Welsh Journals

Neolithic settlement pattern already suggested by the concentration of chambered long cairns at the eastern end of the Vale of Glamorgan, and provide interesting information about trade in the opening centuries of the 2nd millennium B.C. Petro logical study of these implements by Professor F. W. Shotton, of Birmingham, part of a general survey of all Welsh stone implements, has shown that the axe-head from Cyncoed is of Cornish gabbro while that from Penarth and one of the very fine and large polished axe-heads in the St. Cyres hoard are of quartz-diorite, probably from Pem- brokeshire. On the other hand the other axe-head from St. Cyres is of flint-the largest of this material ever recorded from Wales. Thus the basic tools of a Neolithic farming community in East Glamorgan were being imported from three different directions- from Pembrokeshire, Cornwall and the flint-bearing region of southern England. Mr. Webley's recent field-work, carried out in connection with his duties in the National Agricultural Advisory Service, has led recently to the discovery not only of numerous flint implements and flakes in Glamorgan, but an unrecorded round cairn, presumed to be of Bronze Age date, near Pontardulais (Bulletin of Celtic Studies, XVII, p. 117). An outstanding chance find of the Bronze Age, (c. 1600-1000 B.C.), is a javelin-head made of local chert, found by a schoolboy, Byron Jones, on the bank of the Camnant stream, south of Toncastell Farm, Onllwyn (ib, pp. 53f.). Apart from Mr. L. Alcock's excavations at Dinas Powis, which he himself describes in the following note, recent study of earthworks of Ancient British (Early Iron Age) origin has been confined to field-work in the strict sense of the term, although the writer's excavations in the small fortified settlement on Mynydd Bychan, Llysworney in 1949-50 have recently been fully published (Archaeologia Cambrensis, 1954, pp. 85ff,and 1955, pp. 14ff.). The field-work has been carried out by amateurs in West Glamorgan and has led to the identification of several embanked enclosures, including one true hill-fort which has hitherto remained unnoticed on the outskirts of a populous industrial area. This was discovered by Mr. D. Gibbon in 1956 on a spur of Mynydd-y-gaer, above Baglan; it commands the north-western end of the pass in which Aberavon stands, just as Mynydd-y-Castell above Margam com- mands the south-eastern end. Another interesting new site is a small embanked settlement, with remains of a single hut-circle on Banwen Tor-y-betel, Resolven; it was discovered by Mr. H. Green. Hut-circles are rare in South Wales, and those at Mynydd Bychan were shown to have been built, as dry-stone foundations for huts, about the time of the Roman conquest, in replacement of the timber-framed wooden huts erected by the Early Iron Age builders of the earthwork in the 1st century B.C. or later. It would be interesting to ascertain whether the Resolven settlement represents pre-Roman Iron Age or native Romano-British occup- ation of the Glamorgan uplands, where true hill-forts are virtually