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Excavations by Chichester and District Archaeology Society on the site of a Roman villa at Warblington, near Emsworth, Hampshire, revealed a small stone cist containing two lead packages. While interpretation as a burial is explored, it appears more likely that the cist and its contents represent a ritual deposit within a domestic structure.

Naxos, the largest of the Cycladic islands, offers a nuanced insight into Iron Age funerary behaviour in the Cyclades and relations between social groups as reflected in the archaeological record. The focus of this paper is the cemetery of Tsikalario in the hinterland of the island, with emphasis on two burial contexts which exhibit a range of activities related to funerary ceremonies and the consumption of grave-offerings. The grave-tumuli found in the Tsikalario cemetery comprise a mortuary ‘phenomenon’ not found otherwise on Naxos during the Early Iron Age. Such a differentiation in mortuary practice can be interpreted as a strategy used by the people of inland Naxos to distinguish their funerary habits from the more typical Naxian practices of, for example, the inhabitants of the coastal Naxos harbour town. This distinctive funerary practice can speak in favour of an attempt by the kinship group(s) that buried their deceased in the cemetery of Tsikalario to articulate status and identity. Beyond these tumuli, evidence from a different type of grave context at Tsikalario – Cist Grave 11 and its vicinity (Burial Context 11) – offers an additional example of a well-thought-out staging of funerary beliefs in the inland region of Naxos. Not only does it illustrate the coexistence of other types of burials in the cemetery, but, alongside the tumuli and their finds, it also demonstrates, through the symbolic package of the grave-offerings and the multifaceted network of interactions they reveal, that inland Naxos participated in the intra- and supra-island circulation of wares and ideas.

This article deals with the finds from a cist grave which is located in the bed of the River Xerias at Argos. The grave was in use during the fourth centurybcfor multiple burials, a usual practice for Argive cemeteries. The burials are presented in chronological order based on the interpretation of the excavation data and the chronology of the pottery. The finds from the grave reveal hitherto unknown burial practices at Argos; however, our limited knowledge on the cemeteries of the Late Classical period impedes assessment of them. The study of the vases from the tomb illuminates the otherwise unknown makeup of the local workshops in the fourth centurybc, where influences from abroad coexist harmoniously alongside experimentation and novelty.

Aerial photography and excavations have brought to notice a major prehistoric ceremonial complex in central Scotland comparable to Stonehenge, although largely built in earth and timber. Beginning, like Stonehenge, as a cremation cemetery, it launched its monumentality by means of an immense circle of tree trunks, and developed it with smaller circles of posts and an earth bank (henge). A change of political mood in the Early Bronze Age is marked by one of Scotland's best preserved dagger-burials in a stone cist with an engraved lid. The perishable (or reusable) materials meant that this great centre lay for millennia under ploughed fields, until it was adopted, by design or by chance, as a centre of the Pictish kings.

The famous monumental Bronze Age cairn Bredarör on Kivik with its decorated stone coffin or cist has been described as a ‘pyramid of the north’. Situating his work as the latest stage in a long history of interpretation that began in the eighteenth century, the author analyses the human bone that survived from the 1930s excavation and shows that the cist and chamber must have remained open to receive burials over a period of 600 years.

Funeral pyres identified at a fourth-century BC cemetery on Thasos have produced a range of plants. The authors show that strongly represented among them are pomegranate, garlic and grape, as well as bread – foodstuffs for funeral feasts and with significance for religious practice.

A fragmentary inscription found at Thebes casts new light on the abortive invasion of Athens in 506 by Kleomenes, the Boiotians, and the Chalkidians. On the one hand, it provides valuable confirmation, soon after the event, of the general drift of Herodotos' account of events; on the other, even in its incomplete state, it adds one important detail lacking in Herodotos. And, of course, it tells the story from the Boiotian point of view.The excavation took place in the winter of the year 2001–2 in the property of Evanghelia Madhis at Thebes following her application for the construction of a new house. The plot is situated in the suburb of Pyri, in the north-west periphery of Thebes, about 800 m from the city centre of Thebes, and just beyond the Athens–Thessaloniki railway line (FIG. 1). In it was unearthed a well-built tomb-like cist, made of three rows of large conglomerate stone blocks in regular masonry; similar blocks form its pavement. No traces of covering stones or other relevant materials have so far been discovered. However, since the contents of the cist—including objects such as the bronze inscribed sheets found at the bottom—were probably thrown there when it was abandoned, it may never have been properly covered: no trace of a superstructure or roofing system is preserved on the upper surface of the walls of the cist.

