The object of this paper is to give an account of the various diggings which have been carried on beneath the base of the Red Crag of Suffolk by means of money grants from the Royal Society of London, and to accurately describe and figure the further flint implements of man which have been discovered in the sub-crag detritus bed, since the appearance of Sir Ray Lankester's memoir in the Philosophical Transactions (series B., Vol. 202, pp. 283–336) and to show by such a description that a series of flaked flints have now been recovered constituting a true Pliocene human “culture.”

An account will also be given of the characteristics of these newly-discovered implements, and the conclusions which may be legitimately drawn from them regarding their past history and its bearing upon the deposit in which they are found.

The excavations which have been conducted and which have resulted in these new discoveries being made, extended over the period intervening between April, 1912, and November, 1913, and were carried out at the following places:—Tattingstone Hall Farm, Tattingstone; Thorington Hall, Wherstead; The Back Hamlet, Ipswich; Messrs. Bolton and Laughlin's brickfield, Ipswich; The Nursery, Martlesham; Pettistree and Sutton Hall Farms, near Woodbridge; and the Valley Farm, Boyton, near Woodbridge.

Being in the neighbourhood of Lopham, in July, 1914, I made such examination of the neighbouring flint and gravel pits as time allowed. In the majority of cases the pits are only dug to a moderate depth, the lower strata above the chalk being left untouched. A large pit at Diss, on the northern slope of the Waveney Valley, showed very fine sections of glacial deposits, including some very large, much-abraded flints.

At Hargham, Garboldisham, West Harling Heath, and Banham was a cohesive, argillaceous, red sand, beneath the humus, some four or five feet in depth and containing a considerable number of flints. Most of these are in a vertical position. At Hargham a stratified gravel was visible beneath the aforesaid. At West Harling the red material was interdigitated, vertically, with chalk rubble containing flints. Here, and more numerously at Garboldisham, were humanly-chipped flints, apparently intermediate in age between the pre-Crag industry and the Pleistocene Palæoliths.

In the summer of 1913 I discovered a barrow in a remote spot in North-West Suffolk, a few miles from Thetford, and as it did not appear to have been opened I determined to excavate it. I started digging on January 14th, 1914, and between then and April was working on the site for 145 hours. The barrow was roughly circular with a diameter of 40 feet. The soil was sandy, resting on gravel, with stones and gravel at a depth of 2½ feet round the circumference of the barrow, which was dug over to a depth of 4 feet, though no relics were found below 3 feet from the surface.

A little to the east of the centre a small urn was found in a rabbit burrow in 1906, and here I discovered a large funeral pyre with charcoal and potsherds. The charcoal was kindly identified by Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., F.G.S., as that of oak, part of it probably representing a gnarled root, while there was also a carbonised half acorn; and the potsherds by Mr. A. G. Wright, of Colchester Museum, as portions of a Bronze Age cinerary urn.

In July last I discovered two “floors” or occupation-levels in North-West Suffolk, one of Neolithic age on Foxhole Heath, Eriswell, and the other of Early Iron age on Barnham Common, Thetford. The former was on the N.W. slope of a dry valley, about a mile in length, connected with a tongue of the fenland, and just below the 50 ft. contour. The thin layer of black earth which marked the land surface on which the Neolithic people lived and made their implements was covered by two or three feet of sand, almost stoneless and apparently wind-drifted. Some of this had been washed away, leaving a dark surface on which were potboilers, pottery, numerous cores, flakes and chips, and about thirty flint implements. The potsherds were kindly examined by Mr. A. G. Wright, who reported that it was difficult to date them, as that kind of ware lasted from Bronze Age to late Roman times. A small piece of red ware, with square or rectangular notch ornament, was evidently part of a beaker of Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. Beakers are usually found with inhumation burials, and are the earliest of the sepulchral types in this country.

Forming the Western boundary of the beautiful cove of Porthcurno is a bold headland, known as Pedn-mên-an-mere; it is some 3½ miles S.E. of Land's End. On its summit stands a “Wireless” mast, which, with the attached hut, is enclosed in a wire fence. Outside the fence the surface is covered with gorse and heather except for two small bare patches about 15 yards apart, from which the turf has been removed, and several spots where masses of granite come to the surface. On one of these bare patches I found many flakes and one or two rough implements; on the other not a trace of flint. I therefore decided to dig up the former, and have found about 1,500 pieces of flint and chert, the former largely predominating.

As far as can be judged from its appearance, the ground had never been opened up before; in most places the depth of the soil was only a few inches, and nowhere more than fifteen. The flints were almost invariably lying flat and near the surface. I could not see any sign of a definite stratum.

This site is in the parish of Thetford S. Peter, near Two-Mile Bottom. It is distinct from that described by Mr. F. N. Haward last year, being on the other (eastern) side of the Thetford-Mundford road and of the G.E.R., and somewhat north of the Vitriol and Manure Works. The implement types, too, differ greatly.

