Welsh Journals

RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATION AND DISCOVERY IN GLAMORGAN I. PREHISTORIC PERIODS DURING the past year Mr. S. Price has continued to collect flints in the neighbourhood of the Mesolithic site on Craig-y-Uyn, and has discovered other areas productive of flints on the ridges flanking the west side of the Rhondda Fawr. The number of microliths from the Craig-y-llyn site, made of a variety of materials- dark grey or honey-coloured chert and quartzite as well as flint-is now considerable and the types form a consistent assemblage which is being studied by Mr. A. D. Lacaille, a lead- ing specialist in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, with a view to detailed publication in the Glamorgan County History. In connection with these studies, Mr. Lacaille carried out a small trial excavation in September 1962, aided by Mr. Price, to determine the horizon of the Mesolithic flints. Some flakes were found on the old land surface, and soil samples were taken by Mr. C. B. Crampton of the National Agricultural Advisory Service which when studied in relation to Dr. Seddon's pollen analysis of the samples of peat taken previously in the same area may in due course permit a determination of the climatic phase during which the flints were deposited and so suggest an ap- proximate date for them. No such problem of chronology affects the flints found recently by Mr. Price on the ridge over- looking West Cwm-parc, south-west of Treherbert, for these include fine leaf-shaped and barbed and tanged arrowheads, as well as a fragment from a polished flint axe-head, and evidently belong to the Neolithic and Copper Age horizons (c. 3000- 1 500 B.C.) they are, none the less, of interest in that they add to the picture of Neolithic settlement on the Glamorgan uplands which not so long ago seemed to be so slight.