New survey in the Chitral Valley has doubled the number of recorded Gandharan Grave culture sites in the region and extended their geographical range. The numbers and location of sites indicates that the Gandharan Grave culture was well established in the Chitral valley, suggesting that the valley may have been central to this cultural development, rather than marginal.

Sand quarrying in 1989 at Sand Fiold, Sandwick, in Orkney resulted in the accidental discovery of a rock-cut chamber containing a cist. Subsequent excavation revealed that this cist had a number of unusual features. The cist slabs had been fitted together exceptionally well and the completed cist was designed to be re-opened by the removal of a side slab. Within the chamber, access was provided to the opening side of the cist and a relieving structure was built over its capstone.The cist contained cremation and inhumation burials that had been inserted on more than one occasion; as its builders intended. A collection of poorly preserved unburnt bone was found to comprise the remains of two individuals: a young adult and a foetus. Two collections of cremated bone, each derived from a single adult, were also present; one in a Food Vessel Urn, the second forming a pile on the floor and containing two burnt antler tines and two unburnt human teeth. The un-urned cremation deposit and the unburnt bones had been covered in mats of plant fibres derived from grass and sedge. The urn had been lined with basketry, also made from grass. Outside the cist, an exceptionally large collection of fuel ash slag (FAS), derived from a cremation pyre, had been deposited between the cist and the wall of the rock-cut chamber.Radiocarbon dates indicate that the site and its contents had a long history. The FAS and the foetus skeleton date to 2900–2500 cal BC. Between 2200 and 1900 cal BC the urned cremation and young adult human bones were inserted and charcoal was deposited in the foundation slots for the back wall of the cist. The deposition of the un-urned cremation was dated to 1000–800 cal BC, some 900 years later, when the urn had already fallen over and broken. At this time, it is assumed that the urn was restored to an upright position and propped with stones, while the stone lid for the urn was reused in the foundation slot of the left-hand side of the cist. Reuse and refurbishment over two millennia seem evidenced in the results from this cist.

The first season of an on-going project focused on Leskernick Hill, north-west Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, entailed a preliminary settlement survey and limited excavation of a stone row terminal. Leskernick comprises a western and a southern settlement situated on the lower, stony slopes of the hill and including 51 circular stone houses constructed using a variety of building techniques. Walled fields associated with these houses vary in size from 0.25–1 ha and appear to have accreted in a curvilinear fashion from a number of centres. Five smal burial mounds and a cist are associated with the southern settlement, all but one lying around the periphery of the field system. The western settlement includes ‘cairn-like’ piles of stones within and between some houses and some hut circles may have been converted into cairns. The settlements may have been built sequentially but the layout of each adheres to a coherent design suggesting a common broad phase of use. The southern settlement overlooks a stone-free plain containing a ceremonial complex.The paper presents a narrative account of the work and considers not only the form, function, and chronology of the sites at Leskernick but also seeks to explore the relationships between people and the landscape they inhabit; the prehistoric symbolic continuum from house to field to stone row etc, and to investigate the relationship between archaeology as a discourse on the past and archaeology as practice in the present. It considers how the daily process of excavation generates alternative site histories which are subsequently abandoned, forgotten, perpetuated or transformed.

Blawearie Cairn was first excavated by Canon William Greenwell in 1865. His findings indicated that the cairn was a cist cemetery of the Early Bronze Age. Recent excavation has demonstrated that the cairn was originally a kerb circle and that funerary rites were not necessarily its prime function.

In the Kumaun region of Uttar Pradesh, India, on the southern slopes of the Himalaya are cist burials, as well as megalithic monuments. Radiocarbon dates from the cists now hint at their going back to the 3rd millennium BC, and linguistic affinities would associate them with early Indo-European migrations into the western and central Himalaya regions.