In 1906 I obtained one or two scrapers in the roadside belt adjoining the site on the west. Southwards the land dips down to the little valley which probably gave the name to Two-Mile Bottom, but the characteristic flakes of the site seem to thin out directly the slope becomes definite; and what flakes there are, are of more recent type and condition. From this low level site came several harpoon barbs in Mr. H. H. Halls' collection, and a barbed arrowhead and many other implements found by Mr. W. G. Clarke. The site is thus on a slight plateau about 80 ft. above O.D., and about 60 ft. above the river. Northward it is very indefinitely bounded, as flakes and implements are strewn about on the open breck and among the furze and bracken for a quarter of a mile or more, but the more characteristic patinas seem soon to disappear.

The experiments on which these notes were made were undertaken to clear up a little of the mystery which has been thrown around the subject by well-meaning but not always chemically-minded people. Much has been said lately on the necessity for prehistorians being also geologists, but it is perhaps too much to ask that they shall, in addition, be chemists. But a very little knowledge of chemistry would have averted some of the blunders and misstatements met with on the patination problem. These notes contain no really original idea, but were made on experiments proving what to most chemists are well-known facts. The experiments were carried out in the brief intervals of routine work in a very busy laboratory, unfitted with any special re-agents or apparatus for the work.

Silica is, chemically speaking, the dioxide of the element silicon, a body which does not appear to exist in a free state in nature, and which can only be brought into a free or elementary state by some what tedious laboratory processes.

The longest, best preserved, and best known of the early trackways of Norfolk, Peddar's Way can still be traced, with one or two doubtful sections, from Holme-next-the-Sea, near Hunstanton, in a south-easterly direction to Blackwater, the ford of the Little Ouse between Rushford and Riddlesworth, and thence for a few miles into Suffolk. Notwithstanding that most of this course is marked on the Ordnance Survey maps, that it was correctly given by Samuel Woodward in 1830, and that a pedestrian who essays (as I have done) to walk the fifty miles of this most interesting primitive route can have little doubt that it is correctly indicated, yet in 1872 it was referred to as the “Roman road which leads from Brancaster to Swaffham,” in 1904 as going from Brancaster to Castleacre, Swaffham, Ickburgh and Brandon, and thence to Exning, Bishop's Stortford and Stratford-le-Bow, while in 1908 § it was stated that it connected “the two Branodunums, that to the south, now Brandon, with that to the north, now Brancaster.” Of the various places mentioned Castleacre is the only one on its course.

My first paper on flint implements in Cornwall dealt with those of Booby Bay and Dinas Head, adjoining Trevose Head, near the famous cemetery at Harlyn Bay. Mention was made of the fact that prisms and cones of regular shape, and long thin flakes, occur there, and also at the inland site on the shore of Dozmare Pool. In both cases, pygmy flints are found with the flakes and cores. On the coast sites, however, scrapers are rare (at Booby Bay they are absent); whilst at Dozmare Pool they are numerous. They are both short and long at this site. The latter are sometimes formed on quite narrow blades. The facets are almost always grey. On the coast the chipped flints are sometimes grey, but are more often white, owing to exposure by the weathering away of the superincumbent soil.

Both on the coast sites and at Dozmare Pool the flint tools are made from shore pebbles. Local ideas sometimes attribute the presence of these pebbles on the shore to the casting out of ballast from coasting ships. It is evident that they are in reality remains from the Tertiary beds of West Cornwall, which have now almost vanished, though a section may still be seen near S. Erth.

When strolling beside the Wharfe near Burley, Yorkshire, in 1897, a small stone axe, 3¼ in. by 1⅝ in., was found in the river amidst a heap of sandy clay, partly submerged, at a point where recent floods had undermined the bank. The importance of this find was not then fully appreciated; indeed, the unusual shape of the axe caused it to be looked upon with a degree of suspicion, even suggesting thoughts of “Flint Jack,” though without any adequate grounds. After cleaning it and recording the circumstances of discovery, for a time it occupied a place in a drawer of implements, but was ultimately relegated to one of more general specimens, there to remain forgotten until accidentally turned over a year or two ago, when its true quality was at last recognised.

For many years it was postulated that an ice sheet had covered the north and west of Great Britain during the period when Palæolithic man lived and made his flint implements in the south and east of England. It was taught that the southern margin of this ice sheet corresponded in the main with an imaginary line stretching from about the mouth of the Severn to the Wash, or, as others claimed, from the mouth of the Severn to the mouth of the Thames. These views were held to be supported by the fact that very few palæoliths had been found north of the above-mentioned line. As years passed, however, new facts testifying to the lengthy duration of the Palæolithic period slowly accumulated, and knowledge respecting the great Ice Age gradually increased. True, many and divergent views have been advanced respecting the several phases of the Ice Age as these concern Lancashire and the north of England generally. Some glacialists hold that the Ice Age there, as also in the Alps, was broken up into several complete cycles consisting of a number of glaciations with a corresponding number of interglacial periods. Others believe that there was only one interglacial period in the north of England.

