Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 52

An unenclosed timber platform settlement site of LBA date, lying in open fen, includes a well-preserved three-aisled rectangular building with at least two floor levels intact. Some of the pottery, flint, and wooden objects are illustrated and the environmental research work outlined. The character of the site is undoubtedly that of prestige and display.

Excavation of the ploughed-out barrow revealed disarticulated human bones in the ditches only; these had silted naturally, with Beaker activity and then RB agriculture in the upper levels. Some carved chalk objects had been buried in the E ditches. Three radiocarbon dates for Neo and BA levels. (For the Saxon material see 87/1673.)

The Milfield Basin was chosen for its suitability in a test programme of diatom analysis for provenancing Late Neo and EBA ceramics. Most of the pottery sampled was found to be of local origin, but the only ?Beaker sherd sampled seems to be an import. The potential of the technique was confirmed and some problems of the technique, with possible solutions, are discussed.

A gravity model is developed which predicts relative abundance of goods from each source at each site in the region. Application of this model to an ethnographic example (stone axes in New Guinea) suggests that the observed spatial patterning can be explained by the effects of alternative sources in the region. The model is then applied to the patterns of British stone axe distribution. The 'multiple sources gravity model' is offered as having wide utility in investigating prehistoric exchange systems.

Four river finds are catalogued; despite some doubts about provenances they merit serious consideration. Two are of Group III, type Wandsworth; one is of Group IV with Group III affinities; and one is Group IV, probably type Cloontia.

The Acheulian site contains one of the most extensive areas of in situ fauna and flintwork yet found in Britain. The material is found in a complex sedimentary sequence from a 42m sea level rise to the onset of a full periglacial climate. Sedimentological and environmental reconstruction techniques form part of the multidisciplinary research programme. In the absence of absolute dates, a position within the Middle Pleistocene is suggested, with the archaeological horizon lying towards the end of an interglacial or an interstadial period.

Reports recent work by foreshore survey, trial pits, and environmental sampling; the evidence suggests a boatyard in a creek on saline mudflats. Many such sites probably await discovery by regular foreshore survey.

Refutation of Gale & Hunt (1985) (86/1369) which cast doubt on the stratigraphic integrity of the cave. G & H seem unaware that explosives had been used at their sampling point, and Ashmead had correctly located the Megaloceros sp antler. Tipping finds the methodology and reason of G & H unsatisfactory and the data too limited for useful conclusions.

Review-article on I H Longworth's corpus, Collared urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland (1984). The 2255 entries must be all-but comprehensive but the basis of choice for illustrations is not made clear, and not all grave groups are illustrated in full. Some general summary tables would be helpful. L's date range is too long, as the Collared Urn tradition cannot be shown to run longer than 18th-13th centuries bc. A modification of L's 'Early' and 'Late' divisions is presented and illustrated, and some revisions of reviewer's 1980 phases are offered (Fargo Phase, Bush Barrow Phase, Aldbourne-Edmondsham Phase, and Knighton Heath Phase); such modifications only become possible because of the monumental character of L's work.