Excavation of an Early Bronze Age cist cemetery at West Water Reservoir, Peeblesshire, has uncovered a unique two-strand necklace, with one string of cannel coal disc beads and another of lead beads, buried around the neck of a young child. This is the earliest evidence for the use of metallic lead in Britain and Ireland.

The excavations of the cemetery groups at Balneaves, Loanleven and Park of Tongland facilitate an examination of many aspects of Bronze Age burial practices in Scotland. They are notable as much for the differences in burial ritual they imply as for the very narrow chronological period in which they were used. The three sites produced a total of seventeen14C dates, two of which are aberrant, with means of the remaining fifteen falling within a period of 250 years (3370–3610 bp in radiocarbon years). The excavations were sponsored by Historic Scotland (formerly Historic Buildings and Monuments, Scotland).At Balneaves, a penannular ditch enclosed sixteen features, including a group of seven pits with cremation burials, four of which were associated with a distinctive assemblage of collared urns. The cremated bone was well preserved. At least one large standing stone had been erected on the site, and this was buried in the medieval period.At Loanleven, only a segment of the enclosing ring-ditch survived, within which were four cists, two containing inhumations and two cremations, one of the latter (Cist 2) associated with a fragment of a food vessel. A decorated slab, in so-called ‘Passage Grave Style’, was recovered from Cist 1, and the same cist produced palynological evidence for grave furnishings in the form of a mat of plant material which probably underlay the body.14C dates give a terminus ante quem of 3620±50 bp (GU–2543) for the re-use of the decorated slab, and aterminus post quemof 3410±50 bp (GU–2542) for the food vessel grave.Park of Tongland, regarded as a Four-Poster stone circle, was excavated after the fall of a standing stone. It was shown to be of multi-period construction, consisting of a cairn which overlay seven pits containing fragmentary cremation burials, two associated with collared urns. The standing stones may not all have been erect at the same time. A series of14C dates fell within the range of 1480–1530 bc.

Excavations at Ewanrigg, Maryport, Cumbria (NY035353) took place in 1983 and 1985–87. The site of a Bronze Age cremation cemetery was discovered whilst fieldwalking a crop-mark enclosure site; this site had been trial excavated in 1956 and shown to be a Romano-British settlement. During the excavations 28 burials were discovered, 26 being cremations and two inhumations. Both inhumations, one a Beaker burial and the other a cist burial with a Food Vessel, had been disturbed. The Bronze Age pottery assemblage was a mixture of Collared Urns and Food Vessel Urns; the Collared Urns are mainly Secondary Series with one showing some Primary Series traits. Fragments of two Beakers were discovered, one an N/MR Beaker and the other more in the long-necked Northern series tradition. All the pottery, except the N/MR Beaker, was made from local clay. Within one of the cremation burials a clay connecting rod for a furnace was discovered and apart from one other site this is the only discovery which shows any link between metal-working and the burials within the Collared Urn tradition. Also within the cremations were a number of toggles and pins made from animal bone. The human cremated bone was sufficiently well preserved to allow analysis to show that there were six female and five male burials. Radiocarbon samples, mainly on charcoal, gave a date range for the Collared Urns of 2460–1520 BC (calibrated to two standard deviations).

This article reviews the evidence for built tombs in Macedonia prior to the construction of the royal tombs at Vergina. It considers earlier cist tombs with slab roofs, and evidence for architectural embellishment: it proceeds to discuss the evolution of the vaulted form, with architectural facades. In a second part, the identity of the occupants of Tombs I–III at Vergina is discussed, followed by a consideration of the arguments against the identifications proposed.

The two categories of tomb are defined. Burial practice in Greece from MH onwards is discussed, chamber tombs being established as canonical in LH I, though these are not universal, and cist and pit burials continue. Chamber and tholos tombs occur over a wide area of the mainland in LH II; after LH II, except for children's burials, pits and cists are relatively rare, though they are found in chamber tombs. It is argued that chamber tombs were the general form of burial, and that cists and pits were not used, separately, for poor burials. Chamber tombs continue to be general in LH IIIC: simpler requirements and cremation lead to a revival of cists and pits, though chamber tombs do not totally die out, and in Crete continue to be the preferred form in Archaic times.