At the present time, when the old classification of Prehistoric implements is being considerably modified, and superficial “floors,” “stations,” and surface finds are no longer collectively referred to the Neolithic period, it will be of interest to record a site which has never been described, and which I shall hope to show in the present paper contains a number of forms which correspond with those of cave sites and which, moreover, have not hitherto been found on a Neolithic one. At the end of this paper some reasons are given in support of the above conclusions.

I have known Nettlebed for about 15 years, and for more than half that time the Common was a waste. Now a large portion of it, over which presumably the “floor” extended, is levelled for a recreation-ground. It will always be a matter of regret to me that it was only in 1913 I happened to examine the pit, as no doubt a large number of implements are permanently buried beneath the recreation-ground. The large sand-pit is some 300 yards in length. On the talus of this I picked up in 1913 a number of fresh-looking flakes with such sharp edges that I thought at first they were recent.

During 1911 Mr. Reginald A. Smith, F.S.A., mentioned to me that some long flakes which fitted together had been presented to the British Museum by Captain R. A. Vansittart, and were described as being from North Cray gravel-pit. Prior to this I had visited the pit on one or two occasions and noted the section exposed, but without finding any implements or flakes; however, on receipt of this information another visit was made and the workmen questioned.

It appeared that the flakes mentioned had been found at the junction of the gravel with the alluvium by my informant, some nine or ten years ago, when the gravel on the east bank of the Cray was being worked (indicated in Fig. 1), but nothing had been found since.

Nevertheless, the pit was kept under observation and, after some dozens of visits, I obtained from the man, on June 10th, 1912, the implement (Fig. 2) and a few flakes; on another occasion the “worked-angle” flake (Fig. 4), and since then a few simple flakes—in all, one implement, two cores, one hammer-stone, one worked-angle flake, two flakes showing signs of use, and eighteen simple flakes.

The implements which Mr. G. W. Smith has been good enough to exhibit at my suggestion are a selection from no less than one hundred and seventy in his collection from a small and shallow pit on high ground overlooking the Thames, near Tilehurst Station, 3 miles north-west of the centre of Reading. It is perhaps unfamiliar ground to members of this Society, but has been well studied in the past, and the following list, together with other papers quoted in the text, will put the reader in possession of the principal facts at present ascertained as to the geology and flint-finds of the neighbourhood:—

Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., LIV., 600 (sketch-map of the high gravels near Reading, Tilehurst and Goring Heath being marked alike).

Q.J.G.S., XLIX., 311, from which the accompanying section of the Thames Valley is derived (Fig. 8).

Q.J.G.S., XLVIII., 40, where the Tilehurst plateau-gravel is described as glacial.

Proc. Geol. Assoc., XV., 157 and 308.

Proc. Geol. Assoc., VIII., 348 (heights given, above the river and Ordnance datum, of flint-finds).

Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Archæological Journal, II., 16 (Treacher).

Trans. Berks Archæol. and Archit. Soc., 1881–2 (Stevens).

A series of implements were collected during the summer and autumn of 1914 from an area of some twenty square miles lying between the Cray Valley and Kingsdown in North Kent. The specimens were not distributed uniformly over this area, but confined more or less to a few localities where they occurred in considerable numbers. It is, moreover, significant that these localities are on high land commanding extensive views of the surrounding country, and especially of the river valleys. The sites were presumably chosen for this and another reason—the local abundance of green-coated flint, a material which was largely employed in the manufacture of implements.

The sites had been inhabited by a succession of peoples who left their implements behind them. Among these the commonest are assignable to the Neolithic period, but Palæolithic implements are by no means rare. There are, moreover, localities where only Palæolithic forms are found, and these all of one pattern, namely, the pointed ovate. Many possess the familiar reversed S twist, and all are deeply patinated, either pure white, pinkish-yellow, or cream.

The object of this paper is to describe and illustrate a series of heavily mineralised bone implements of a primitive type which (in the case of the Red Crag) have been found associated with numerous humanly-fashioned flints during diggings conducted in the detritusbed below the base of the Red and Coralline “Crags” of Suffolk.

The author is fully aware of his heterodoxy in claiming that bone was utilised in implement-making at such a remote period as that to which any pre-Crag remains must be referred, but having conducted a number of experiments in which mineralised and unmineralised bones were subjected to the effects of fortuitous blows and pressure, and after having fractured numerous modern shank bones of the bullock by striking and cutting them with flints and other stones held in the hand with a view of thus shaping them to the forms of the sub-Crag examples, he is compelled to regard these latter specimens as undoubted works of man.