Although among our most striking antiquities, the swords and daggers of the British Early Iron Age, with their accompanying scabbards, have received no systematic study in the light of recent archaeology. The artistic qualities of many of the ornamented bronze scabbards had led to their becoming collectors' pieces from the 18th century onwards, and the basic treatment of the types (and indeed the only publication of many examples) is that of A. W. Franks when he was engaged in defining the ‘Late Celtic’ art style in his articles of 1863 and 1880. On this basis, Déchelette was able to include the British material in his classic treatment of European La Tène swords in 1914, and this was followed and amplified by R. A. Smith in 1925. Since then, the British scabbards have received incidental mention by such students of Iron Age metal-work as Leeds, Ward-Perkins and Fox, but they have not been treated as a group. The purpose of this paper is to review the available examples, to attempt a classification, and to determine the relationships of these products of the armourers' craft in Early Iron Age Britain to what is known of the stylistic development of other decorative metal-work, and to the areas of settlement and trade interchanges of the various Iron Age tribal groups or distinctive communities. The absence of any recent comprehensive treatment of the enormous series of continental La Téne swords, and the distinctively insular character of the British groups, has led me to restrict this study almost entirely to the British evolution, with the minimum reference to prototypes or parallel developments on the European mainland.

New discoveries during recent years of Palaeolithic implements near March and other places in the Fen District are important, because little is known of the cultural stages which can be correlated with the marine March Gravel. As far as I know, the only palaeoliths which have been reported so far from the Fenland area are:—

(1). A flake of Levalloisian type from Griffin's pit, one mile south-east of Wimblington; and a flake of Clactonian type from Bedlam Farm, 1 mile north-east of Manea (Baden-Powell, 1934, figs. 4–5, p. 217).

(2). An ‘almond-shaped’ implement reported from March by the Geological Survey (Skertchly, in Whitaker, 1893, p. 113). Apparently this specimen has not yet been fully described or figured.

(3). Five Acheulian implements and various flakes from Tottenhill south of King's Lynn; also flakes from South Wootton north of King's Lynn. Most of these implements were found by Dr C. B. Plowright, and were mentioned by H. J. Hillen (Hillen 1911, p. 118) and by J. E. Marr (Marr, 1920, pp. 186–7 and 1926, p. 120). These specimens were presented to the King's Lynn Museum, where there is also an Acheulian implement from East Winch, near the Nar Valley.

(4). A number of implements from various gravels in and around the south-eastern Fens, mentioned by J. G. D. Clark (1938, pp. 253–4). One from Burnt Fen was identified as Levallois v.

The archaeology of the Pontic lands conceals several unsolved problems, and the puzzle of the sudden breakdown and disappearance of the Tripolye culture ranks as one among the most striking of these. Several scholars who have dealt with Tripolye culture have expressed views, but none of them has proposed a really satisfactory solution.

In the twenties of this century the commonest view was that the Tripolye population simply left their native country at the end of the late Stone Age. E. v. Stern was of the opinion that the fact that the Tripolye culture disappeared suddenly at the summit of its development, and that another culture very akin to it appeared simultaneously on the Aegean territory, is clear proof of a great movement which brought the Tripolye population from the Pontic steppes down to their new homeland in the Aegean.

Tracking the elusive Indo-European has been a favourite sport of archaeologists and philologists ever since the days of the brothers Grimm, and surely some share of their power of telling fascinating fairy stories must have descended on their philological and archaeological successors.

Some authorities have tried to associate the spread of Indo-European languages with that of cremation burials or with the diffusion of a particular physical type. The German school of Penka and Kossinna regarded these languages as the product of the Nordic race, and connected this diffusion with a group of cultures characterized by double axes or hammer-axes of stone, by axe-adzes of copper, and by certain varieties of pottery such as corded ware, globular amphorae, etc.

I am not here concerned with the origin of these weapons. The axe-hammers may indeed ultimately be derived from stag-horn types of the mesolithic age. The copper axe-adzes are more restricted in their chronological and geographical setting. Still more restricted in their distribution and more definitely associated with Indo-European speaking peoples are two groups of metal battle-axes found especially in Persia and associated by M. Godard with the Kassites, the halberd-axe and the spiked-butt battle-axe. The first group, derived apparently from the ‘axe with double perforation’ does not really concern us since it seems almost to be confined to Persia, though its parent the ‘Hache à double évident’ occurs first in a double form in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, becomes acclimatized in Syria, and is found so far afield as Vapheio near Sparta, and Mycenae.

The English Midlands (fig. 1) as a natural region, and for the purposes of environmental archaeology, form a more restricted area than that to which the term is usually applied in modern geography. Fox (1943, 68) has written of ‘… the great triangle of forest lands which form the Midlands …’ and reference to the maps in the same work shows this triangle as roughly lying between the Dee estuary at Chester, the confluence of the Severn and the Avon at Tewkesbury, and a point in the vicinity of the watershed between the Trent and the rivers of the Wash. For convenience of reference it is suggested that the approximate eastern point should be represented by the site of Belvoir Castle for here the plain has narrowed between the southern tip of the Pennines, and the uplands of Leicestershire, to the effective basin of the Trent. This river in its course below Nottingham flows through ancient forest lands, but it is no longer Midland country.

