The village of Shukbah lies at 1,058 ft. above sea-level among the Judaean hills, approximately 17½ miles north-west of Jerusalem and 10½ miles NE. of Ramleh. About half-a-mile to the south of the village a broad winding valley, the Wady-en-Natuf, dry for the greater part of the year, runs westward through the hills towards the coastal plain, and in it is situated the cave to be described.

The cave of Shukbah was first noticed by the late Père Alexis Mallon S.J., Director of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, in the course of a journey from Jemmala to Lydda in September 1924. Père Mallon was not able at that time to make any soundings, but he picked up a number of flint implements, and noted the presence of masses of breccia containing flints and bones. At the beginning of 1928, when I arrived in Palestine for the first time, he generously suggested that the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem should undertake the excavation of the site, which he rightly considered to be promising. Thanks to the generosity of the late Sir Robert Mond the British School was enabled to do this, and in April 1928 I went to Shukbah with two collaborators, Mr George Woodbury, afterwards Research Associate at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, and the late Mrs Edna Thuner Woodbury, who share with me the responsibility for this piece of work. Excavation was carried on from the beginning of April until the middle of June, when we left with the intention of returning in the following year. At the beginning of 1929, however, the British School was asked by the Director of Antiquities in Palestine to undertake at once the excavation of a group of caves in the Wady el-Mughara, Mount Carmel, then threatened with destruction by quarrying. This work was carried out in collaboration with the American School of Prehistoric Research, and the two schools planned to return to Shukbah after it should be completed. In the event, however, the Wady el-Mughara turned out to be an extraordinarily important site, and excavations were carried on there until 1934, while the study of the material and its preparation for publication lasted until 1937. As there is no prospect at present of continuing the work at Shukbah, it has been decided to publish without further delay the results of the excavations of 1928.

Depuis 8 mois, nous avons, entre autres terrains riches en Paléolithique ancien, exploré la plupart des plages anciennes au Nord et au Sud de Lisbonne, du cap d'Espichel au Sud, à la presqu'île de Peniche au Nord, soit environ 120 km. de côtes, dont auparavant (grotte de Furninha excepté) on ne savait rien du point de vue préhistorique. Les sîtes les plus importants qui nous ont livré du matériel, parfois en très grande quantité, sont du Sud au Nord:

(a) Entre Sado et Tage: les plages anciennes du Fort de Barralha (Espichel), de Lagosteiros et de Foz da Fonte, au Nord du cap.

(b) Entre Tage et Serra de Sintra: plages de S. Juliao da Barra et du Guincho.

(c) Au Nord de la Serra de Sintra, les plages de Magoito, Açafora, Ericeira, Beiramar.

(d) Autour de Peniche, les plages de Consolaçao, Porto de Lôbos, phare de Peniche et grotte de Furninha, dans sa falaise.

Nous avons recueilli de nombreuses observations géologiques et archéologiques, et récolté, sur ces anciennes plages, un matériel lithique considérable, principalement en quartzite, parfois en basalte ou en silex, voire en calcaire dur. De sorte qu'en attendant une description plus détaillée qui ne tardera pas trop à paraître, nous sommes en mesure de tirer dès maintenant quelques conclusions d'ensemble sur ce littoral et ses industries paléolithiques marines.

In March 1929, foundations were being dug for the new Biological Laboratory at St. Lawrence College, Ramsgate, overlooking the coast of Thanet, 4 miles SSW. of the North Foreland. In the course of digging, the workmen came across an ancient excavation in the chalk rock, lying beneath several feet of humus and filled with earthy chalk rubble. Intact in this excavation was a hand-made pottery urn (fig. 1, and pl. v, 1), and inside the urn were three large pins of cast bronze (fig. 2, 1–3). The earthy chalk rubble also contained a small number of ancient animal bones and teeth, and shells of the common sea mussel. The discovery was witnessed, and the finds were collected, by Mr C. E. Baldwin, M.A., then Senior Science Master at St. Lawrence College. The urn, extracted in fragments, was subsequently identified as a Bronze Age vessel by the late Mr J. E. Couchman, and the pins were recorded by Miss Lily F. Chitty in the British Association Card-Catalogue of Bronze Age Implements. In 1939 Mr Baldwin, now Headmaster of the County School, Camberley, Surrey, kindly consented to submit the finds for examination by the present writer in the British Museum, and permitted their subsequent exhibition (the urn restored) to the Prehistoric Society, and their publication here.

The purpose of this paper is briefly to draw attention to a new group of Deverel–Rimbury enclosures in Wessex. These were found in the course of field work by the writer and Mr Owen Meyrick during the year preceding the outbreak of war, and all five are within two miles of one another on open downland north of the Marlborough–Wootton-Bassett road (fig. 1).

1. Preshute Down. (See fig. 2 and pl. VII). Squarish enclosure covered with L.B.A. pottery and flints. Slight excavations were made here with the help of Mr W. E. V. Young from Avebury. The field system around the enclosure was shown to be later.

2. Ogbourne Down. (See fig. 4, and pl. VIII). Three enclosures close together, east of the Four-Mile Clump and at the bottom of a valley. Much L.B.A. pottery scattered over the whole area. Many ancient fields all round are visible from the crest of Smeathes' Ridge, but their relationship with the earthworks was not discovered before the war made more excavation impossible. Thanks to many boys from the Marlborough College Archaeological Society, excavation was made at a number of points.

3. Ogbourne Maizey Down. (See fig. 3). An interesting sub-rectangular earthwork of the same type. No excavations made. Only a few potsherds were found, but all proved to be L.B.A. This enclosure had been constructed by digging the ditch into the soft lynchet soil of a pre-existing field system.