This paper deals with a unique glass bead from the second millennium BC in Wessex. Overlooked for more than 150 years, it has now been recognized for its intrinsic interest and general importance and is here presented for its wide significance in ancient Europe and beyond (pls 8 and 9).InAncient Wiltshire(1812, 210) Richard Colt Hoare recorded the excavation of a barrow in a group of Bronze Age date at Wilsford: ‘No. 7 is a large bell-shaped barrow’ (now regarded as a bowl barrow) ‘composed entirely of vegetable earth. It contained within a cist a little pile of burned bones with which had been deposited a very fine brass pin, a large stone bead which had been stained red, a bead of ivory and a lance head of brass’. This account is based on the records of William Cunnington (1807, 5–6), which include a transcription of a letter from the original excavator, a Mr Owen. The dimensions of the barrow are there given as 80 ft in diameter, 9 ft high, with a circular cist 18 in deep. The barrow is described as ‘No. 6 of Mr Duke's barrows’; there is thus a discrepancy in the numbering of the barrow, since Colt Hoare referred to it as Lake No. 7, while Cunnington kept to No. 6. The barrow, though recently ploughed, still stands to a height of over 2 m, and is today known as G.42 (Grinsell 1957, 211).

The excavation of the Royal Tombs at Vergina has led to discussion of problems posed by them. This paper discusses problems of chronology, and the difficulties of deducing date purely from consideration of the architectural features of the Macedonian tombs. It also considers the use of the vault to roof them, and argues that this was developed in Macedonia itself, through the enlargement of cist tombs to meet the particular needs posed by the larger tombs of the fourth century BC. Finally, it discusses the architectural embellishment of the façades.

The discovery of three bronze age cist burials at Ashgrove, Fife, was unusual in revealing highly decomposed macroscopic plant debris in cist I, which was excavated by Professor R. J. Adam, Mrs Mary Adam and Professor L. H. Butler. Miss A. Henshall (1964) states that the liberal clay luting of the side slabs and cover of cist I had been so effective as to keep the interior dry and free of soil. She also reports that 'Over the skeleton and cist floor there was a thin deposit of black crumbly matter which formed a deep deposit nearly I ft across in the area between the forearms and upper arms, i.e., in the vicinity of the chest' (p. 167) (PL. xva). Miss C. A. Lambert (now Mrs C. A. Dickson), in an appendix to Henshall's paper, found that 'The plant material consisted of abundant dicotyledonous leaf fragments, bark, twigs, wood charcoal (two tiny fragments), plant tissue with crystalline copper salts adhering to it and fairly abundant sphagnum moss. The leaf fragments were several layers thick but their poorly preserved condition prevented their separation and identification.

The prehistoric rock art of Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — is surveyed, with specific reference to the over 900 sites bearing motifs more complex than cup-marks alone and apparently random grooves. Of sites bearing cup-marks alone, there are at least 700.The majority of motifs is geometric, with a few animals, weapons and human hands and footprints. Two main groups are recognized, the Boyne or Passage Grave type and the Galician type. The former occurs mainly on the slabs of Neolithic tombs, especially in Ireland, and includes spirals, rings, lozenges, zigzags and flower-like figures, only some of which occur in Britain. The latter is more restricted in design, with mainly cup-and-rings, rings, and spirals, usually on rock outcrops and boulders. A third group is recognized by some workers, in which cist and burial stones are carved with mostly the Boyne type, but sometimes with Galician or simple cup-marks or a mixture of these. There is also occasional overlap between Galician and Boyne types, occurring on natural rocks and tombs.The main characteristics, locations in relation to topography and archaeology, and distribution are detailed. Dating and significance are briefly discussed.Most of the art occurs in a central belt of Britain, but within that it is recognized as being distributed spatially among 16 main regions which are defined both geographically and with regard to concentrations of sites.There is a gazetteer of all sites, similarly arranged.

