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This article discusses several universal features of fortifications and distinguishes those features that are unequivocally military in function. The evidence adduced includes the features of known historic fortifications, relevant prescriptions by ancient military authors, and geometry. The archaeologically visible features that are universally used in military defenses are V-sectioned ditches, "defended" (especially baffled) gates, and bastions. It is also noted that ritual, ceremonial, or any other peaceful activities conducted within an enclosure having these architectural features does not preclude its obvious military function.

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Hafting has long been recognized by archaeologists as a process affecting stone tools. However, the effects of this process on the archaeological record have been virtually ignored. Hafting affects the final typological form of tools because hafted tools are usually more extensively and intensively worked than their unhafted counterparts. Ethnoarchaeological and some recent archaeological evidence indicates that functionally equivalent but typologically diverse hafted and unhafted tools may be in use at the same site. Because hafted tools are disposed of as a consequence of the “retooling” of hafts, the context of their disposal may not be equivalent to the context of their use. But, unhafted tools appear to be disposed of more often at or near the focus of use. Indifference to the hafted/unhafted distinction then may seriously distort inferences based upon intrasite spatial analysis. It is also argued that hafting is a strategy that will be differentially employed by any social group at different sites according to circumstances, thereby contributing to interassemblage variability. Finally, some methods of analysis are suggested that will allow the typological and distributional effects of hafting and retooling to be taken into account by lithic analysts.

The wooden artifact widely known as the Clacton Spear (pl. 1) was discovered by Samuel Hazzledine Warren, F.G.S., in 1911. He dug it out of an undisturbed part of the freshwater sediments, probably a peaty seam, exposed on the foreshore at Clacton-on-Sea, c. 80 km ENE of London (Warren 1911; 1914, and in conversation with K.P.O. 1933). On 30th September 1911, Warren conducted a party of members of the Essex Field Club on a visit to see the outcrop of Pleistocene fluviatile deposits on the shore west of Clacton Pier, and in the brief report on this excursion, reference was made to the occurrence of fossil mammalia and Palaeolithic flint artifacts. At first Henri Breuil tentatively identified the worked flints with the Mesvinian industry of Belgium; but after Warren's amassment of a larger collection, he recognized that the Clacton flint artifacts represented a distinct Palaeolithic industry, or tradition, for which he proposed the name Clactonian (see Warren 1922 and 1926; Breuil 1932).