This is the first Presidential Address to be delivered before our Society since it has become the Prehistoric Society without qualification. It seems therefore appropriate to choose in preference to any particular problem the general topic of the aims and methods of our science. The last ten years have witnessed an extraordinary increase in the data available to the prehistorian and a remarkable expansion in the field he must survey. For this very reason we have been led to a revaluation of the methods and concepts to be employed in the interpretation of our material. To arrange and classify data pouring in from every corner of the world parochial categories that worked well enough for local collections can no longer serve.

Prehistoric archaeology has twin roots and a dual function; it tries on the one hand to prolong written history backward beyond the oldest literary records, on the other to carry natural history forward from the point where geology and palaeontology would leave it. In practice prehistoric remains were first systematically studied with a view to supplementing the information about Celts, Druids, Britons, Picts and Germans provided by ancient authors. But it was the union with geology after the acceptance of Boucher de Perthe's discoveries that made prehistory a science.

Plumpton plain is situated on the top of the South Downs, roughly 600 feet above sea level, six miles north-east of Brighton and four miles north-west of Lewes (fig. 1). From its western end a broad spur slopes gently southwards from the northern escarpment of the Downs, lying between Moustone Valley on the south-east and Faulkners Bottom on the west. Most of this Downland is covered with a dense scrub of gorse, thorn and bramble, and with large patches of bracken and heather. A series of broad paths running roughly at right angles with one another has been cut through this vegetation to facilitate the preservation of game. Along the main ridge of the spur running north and south is a broad gallop which, at a height of 600 feet O.D., passes through a group of earthworks situated 1500 feet from the north edge of the Downs and 2300 feet east of Streathill Farm. This group was the primary object of bur investigations and will be referred to as Site A (fig. 2).

Site B (fig. 3) lies a quarter of a mile to the south-east of Site A on a small lateral spur jutting between the twin heads of Moustone Bottom. The only visible evidence of prehistoric occupation was a quantity of coarse gritty sherds and calcined flints on the surface to the south-east of a low bank and ditch which runs across the spur.

Several groups of lynchets enclosing square Celtic fields are to be seen in the neighbourhood of these two sites. They lie principally to the south-east of Site A and to the south of Site B.

A substantial series of pottery was submitted to me from both the Plumpton Plain sites. Its examination has emphasized the distinction of date between them. It will appear that Site A belongs to the earlier part of the Late Bronze Age, from perhaps about 1000 B.C., whereas Site B cannot be dated before about 750 B.C., and covers the transition to the Early Iron Age in the period approximately centred on 500 B.C.

In 1913 the gravel beds on the right bank of the Wey at Farnham were described as occurring on four terraces (A, B, C, D,) though admittedly the highest terrace (A) was only part of the much-dissected plateau of Alice Holt. All authorities were until recently agreed that these beds consisted of river gravel, but now Mr R. A. Smith and Major Wade, without giving any clear reasons for their dissent, assure us that there are only two river terraces, one at 50 feet above the river (Terrace D) and the other at 100 feet (Terrace C); and that all the Pleistocene deposits above the latter are ‘contorted drift.’ It does not appear, however, that these words are used in their ordinary sense, to denote the product of a glacier, but Mr Reginald Smith tells us that the gravel is ‘clearly not of river origin; hence some other geological reason for the deposit must be sought.’

In the following pages these assertions will be challenged, and an attempt will be made to show that river-gravels extend right up on to the plateau. The old names of the terraces, however, will be maintained throughout, as it seems undesirable to employ the terms ‘50 feet terrace,’ and ‘100 feet terrace’ until their relation to those of the Thames Valley is more fully established.

‘Rising from the middle of the Irish Sea, within sight of each of the three Kingdoms, with a history and associations so distinct, yet so intimately linked with those of the rest of Britain, this interesting Island presents in its geological structure features which connect it alike with England, Scotland, and Ireland, while at the same time it retains a marked individuality in regard to some of the rocks that form its framework.’—Sir Archibald Geikie.

The prehistory no less than the geology of the Isle of Man is of absorbing interest from its geographical position in relation to the larger units of the British Isles. The island is placed (fig. 1) at an equal distance (31 miles) between the coasts of Ireland and of Cumberland; its northern tip, the Point of Ayre, reaches to within 16 miles of Wigtonshire, and Anglesey lies 45 miles to the south of Langness Point. An observer on Snaefell (2034 feet) can view England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in one sweep. Since the first settlement of the island, cultural and ethnic influences have approached from all directions, but its size (227 sq. miles) and the distance of sea which isolates it from the coasts of the mainlands have been sufficient to ensure vigorous local developments. The interaction of British and Irish influences and the occasional insular developments are the chief features of the prehistory of the island.

Apart from a triangle of flat ground to the north, broken only by the Bride Hills (200–300 feet), and so far as its drift deposits are concerned, relatively recent in origin, the island consists almost entirely of slate diversified by local intrusions of igneous rocks (granite and diabase), by the sandstone of the Peel area, and by the carboniferous limestone of the Castletown district in the south. Most of the area of older rocks lies above the 400 foot contour and quite large areas are more than 1000 feet above sea level. The mountainous mass of the island, divided by the valley between Douglas and Peel, remained almost uninhabited throughout prehistoric and historic times.

Since my first paper was published nineteen years ago on the Darmsden deposit and implements, a good deal more is known about the geology of the site, while there has been collected a series of implements exhibiting a wider range of types than that described in 1916. It appears, therefore, in view of the interest taken in the primitive industry of Darmsden, that the time is opportune for the publication of another paper which will set forth the present state of our knowledge of this industry and of the deposit in which it is found.

