[Book Reviews]

Abstract

IN one sense the late Dr. Wright's presentation and survey of present-day knowledge of the data bearing on early man and the development of his material culture in the early stone age supersede all previous manuals of the kind. It is the first of such handbooks available for the general reader and the student to review critically the earliest material from East Anglia which, it is claimed, shows evidence of human handiwork, and to give an account of the investigations of the Abbé Breuil on the gravels of the Somme and their bearing on and consequences in determining the dating of palælithic industries, which, it would seem, must now be subjected to considerable revision. A summary account of the latter research by the Abbé Breuil himself for the benefit of British archæologists appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Further, Dr. Wright, while pointing out that the familiar classification of palælithic implements, baaed on the material from France, is too deeply rooted in archiælogical studies to be ignored in a general survey, adopts and expounds the core-flake classification of implements, entering fully into its teclinological, classificatory and ethnical implications, as affecting the world-wide study of stone age cultures.

Tools and the Man

By W. B. Wright. Pp. xvi+236+9 plates. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1939.) 12s. 6d. net.