Antiquity 47

Many ground features caused by frost are sufficiently regular to look like man-made disturbances, such as trenches, post-holes or gullies, ridge-ploughing, pond barrows or flint mines and lynchets. Wider or deeper examination usually betrays their true nature.

[SO 927161]. Work in 1972 uncovered a series of rectangular buildings up to 25m long and 7.5m wide, regularly set out on the hilltop, associated with coarse, thick pottery. These houses, for which only Continental parallels are relevant, were succeeded by a round house nearly 15m in diameter associated with very early Iron Age Pottery.

[NF 976913]. Radiocarbon dates spanning about a millennium have been obtained for a Neolithic and two Beaker occupation horizons separated by blown sand. The land-snail sequence shows that the Neolithic phase of land clearance here was a long one, and that the eventual regeneration of woodland was undoubtedly non-local in extent.

Thermal neutron activation analysis of thirty-one faience beads from nine sites in Czechoslovakia and Hungary has provided strong confirmation of regional differences in composition. Comparison of these results with those for British and Egyptian faience provides further evidence that the Central European beads are of different origin from the rest; more samples from this area are now sought.

ST 998101. Re-examination of the concept of the "Little Woodbury Culture" prompted total excavation of an enclosure similar to Little Woodbury but slightly smaller and lying in Cranborne Chase. The 3-acre site was enclosed by a two-phase ditch with entrance flanked by "antennae-ditches". Inside the enclosure was a circular area 32m across, defined by a ditch and containing a round timber structure. Up to 30 four-post structures occupied the centre of the main enclosure, and there was a trapezoidal ?stock-compound. The settlement appears to have been occupied between c 450 BC and late 1st century AD, in phases not yet definable until the contents of some 400 pits have been examined. A bronze-worker had been producing chariot and harness fittings at some time, and study of his broken moulds, tools and waste material promises to throw much light on techniques and organisation of metal-working in the late pre-Roman Iron Age of S Britain.

The scale is designed for use at distances up to 1.5km and is simple to make, transport and lay out. Alternate black and white rectangles of cloth are sewn into a strip 10m x 1 which can be staked out flat, hung along a wall or held by two people depending on the desired viewpoint. More elaborate uses, eg. contour or grid plotting, are also described.

A final contributor to the debate on "the new clarke-aeology" sympathises with Clarke's scorn for instinctivism, subjectivism and elitism, but points out that there is plenty of evidence for objective assessment of excavations, and shows that the "disciplinary dinosaurs" Clarke belabours are less likely to be people than ideas.

Dramatic changes in the organisation of rescue archaeology are being planned by the Department of the Environment, but it is up to us to press for the best possible approximation to a State Archaeological Service. Finance and staffing of the proposed Regional Units will be difficult; in particular we cannot expect adequate contributions from local authorities for a problem which belongs essentially to central government. Urgently required are a national training scheme for field archaeologists and more powerful legislation to protect archaeological sites.

The first two authors defend the analytical methods used in SAM 1 and 2 by means of their archaeological and statistical observations, with particular reference to bismuth content. In rebuttal, Slater and Charles maintain their earlier views (see 71/941).

New dates from Denmark provide a useful test for the method of presenting 14C results based on interquartile ranges. Two diagrams are shown, one for Erteb lle and one for N Danish Middle Neolithic (TRB) dates. It can be predicted with 95% probability that, of all future 14C dates obtained for these groups, half will fall within specified ranges. A quite small sample of dates will permit the prediction, within c 40 years, of their effective time-span.

"Archaeologists bewail the difficulty of persuading scientists to work for them. The remedy lies in their own hands." A botanist-archaeologist supplies advice on how to get your specialist and how to keep him happy. The important thing is to try as hard to understand the limitations and difficulties of scientific techniques as the scientists demonstrably do in coping with archaeological problems.

Bede and other sources allow the partial reconstruction of the pagan AS calendar, which was based on lunar months, with years of 12 or 13 lunar months arranged in a regular cycle to reduce the inevitable discrepancies. This luni-solar calendar also kept tolerably close to the contemporary Christian (Julian) reckoning. Problems still needing solution are: how did the pagan Anglo-saxons discover the necessary cycle, and was this the eight-year cycle of Kaleostratos, or the 19-year Metonic cycle? Tally marked artefacts may yet turn up to answer these questions. See also author's The beginning of the year in England, c 500-900, in Anglo-Saxon England, 2, 1973, 51-70.

SD 543574. During car park construction in Quernmore parish a nearly complete one-piece wooden vessel was recovered together with another in fragments, a woollen ?shroud, human toenails and hair, all preserved in peat. The vessels probably fitted together as a boat-shaped coffin; an EBA date best fits the available evidence.

Discussion of some points in Spratling's article (see 73/2166) on the nature of settlement hierarchy and on metalworking organisation in the Early Iron Age.

The provenances of five double axes found NW of the Alps, and often cited as evidence of Wessex-Mycenae contacts, have been examined. One is demonstrably a recent import from Attica, the others are vaguely or even speciously provenanced and none can be used as reliable evidence.