The most uniform frontier of the Midlands, as here defined, is that provided to the south and east by the great sweep of the Jurassic uplands from the Cotswolds to Lincoln Edge. To the west, the Severn and the hill country of the Welsh borderlands form a zone which provides natural communications north and south and into the Welsh massif, but which, as it were, turns its back to the east. The northern confines of the Midlands are altogether less definite, but may be said to creep round the edges of the southern Pennines from the south bank of the Mersey to the middle course of the Trent.

In March 1949, work was carried out at The Bull Ring, Dove Holes, Derbyshire, by members of the Oxford University Archaeological Society, as part of the general survey of ‘henge“ monuments, undertaken by Mr R. J. C. Atkinson. The site was surveyed and was found to be of the ‘double-entrance’ class of Henge Monument. No stone-holes were found, but it is known from an 18th century account that the monument once had a stone setting similar to that at Arbor Low, Derbyshire. Trenches revealed the form of the ditch and bank, but the dating evidence was confined to two fragments of pottery, one of them a rim sherd, probably related to Beaker fabric.

When the present writer published his Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe in 1936, much had already been established about the pre-neolithic occupation of the West Baltic area. Paradoxically it is for this very reason that recent advances in this field are of more than regional interest, for it is only by intensifying fundamental research in the most favourable territories, in conjunction with more extensive surveys, that we can gain the evidence needed for a real insight into the processes of prehistory. One reason for the pre-eminence of the area in mesolithic research is the scope it provides for co-operation between archaeologists and natural scientists. Team-work in quaternary research has made it possible to study the earliest cultures in their correct chronological and ecological setting, and it has also guided prehistorians to the sites most likely to yield the maximum range of cultural evidence.

The setting of the discoveries (1947–9) described in this paper is the relatively flat and low-lying basin of the easterly and coastal end of the Vale of Pickering in north-east Yorkshire. Abounding hereabouts are many ditches nearly all of which serve as field boundaries draining what is mostly quagmire of varying depth. These empty their waters into the Hertford river or Muston Drain, a canalised version of an ancient stream which rises near the coast and flows directly inland. Sections revealed in these drains, supplemented by borings, show the area around Flixton to possess a stratified series of Late Glacial and Early Post-glacial deposits distinct from anything yet known in the greater part of the Vale to the west. Although the Pleistocene geology of the Vale of Pickering is not yet adequately understood, the presence of these deposits makes the Flixton area of far more than local interest.

During the early part of the summer of 1947, I examined some gravels forming an exposure in the face of a ditch. Nothing of archaeological interest was seen at the time, but one week later I made a second, somewhat casual, scrutiny of the same section and upon this occasion I found and extracted the flint blade which presaged a closer scrutiny of the section and eventual excavation within the area (Site 1). It was not until the excavation of Site 1 had been nearly completed (Nov. 1948) that other sites were located.

The first season's digging at Star Carr, Seamer, was confined to the examination of a single cutting and a lateral extension from this, the whole area amounting to no more than 475 square feet. The second season's work carried out in June and July 1950 was aimed first and foremost at learning more about the character of the brushwood flooring revealed in 1949 and in increasing the range of data bearing on the culture of the mesolithic hunters and on the wild animals on which they subsisted. Cuttings (II and III) were accordingly opened on either side of the original one, but three-foot balks were retained so as to prevent loose peat and water pouring from the original cutting into the new workings (fig. 1). The width of cuttings II and III was maintained at three yards so that the peat overlying the archaeological level could be dumped without harrowing. The new cuttings were started three yards south of datum, in view of what had been learnt in the previous season about the limits within which organic materials survived. Cutting II was extended southward well out into the lake bed, but cutting III was not carried out so far owing to the seepage of water from the lateral extension from the original cutting. The total area examined in cuttings II and III was approximately 747 square feet.

This paper is an attempt to bring together the rather scanty evidence for prehistoric textiles in the British Isles, whether in the form of surviving fragments, impressions on bronze corrosion, or implements associated with spinning and weaving. While the material cannot compare with the rich series from Scandinavia or Switzerland, it has, nevertheless, considerable points of interest in its own right.

Surviving woven textiles are first discussed, with such evidence of spinning and weaving techniques as can be deduced from the fragments. The archaeological material representing weaving appliances (e.g. spindle whorls, loom-weights, weaving combs, etc.) is then reviewed, with a special note on the curious technique of tablet-weaving, and finally there is a consideration of the evidence for basketry and allied fabrics. The material discussed is listed with references in a series of tabular appendices at the end of the paper.

Most prehistorians would probably agree that one of the most promising developments in the theory of the subject in recent years has been the increasing use of geographical concepts and methods. By this I do not mean merely the compilation of distributions—naturally suggested by the growing body of observations—but rather the deliberate attempt to use such distributions as an indication of the part played by various natural and social factors in stimulating and moulding the cultural traditions.

Probably the best known work of this description is Sir Cyril Fox's Personality of Britain, but the same general tendency is implicit in many other recent studies of prehistoric material both here and on the Continent. Roughly speaking the underlying principle might be described as a combined interpretation of the traits themselves with that of various elements in the environment, including its general structure.

In general it is likely that the most obvious fields for work of this sort will occur in the later periods of prehistory. Apart from somewhat increased chances of preservation, the remains of later societies tend to be of a more specialised character which greatly facilitates their attribution to this or that specific cultural tradition. At the same time it may be argued that the ultimate problems at issue during the earlier phases are of a somewhat simpler nature.