The excavation of this site on the southern outskirts of Ramsey (nat. grid ref. SC452936) was undertaken as a rescue operation when a building estate was to encroach upon the large mound which formed a conspicuous feature in the field. The Manx Museum and National Trust acknowledges the co-operation of the Planning Committee of the Isle of Man Local Government Board in stipulating as a condition of planning approval that opportunity must be given for scientific examination of the site. The excavation (necessarily accommodated with other commitments, and briefly delayed through snow) took place within the period December 1968 to April 1969.Early References to the Site. As well as a strong local tradition that the mound was a burial place, references to the site occur in the local antiquarian literature. The earliest appears to be that in Oswald's Vestigia (1860, 57–58), where he notes the inspection of this site by the Rev. W. Kermode of Ramsey at the time when it was first given over to the plough, c. 1850. Kermode remarked that the ‘mound of considerable dimensions … had on the top the usual kist vaen,—a rude stone grave, consisting of a few upright stones with a large heavy slab resting on the top; within were found some very small pieces of unbaked pottery, with a black substance which was probably charred human bones.’ From the north–south orientation of the cist he surmised that it might have been a Viking grave.

The incised slabs of the rectangular cist in the cairn at Kivik rank with the Hagia Triada sarcophagus in being among the most important discoveries so far made of evidence bearing on the funeral rites of the Bronze Age in Europe, and it seems certain that pending further discoveries these two monuments form the foundation on which our study of Bronze Age funeral customs must be built.Before discussing the Kivik cairn itself it is well to glance at the archaeological setting of Kivik and the surrounding country, for on this the correct interpretation of the Kivik slabs depends.

In May 1927 Mr. J. R. Gabriel, of Caerleon, drew my attention to a Roman burial which had just been discovered during building operations in the village of Ultra Pontem, the bridge-head suburb of Caerleon on the southern bank of the Usk. The eastern edge of this village has long been known to impinge upon an extensive Roman cemetery, and fragments of Roman tombstones are still found here from time to time. The new discovery was made some 60 yards east of Yew Tree House and 550 yards east-south-east of the south-east end of the bridge (Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, Mon. XXIX, S.W.), during the digging of a cess-pit for bungalows then under construction on the hill-side south of the Bulmore Road. At a depth of about 2½ feet the southern side of the pit was found to consist largely of a vertical slab of stone, which, as the digging proceeded, fell downwards and disclosed a stone cist containing a lead canister (figs. 1 and 3). The cist and its contents were then left in position until Mr. Gabriel and I had seen and recorded them, and with the consent of the owner of the property (Mrs. Lewis), who rendered every assistance, both cist and canister were removed to the Caerleon Museum.

SummaryThere has been little investigation into the beaker period in the Derbyshire Peak District since Thomas Bateman's activities between 1843–60. This paper describes the excavation, between 1966–8, of Bee Low, a beaker round cairn imperfectly examined by Bateman in 1843 and 1851. The excavation produced evidence of almost continuous usage of the mound by beaker and later communities over a period of some 300 years. The earliest burials (c. 1700 B.C.) were a collective group of six or more inhumations in a stone cist with an All-Over-Cord beaker, a pottery type hitherto unrepresented in the Peak. In all, twenty-three inhumations and five cremations were recorded from the cairn, with further beakers of types N2 (Developed Northern), S2 (Developed Southern), and S4 (Final Southern), the last a further type not previously recorded with certainty in beaker contexts in the area. Burial customs included collective, crouched, and disarticulated interment. Only one inhumation had a metal association—a bronze awl—but two cremations were provided with bronzes, an awl and a small riveted knife. The excavation of this miniature necropolis has added considerably to present knowledge of the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age cultures of the Peak.

The statuette of a centaur at Plates 8–9 was found during excavations at Lefkandi in Euboea, conducted by the British School at Athens during last summer. Standing 36 centimetres high, it is among the earliest representations of a centaur yet known from the Aegean area, and the largest of terracotta centaurs. Its outstanding interest seemed to the authors to call for a more detailed publication than the normal brief preliminary account of the excavation and its finds.It has an unusual archaeological history, suggesting that it was a valued object before it was eventually buried in a cemetery at Lefkandi. This cemetery, which lies on a small hill called Toumba, overlooking the modern fishing village of Lefkandi, was an unexpected discovery. Trials were made during 1969 in this vicinity in the hope of finding the Submycenaean and Early Protogeometric settlement which went with the nearby cist graves. The virtual absence of remains of this period on the main town site of ‘Xeropolis’ had led to the belief that at this time the inhabitants may have temporarily moved to the Toumba area, a smaller and more easily defensible hill and one with a natural supply of water. However, our trial there found not the settlement we hoped for, but another cemetery.

