Abstract
PREHISTORIC DISCOVERIES AT PRESTATYN.—Some interesting evidence bearing upon the possibility of the survival of a palaeolithic people in Wales into the Neolithic and Bronze and even into the Iron Ages has been obtained from excavations carried out during the last two and a half years in the neighbourhood of Prestatyn. According to a recent lecture by Mr. F. Gilbert Smith, delivered under the auspices of the Dyserth and District Field Club, the ‘Byrn Newydd’ people began to settle in that area after the last phase of the Ice Age. The original site of occupation is directly on the boulder clay, now from one and a half to five feet below the present surface level. The implement-bearing zone begins at a depth of about one foot. Of three mounds or islands in a basin of boulder clay, one, the smallest, which had been used as a workshop, had been sealed, after its abandonment, by a deposit of two feet of tufa, and had thus remained untouched by the influence of later cultures. The implements found here included a large number of, typical Tardenoisian form with battered backs and cores. They are of chert of exceptional quality, and are worked with great skill. Conclusive evidence for the contact between this culture of epipalaso-lithic type and that of a later phase is furnished by the discovery of a flint spear-head and a polished stone celt in a ‘fire-place’ on one of the larger islands in association with artefacts, in the main of the type found in the workshop.
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Research Items. Nature 117, 634–636 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/117634a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/117634a0