290 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



only one flint implement and a few flakes rewarded the search, during which 

 some 5 ft. of cave earth were removed. 



' Excavation in the Sloping Chamber was therefore resumed, and was 

 rewarded by the discovery, at a depth of 8 ft. below the Upper or Granular 

 floor, of two fine specimens of tools — the one an ovate implement of flint, 

 more probably Early Mousterian than Acheulean ; the other a typical 

 Acheulean hand-axe, with twisted edges, of chert. This latter implement 

 is the first certain specimen of the Acheulean period so far discovered in the 

 Cavern, and completes the series of cultures represented there^Chellean, 

 Acheulean, Mousterian (Early and Late), Aurignacian (Middle and Late), 

 Solutrean (Early or Proto-Solutrean, and a rather later phase with primitive 

 laurel leaf), and an apparently very late Magdalenian with bi-serial and uni- 

 serial harpoons with trapezoidal barbs. 



' The deposit in which the Acheulean flint was found had been to some 

 extent overturned, perhaps by flood water. It consisted of a mixture of the 

 Late Palaeolithic cave earth, with its characteristic fauna, and the much 

 earlier deposit of Grit, quite unbrecciated, which elsewhere sometimes 

 contained the Chellean tools, while not many feet from the point of discovery 

 MacEnery had found remains of Machairodus at the top of the deposit 

 immediately under the Upper Stalagmite floor.' 



The Committee asks to be reappointed, with a small grant for the employ- 

 ment of a labourer to remove excavated material after examination. 



PREHISTORIC SITES IN EGYPT. 



Report of Committee (Prof. J. L. Myres, Chairman ; Mr. H. J. E. Peake, 

 Secretary ; Mr. H. Balfour) appointed to co-operate with Miss 

 Caton-Thompson in her researches in prehistoric sites in the Western 

 Desert of Egypt. 



To continue the geological and archaeological exploration of Kharga 

 Oasis, begun in 1931, Miss Caton-Thompson returned, with Miss Elinor 

 W. Gardner as geologist, to examine the tufa deposits and sheets of gravel 

 on the eastern scarp of the Oasis, which presented difficulties not resolved 

 in the first season's work. The tufas were found to belong to at least 

 three distinct geological horizons ; the last two are dated securely by tools. 

 Similarly the gravels must be divided into (a) Plateau Gravels, (b) Terrace 

 Gravels, (c) Wadi Gravels ; these also are all three now culturally dated. 

 The conspectus of prehistory in the depression extends from Acheulean 

 and Levalloisean, through late Middle Palaeolithic (pre-Sebilian), Aterian, 

 and Capso-Tardenoisean to Neolithic, and all these were found in situ. 



In the scarp the oldest deposit of the ' drift ' sequence is a massive 

 crystalline Plateau Tufa with reed impressions but no fauna or human 

 evidence : it is provisionally placed as Plio-pleistocene. There followed 

 a period of great erosion, forming longitudinal and transverse valleys, also 

 without cultural evidence. Then the upper reaches of these valleys were 

 filled by great accumulations of angular breccia, representing a long dry 

 period, and yielding no tools so far. On the breccia filling, rainfall and 

 vegetation permitted palaeolithic man to appear. Cellular Wadi Tufas 

 yield plant impressions and land shells both palaearctic and tropical. These 



