48o SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— H. 



Mr. M. M. Rix. — Prehistoric skulls recently excavated in Cyprus (4.0). 



With the help of a grant from the British Association, I was able to make 

 an expedition to Cyprus in November 1937 to January 1938. One purpose 

 of my visit was to help Mr. James Stuart of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 

 the excavation of an early Bronze Age cemetery at Vounous near Kyrenia 

 on the north coast of the island. Sixteen of the skulls have been brought 

 to England, and will be on exhibition at the meeting. 



Secondly, my chief object was to study the skulls from Khirokitia, a 

 Neolithic settlement on the south of the island, which is in process of 

 excavation by M. Dikaios ; he is the Curator of the Cyprus Museum, 

 Nicosia, where I spent much of my time reconstructing the Khirokitia 

 material. Although their poor state of preservation made the actual skulls 

 disappointing, the important fact emerged that they had been artificially 

 deformed by means of fronto-occipital flattening. I also spent some time 

 at Khirokitia itself where the skeletons are being preserved in situ. As the 

 Neolithic period in Cyprus dates back beyond 3000 B.C. the discovery of 

 artificially deformed skulls from that epoch involves a revision of ideas 

 about the earliest date, and the place of origin, of cranial deformation. 



Tuesday, August 23. 



Mr. K. Jackson. — Calendar Customs in the Eastern Counties (lo.o). 



In the Eastern Counties the calendar customs, the celebrations on certain 

 festivals and fixed events throughout the year, were as well preserved within 

 living memory as in any part of England. They have mostly died out since 

 the War, but descriptions are available from various sources which give a 

 fairly complete picture of their character. Plough Monday, May Day, 

 St. Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Mothering Sunday, 

 Good Friday, Oak Apple Day, Guy Fawkes Day, St. Cecilia's Day, St. 

 Clement's Day, St. Catherine's Day, St. Thomas' Day, were all kept up with 

 their appropriate festivities. Village Feasts and the Harvest Home Horkey 

 are also described. 



Mr. I. C. Peate. — Some Welsh light on the development of the chair (10.35). 



It has generally been assumed that the earliest examples of movable 

 chairs in Britain were probably the ' joyned chairs ' of panelled character, 

 ' their structure suggesting that they were evolved from the chest.' The 

 earliest surviving examples of such chairs in this island belong to the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century. But a Welsh manuscript written in the 

 twelfth century has contemporary illustrations of chairs of a very different 

 character. These are discussed and attention drawn to the early literary 

 evidence in Welsh concerning the various forms of chairs and the seating 

 arrangements in the courts of the Welsh princes. 



Miss B. Newman and Mr. L. F. Newman. — Birth customs in East Anglia 

 (11. 10). 



Theories of the couvade and other allied customs have been accepted 

 on somewhat incomplete evidence and the subject allowed to rest on the 

 assumptions made. Explanations of the couvade as practised by primitive 

 peoples were applied equally to Europe and Europeans. Some recent in- 

 vestigations on British customs in Eastern England have suggested that 

 present ideas and explanations do not cover all the observed facts. 



