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It is thirty years since the first publication (Wright and Wright 1947) of the collection of artifacts found over a period of years from the site at North Ferriby, which yielded the three boat-relics now identified as of the Early or Middle Bronze Age. With the increasing recognition of the importance of the boat finds themselves, the latest information on which has recently been published in a National Maritime Museum Monograph (Wright 1976), it is timely to review and, where necessary, revise the descriptions and attributions of the other artifacts obtained from the clays in which the boats were sealed, and also a small number of finds from the underlying fen-woodland peat. The customary and essential caveat needs to be entered that in beds of this kind propinquity of one find to another, whether in the horizontal or vertical plane, is no guarantee of association. Nevertheless, as will be seen, revised identifications and attributions of some of the objects have resulted in a pattern which is much more consistent both in itself and also with the recent evidence for the age of the boats than the somewhat confusing picture which emerged from what seemed to be reasonable deductions in 1946–7.

SummaryNo accurate survey of a flint mine exists. It is planned to carry out such a survey at Grime's Graves over a period of several years. Its purpose is to study the growth of the flint-mine complex, the evaluation of mining techniques and ancillary industries, and trade relations; and to discover settlement sites related to the industrial complex. Preliminary field work was carried out in the summer of 1972. This included geophysical and chemical surveys, ground surveys, and aerial photography. Excavations were undertaken to test the results of the scientific surveys. A detailed contour map of the site was prepared by photogrammetry.

SummaryIf the fine structure of the carbon-14 deviation curve published by Professor H. E. Suess (in Proceedings of the 12th Nobel Symposium, I. U. Olsson (ed.), 1970) is correct, then the period from c. 2200 bc to c. 1700 bc in radiocarbon years falls within one of the insensitive regions in which carbon-14 determinations could have a number of alternative chronological values and hence could not be used to order archaeological evidence. Without disputing the now well established general trend of radiocarbon variation, it is the purpose of this paper to suggest, from recurrent evidence drawn from four recently studied Late Neolithic enclosures, that the detailed structure of Suess' curve is not necessarily valid. Uncalibrated radiocarbon dates based on the conventional 5570 year half-life of carbon-14 are used throughout this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the development of the Collared vessel from the Peterborough ceramic tradition and assess the contributions made by other non-Peterborough traditions; to define a series of vessels within the Collared Urn tradition which carry demonstrably early traits of only limited duration; and to suggest the limiting conditions within which this controlled typological analysis may be expected to apply. Since divergence of opinion exists in the literature as to terminology, the terms used in this paper can be briefly summarized.For the sake of clarity it seems important to distinguish between descriptiveterms, defining pottery traditions and functional, defining the uses to which vessels were put. In the past, the vessels which will be discussed below have been described variously as ‘Collared’, ‘Overhanging-rim’ and ‘Crowned’. In the following text the term ‘Collared’ has been retained for the whole tradition, and no distinction has been made between ‘Collared’ and ‘Overhanging-rim’.

The site at Hurst Fen in the parish of Mildenhall, Suffolk, was first brought within the cognizance of prehistorians by Lady Grace Briscoe, F.S.A., whose investigations, published in 1954, were sufficient to make it a type site of the East Anglian group of the British primary Neolithic settlement. Thanks are due to Lady Briscoe for most generously encouraging more extensive excavations and to the Crowther-Benyon Fund administered by the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge for providing the necessary funds. The assistance is also gratefully acknowledged of undergraduate and other members of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge and of a number of friends without whose combined labours the fine and repeated scraping of some 20,000 square feet of sub-soil could hardly have been accomplished. Mr E. S. Higgs, Assistant in Research in the Department, undertook much of the supervisory work during the last two seasons, as well as contributing an arduous metrical analysis of the flints and most notably of the scrapers from this and other sites. Mr I. H. Longworth has contributed the description of the pottery and in so doing has devised means for demonstrating its character quantitatively as well as qualitatively, a task too infrequently attempted in this field. To the Curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and his assistant staff a deep debt is owed for a number of essential services, both in connection with the field-work, but principally in the treatment of the finds, notably in the reconstruction and photography of the pottery. Finally, thanks are returned to all those who offered advice about the archaeological material or who contributed the expert identifications incorporated in the following report.

Ardleigh lies midway between Colchester on the River Colne, and Manningtree on the estuary of the Stour, the distance from each place being about four miles. Vinces Farm covers an area roughly half a mile to a mile south of Ardleigh church on the road to Great Bromley. The farm lies on a plateau, 110 feet above sea level, and has no particular geographical feature other than its flatness. The soil is a medium loam over gravel and requires no artificial drainage. Grid Ref. TL/056284.The land has been under arable cultivation for centuries, but not until 1955 was a deep-digging plough introduced, ploughing to a depth of a foot or more. In September of that year the plough brought up sherds of Roman pottery in the Long Eleven Acres field (O.S. 716) and with these, sherds of Bronze Age ware.