A short time ago Mr. Hutchinson, the tenant of Moorhouse Farm, the property of the Right Hon. Lord Brougham and Vaux, informed one of the authors of this communication, Mr. Stalker, that he had recently laid bare a cist containing human bones, and desired him to examine the circumstances of the occurrence and the nature of the contents.

The curious carvings to which the name “Cup-and-Ring” has been applied are very widely distributed over the globe. They are found in the British Islands, France, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe, and have been noted in India and in Fiji. They occur on natural rock surfaces, on boulders in situ, on standing stones, on cromlechs, on detached stones forming parts of chambered cairns, cist or urn covers, or built into Pictish weems or brochs; and also on grave-stones in Christian churchyards, and on the walls of churches themselves.

On Mull or Meayll Hill, a mile north-east of the Calf Sound, Isle of Man, is the remarkable megalithic monument known as the Mull Hill Circle. It is not a stone circle of normal type but consists of six T-shaped structures, each comprising two rectangular cists averaging 5 ft. 9 in. by 2 ft. 8 in., placed end to end with the inner end of each open and forming the head of the T, and approached by a short passage about 7 ft. long at right angles (the upright of the T). These pairs of cists are arranged in a circle some 50 ft. in diameter; each group distinct, with the cists placed tangentially and the passages leading radially outwards. They are so spaced as to leave a larger interval between the groups on the north and south to form two opposite ‘entrances ’. Apparently the entire circle of cists had originally been covered by a ring of stones and earth, the whole forming a ‘disc-barrow’, the bank of which contained chambers. There are vague indications of a central chamber or cist. The stone used in the construction of the monument was a local slate. No capstones remain to any cists or passages, but all appear to have been paved with flat slabs.

This cist tomb was uncovered in 1959 during the excavation of the House of Sphinxes,2 and it lay at a distance of only 2 m. from tomb PG 606 (see fig. I and BSA li. 114 fig. 5).It was built on the rock where there was a natural angle and a fairly sharp slope from west to east. The floor of the tomb was in fact for the most part the rock itself, but at the east end a number of small stones, overlying Mycenaean debris, were used. It was of rectangular shape, and orientated W.-E. The west and south walls of the tomb were provided by the rock; two large worked slabs, set upright, formed the north-east corner, and for the rest natural stones were used to line the tomb. There was no evidence of any roofing slabs, nor can one see how such could have been fixed. The inner dimensions were 1·78 × 0·68 m., and the two walling slabs had a height of 0·60 m.

The station of Parkhill, on the Great North of Scotland Railway, is seven and a half miles from Aberdeen, and the cist which is the subject of these notes was situated in a mound of gravel and sand to the north-east of, and within one or two hundred yards of, the station. This is the second which has been uncovered at the same spot,—a previous one having been disclosed in 1867, the contents of which—a vase and some bones—are preserved in the Anatomical Museum, Marischal College, University of Aberdeen.

The cairn at Mount Stewart has attracted wide attention as the alleged find-site of one of the very small group of Irish beakers. Since the ‘beaker’ and another bowl-shaped food-vessel from the cairn have now been rediscovered in the Belfast Municipal Museum—and the last relic of the cairn recently removed—we feel the time has come for a review of the available data.

