Prehistoric Society of East Anglia in 1931

Abstract

THE recently issued Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia for 1931 (vol. 6, pt. 1) contains a number of communications of importance for pre-historians. The presidential address by Mr. J. P. T. Burchell on?Early Neanthropie Man and his Relation to the Ice Age? has already been the subject of reference in NATURE (NOV. 21, p. 879? 1931). It is printed here in full with ample illustration. Among the remaining papers, Mr. Bertram Brotherton describes a remarkable rostrocarinate implement of quartzite from Worcester, upon which Mr. Reid Moir remarks that it may be less ancient than its type suggests. Mr. Reid Moir himself chronicles further discoveries of flint implements in the brown boulder-clay of north-west Suffolk. He is now inclined to think that the brown boulder-clay was laid down before the Magdalenian period began. In a paper on the flint industries of the type station of La Madeleine, Mr. A. S. Barnes discusses their value as a basis for the classification of Magdalenian industries elsewhere. Mr. A. Leslie Armstrong deals with his further excavations in the Pinhole Cave at Creswell Crags and on a late Aurignacian site in Lincolnshire. Mr. A. L. Grimes, in dealing elaborately with the early bronze age flint-dagger in Britain, suggests that while it was undoubtedly introduced into Britain with the beaker culture, it shows resemblances to both the two main Continental groups, the northern and the Mediterranean. An account of the excavation of an early iron age site at Great Wymondham, Herts, by Mr. C. F. Tebbutt, is especially noteworthy, as sites and finds of this?early phase? (La Tne I. and II.) are rare in that area.