Welsh Journals

RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATION AND DISCOVERY IN GLAMORGAN I. PREHISTORIC PERIODS Mesolithic and Neolithic. Mr. Shon Price has continued to collect flints of all periods from the area around the head of the Rhondda valley, the principal new development being a new Mesolithic site about a mile north-west of Maerdy Reservoir, represented by microliths and cores of flint and grey chert. Mr. L. Hergest, of 179 Mynachdy Road, Cardiff, has found a small leaf-shaped arrowhead with a slightly ogival point in his garden. Another Neolithic find from the Cardiff area, the axe-head reported in the last volume of Morgannwg (p. 53) as having been found by Mr. I. T. Rees in his garden in Lakeside (ST/i 90804) has now proved, on petrological examination by Professor Shotton, to be of Cornish gabbro (Group I), as suspected. The Bronze Age. There have been a few discoveries relating to burials in the early part of the Bronze Age, resulting from chance or from emergency excavations. During the winter of 1966-7 Mr. Howard Thomas of Barry drew the attention of the National Museum of Wales to the remains of a small urn that had been exposed by erosion of the turf cover at the top of the low cliff on the western side of Cold Knap, Barry (ST 10256608), very close to the spot where he had found fragments of the rim of a "Narrow Rim" cinerary urn of Early Bronze Age type, similarly exposed, in 1958.1 There are no definite indications of the presence of a wrecked round barrow at this point, although the position at the cliff edge is such that these may have been completely destroyed long since. The newly discovered urn is very small-less than 6 in. in diameter and of uncertain height, only the upper part having survived-was in an inverted position 1 Morgannwg 3 (1958), 101.