Welsh Journals

Cardiganshire in Prehistoric Times. By E. G. Bowen, M.A., of the Department of Geography and Anthropology, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. IT was resolved at a meeting of the Society held at Crosswood in June 1933 that the time had come to write a standard history of the County. Subsequently, at the Lampeter meeting a number of papers were read indicating in a general way the main outlines which the proposed history should follow. The present paper is an expansion of what was said on that occasion about Cardiganshire in Prehistoric times. It must be remembered that the prehistory of Cardiganshire can not be considered apart from that of Western Europe, and more particularly, from that of the Highland zone of northern and western Britain to which it belongs physically. It is by recording the sites of flint chipping floors, old stone monuments, burial mounds and earthworks, and by noting the evidence drawn from their excavation (whenever this has been conducted) and by observing the type, and mapping the distribution of the various stone and metal implements within the county, that prehistorians are able to tell to what extent Cardiganshire participated in the well-defined sequence of cultures which are now known to have existed in Britain from the days of the Old Stone Age. No evidence of Palaeolithic man has been found in the County. One would expect to find it in caves along the sea shore as in the Coygan Cave in Carmarthenshire, but it is significant that it is on a sea-shore site near the Isolation Hospital at Aberystwyth that the earliest remains of man's handiwork in the county have been recorded. From this site have been derived a number of small finely worked flint points, blades and scrapers. The abun- dance of the finds together with many unfinished specimens and the presence of local supplies of flint makes it clear that this was a flint chipping floor-a centre of early industry., These flints belong to the Mesolithic period, or that period of impoverished cultures after the greatness of the Old Stone Age had passed away and before new elements of civilization had reached Britain from the Near East. Around about 2000 B.C. the new light dawned and a funda- mental change in economy took place at different times in various parts of Britain, involving a change from a life of hunting and collecting to one of herding and agriculture with the use of pottery. In the Western Lands this new era was marked by the building