Although a number of specimens of Combe-Capelle type are recorded for the Gipping Valley above Ipswich few have so far been recognised in Norfolk. Fig. 1 shows the various aspects of a beautiful specimen found by Mr J. H. Capon in a shallow working for gravel on Mousehold Heath, on the northern border of Norwich. Dr. J. D. Solomon examined the section and reports:— ‘The deposit in which Mr Capon found the implement is a portion of the upper gravel of Mousehold Heath, which contains outwash from the Chalky Boulder Clay and is clearly of Great Eastern date. But the actual portion, in which the implement was found, has clearly been disturbed and re-arranged by solifluxion, perhaps of Little Eastern date. The implement is therefore, not to be considered as in situ in the main mass of the gravel.’

It is of fine quality flint. The flatter face (fig. 1 c) is white and porcellanous, highly lustred, and showing two small patches of cortex. The flaking is flat in the extreme, only two of the scars showing resolved flaking. The upper face (fig. 1A) shows grey flint with distinct bluish patina, particularly towards the edges, fine white lines meandering over the whole surface, giving a typical criss-cross effect; some of the flaking is heavily resolved whilst the edges show a rather nibbling re-touch.

Therfield heath, the expanse of chalk downland on the west side of Royston, has long enjoyed a local fame for the number of barrows and other antiquities which diversify its surface. On the north side it is bounded by the Icknield Way and so is well placed on the corridor between Wessex and East Anglia.

By far the most important monument on the Heath is a small long barrow notable as the only example known in East Anglia, its nearest neighbours being the destroyed Dunstable barrow 25 miles to the west, and, further still, the Churn barrow west of the Thames near the Goring Gap.

The outward form of the barrow is well-preserved (fig. 1, plan 1), exhibiting the typical club-shaped plan, the broader and higher end to the east. It is 110 feet long, 56 feet wide and 6 feet high at the east end, and 25 feet wide and 2 feet wide at the west. The Ordnance Survey references are Herts 6 inch 4 NE and 25 inch 4, 8. The latitude is 52°2′35″ and the longitude 0° 2′ 40″ w. The height above sea level is 385 feet.

It is unfortunate that the late E. B. Nunn of Royston, who opened most of the barrows on the Heath, completely gutted the interior of this long barrow. By the courtesy of Dr W. M. Palmer, M.A., M.D., F.S.A. I am able to publish the following extract from Nunn's manuscript describing his operations here eighty years ago. Fig. 2 is a reproduction of the sketch which illustrates his account.

The case here presented is in a sense ‘special pleading’ and does not profess to give a complete explanation of the very complicated plans provided by the few long barrows and chambered cairns which have been excavated with any degree of care and completeness.

It may, in fact, be likened to an attempt to prove a single line of descent in a complicated pedigree; but, in my opinion the line is the principal one leading up to the common ancestor of a vast family of cousins of different degree.

One difficulty is the selection of a starting point in the family tree (to continue the metaphor); Mr O. G. S. Crawford would take the pedigree back to the house, a thesis it is much to be hoped that he will develop. I would, however, enter the caveat that in the particular case he cites the possibility of a reversal of the process of development should be considered. In a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries Mr Stuart Piggott suggested that an elongated chamber found by Mortimer under a round barrow at Kemp Howe was a house converted into a tomb. I would rather believe it to have been constructed for a burial chamber, and claim it as another link in the line of evolution from burial cave to barrow which I am trying to establish.

The original draft of this paper was read at the First International Congress of Prehistoric Sciences in 1932, and a summary was printed in the ‘Proceedings of the Congress’ (p. 144). It has since been re-written and incorporates new evidence.

The English long barrows have not been dealt with as a whole since the classic paper of Dr Thurnam in 1868, but a series of regional studies, mainly the production of the archaeological department of the Ordnance Survey, have made the material available in convenient form. The publication of the Survey's complete map of British megaliths will enable many problems to be approached from the view point of distribution, but the southern English material, which is already published, raises one problem, at least, of first-class importance.

The most recent views on the origin of the Windmill Hill culture have been set out by Mr Stuart Piggott in the last Proceedings of this Society. The point he stresses significantly is that the origin of the Windmill Hill, or Neolithic A culture cannot any longer be regarded as a single one; already in the earlier, A1 phase, there are at least two distinct elements present, which when combined and influenced by the Peterborough culture produced the later A2 phase. He is willing tentatively to accept the possibility of the close relationship that I suggested last year between the A1 element represented by the plain, baggy pots of the lowest levels at the type station, Hembury, and elsewhere, and the néolithique ancien, or Cortaillod culture, of the Swiss Lakes. The second element is represented by carinated bowls of his form D and G with lip diameter greater than that of the shoulder, but apparently by nothing else. If it is agreed to accept a distinct origin for the simple ‘baggy’ A1 pottery, which carries with it the associated interrupted ditch camps and antler combs, the D–G bowls are clearly left alone. Piggott demonstrates how these bowls can be derived by an admirable typological sequence directly from the tulip-beaker of the well-known Michelsberg culture centred on Switzerland and the Rhine. The tulip-beaker grows more sharply shouldered and shallower, and, therefore, more nearly conforming to the D–G bowls as one passes down the Rhine from south to north. But for this typological and geographical series Piggott claims absolutely no chronological significance. Surely such a denial must make the whole story meaningless ? Either the low carinated form developed from the tall tulip-beaker as the culture extended northwards and is therefore appreciably later in beginning than the tall form, although this persisted along side it, or else it did not, and the two forms need have no connection with one another–a reductio ad absurdum.

The authors of these notes have to acknowledge the ready co-operation of the numerous excavators who have kindly contributed information concerning their work. The foregoing notes are designed to put members of the Prehistoric Society in possession of the main results of the summer's work, most of which will not be published in full for several months. Once again we would draw attention to the fact that notes on the publications of the year will be published in the Archaeological Journal by Mr and Mrs Hawkes.