The area of the Protogeometric cairns here described was first discovered in 1931, when we opened a trial pit (Fig. 3) which revealed part of a wall (Fig. 4, 6) and behind it what seemed to be a confused mass of stones mixed with black earth, and containing sherds, ranging from a few LH III to Protogeometric. These stones we took to be the remains of a collapsed house. In 1932 the pit was extended, principally to West and North, and though we encountered the same masses of stones all over the area, it became possible to discover some coherence in them. The plan (Fig. 3) and section (Fig. 4) give some idea of the complexity of the remains, but for the sake of clearness the accumulations of stones (all of which it was necessary to plot before they could be removed) between the surface and the remains actually shown are omitted. In the neighbourhood of wall 6 the stones explained themselves as remains of a succession of terrace-walls and their filling, built at various periods to terrace up the area to the North of them, each time with a slightly different alignment. It was only when we had got near virgin soil that the cairns became recognisable. They had naturally suffered in the process of terracing and had been further disturbed by a series of Byzantine cist graves (Fig. 3, 12–21; Fig. 5), the makers of which had displaced the stones and contents of the cairns and the earth above them. It is really remarkable that the cairns have survived at all and it is only owing to the skilful and patient work of Miss Lorimer that their structural character has been recognised.

On 26th March 1926 a cist burial was discovered by the grave-digger in the cemetery of Penllwyn Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, near Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire. Notice of the find was sent to Mr. George Eyre Evans, of Aberystwyth, and the buried cist was examined by him and the minister of the congregation, the Rev. M. H. Jones, B.A. I cannot do better than quote the account of the cist and its contents written down by the former immediately after the discovery.

By approximately 2000 B.P., a thin testa (

The beaker here illustrated is new only in the sense that it is now for the first time accessible. It was discovered some years before 1901 by a farm boy in a stone cist in the yard of Llancaiach Isaf, an old farm-house in the parish of Gellygaer, 12 miles north of Cardiff (O.S. 6 inch, Glamorgan XIX. S.E.). The cover-slab of the cist then, and until the present year, was level with the paving of the yard, and no traces of a mound survived. Within the cist were found the beaker, a skull, and, it is said, some ‘ornaments’, of which nothing is now known. The skull was seen by a local medical man, but was then, by order of the landowners, replaced with the beaker in the cist. From that time, according to the (then) tenant of the farm, the burial remained undisturbed until 25th June 1901, when a local resident, Mr. George Seaborne, who has greatly assisted my inquiries, reopened the cist and drew attention to it in the Western Mail newspaper (19th July 1901). The contents, however, were not removed, and the precise locality of the burial remained the close secret of one or two persons until the present year, when cist, beaker, and skull were removed to the National Museum of Wales.

The current status of archaeological investigation in the northern Puget Sound region is one of demarcation and elucidation of problems. Lately, the approach has been toward the accumulation of descriptive information on sites and artifacts. The San Juan Island group, at the southern extremity of Georgia Strait, is increasingly important in this process. The extensive cist or cairn burial development at Armadale Valley is merely one of a number of adjacent sites in the intricate complex of headlands and inlets formed by Westcott, Garrison, and Mitchell bays of the northwestern portion of the San Juan Island.The major group of cairns lies atop a low rocky bluff, overlooking Westcott Bay to the east and the narrow but protected thoroughfare of Mosquito Pass to the west. Immediately below the site, at the base of the bluff is a deep and extensive shell midden.

URING the past two years the field activities of the Nininger Laboratory (now the American Meteorite Laboratory, Inc.) have brought to light four new meteorites on old Indian camp sites in eastern Colorado (Plate 5) and western Kansas. The mere fact of these several associations strongly suggests that the aborigines recognized a special significance in these fallen stones. However, it must be admitted that, without additional evidence, these associations could be regarded as accidental. There are other reasons for suspecting that ancient Americans regarded meteorites of special importance. The Winona meteorite, 1928, was found in a stone cist similar to those in which the former inhabitants of Arizona buried the bodies of children. The Navajo irons, 1922, were found covered by a pile of stones and their surfaces bore numerous grooves which had been laboriously cut by the stone implements of ancient man. Under one of the irons were found certain ornaments. The Mesa Verde meteorite, 1922, was found in the ruins of the Sun Shrine House of the Mesa Verde National Park. The Pojoaque meteorite, 1930, was found buried in a pottery vessel on an old village site. It showed signs of much handling and is thought by Dr. H. P. Mera to have been carried in a medicine pouch. Recent investigations by the present writer indicate that this little specimen was a part of the Glorietta meteorite, the site of which is about thirty miles from the Pojoaque site. This fact furnishes additional evidence of human possession.

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