junction to Corfe Mullen, but in 1962 it was still included in field No. 7924, belonging to Lake Farm. Here the land, which forms part of the flood-plain of the Stour, is crossed by a spur of slightly more elevated ground extending north from Willetts Lane. There is a gentle slope westwards from the site towards the Chillwater Stream, which flows north to the Stour after descending from higher ground. The lowlying terrain to the west of this low spur used to be marshland until its reclamation, accounting for the name ‘lake’ given to the locality. The subsoil of the valley-bottom is composed variously of gravel, shingly stones and brown alluvial loam. The original vegetational cover would have been woodland of deciduous type, extending from the floor of the valley up the slope to the south and thinning out to scrub and heath on the gravel plateau 150 feet above the Stour. Today, pasture dominates the scene, with oak prominent only in hedgerow or isolated clumps.

The pit to be described below lay just over half a mile to the north-east of the site of one similar in shape and contents that was discovered in a quarry in Corfe Mullen parish some twenty-five years ago.

The following is a preliminary report on the results achieved during approximately six weeks' archaeological fieldwork in north-eastern Iran in July and August 1963. The primary objective was to explore the area for traces of the local Upper Pleistocene cultural sequence, and in particular to establish if possible the date and character of the local Upper Palaeolithic. In the event no traces of Upper Palaeolithic were obtained. However, a start was made towards defining the problem by the discovery of two well-stratified deposits, the one yielding a Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) industry with distinctive regional affinities, and the other an early Post-glacial Mesolithic industry. Reliable samples were obtained for defining the statistical properties of both, together with carbon samples, traces of vertebrate fauna, and some other climatic data.

Representative collections were lodged with the Musée Iran Bastan at Teheran; and the expedition's share is to be offered in part to the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge and in part to the British Museum. The expedition was financed mainly by a grant from the British Academy, supplemented by further grants from the Crowther-Beynon Fund and the British Museum.

In 1956–57 the remote and almost unexplored desert terrain that stretches for hundreds of miles north and west of Lake Mackay—a great salt morass that lies across the border between Northern Territory and Western Australia—was in the grip of a severe drought which had lasted for more than a year. This great tract of spinifex desert and red sand hills that extends westward to the Canning Desert was named the Great Sandy Desert by Colonel Warburton in 1873.

During 1956 and again in the following year, reports had been coming in sporadically through Alice Springs of the existence of primitive nomadic aborigines far out in the sands beyond Lake Mackay. Some of these nomads were said to have come in to Mt. Doreen Station, which lies 225 miles to the west of Alice Springs on the fringe of the desert, but no accurate information was available.

Having experienced tropical areas of high rainfall with their regular hunting and food-gathering cycle, I had always wanted to work in the arid interior of Australia, where the rainfall is not only extremely low but unpredictable. I had hoped to live and to hunt with a nomadic people of the desert and semi-desert, and to study the background ecology, the adaptation of these people to this arid terrain, and especially their hunting and food gathering, and so to understand the effect of these factors on the territorial grouping and on the social and ceremonial life of the aborigines as I had come to know it.