Abstract
Prehistoric East Anglia. Dr. Cyril Fox, in his presidential address to the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia for 1933, which is published in full in the Proceedings of the Society, vol. 7, pt. 2, discusses the implications of a series of maps showing cultural distributions from neolithic times to the iron age, that is, from about 2300 B.C. to A.D. 50. He points out initially that in the Lowland area of Great Britain, of which East Anglia is a part, human distribution is determined by the character of the soil. Hence East Anglia is divided into three zones, of which two, a western and an eastern, suitable for the habitation of early man, are separated by an unsuitable area, a plateau, forming the East Anglian watershed, which is extended southward to the Thames valley by the exposure of the London clay. In each successive period, therefore, the distribution maps show that the area of closest settlement was within the inner curve of the clay-covered watershed, with a second area of density in the lower Thames valley and estuary. A shift of the population on the chalk belt in the course of ages was accompanied by a like southward movement on the coastal belt, as the estuarine trade sought the shortest route to its markets in the centres of denser population through the valleys which penetrated the plateau in the direction of the settlement area on its western side. Changes in distribution of population on the chalk belt in the later periods indicate the opening up of fertile, but less easily worked, lands by the Iron Age Celtic tribes, to whom the Belgae found themselves opposed and against whom they erected their great system of earthworks, when they had occupied the hitherto unexploited land around St. Albans, which they had reached from the Thames valley and not from the east coast. Differences in type of distribution bring out clearly the distinction between the products of a locally developed culture, of objects imported by trade, and of those introduced by invasion. The series of maps strikingly confirms the reliability of the available data as an index-though an incomplete reflection-of the life of the dwellers in the region, showing where it was vigorous, where it was sluggish, and where almost entirely absent.
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Research Items. Nature 133, 727–729 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133727a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133727a0