This paper describes a pierced reindeer phalanx which was found in Banwell Cave and contains an account of the practical and experimental work undertaken in an attempt to ascertain whether or not this bone is an artefact. This work includes a study of the gross structure of a series of Pleistocene reindeer phalanges, the demonstration experimentally of a mechanism by which some of these objects could have been formed ’naturally’, the manufacture of whistles from modern reindeer phalanges and the determination of their effective range and their frequencies. Besides showing that the pierced phalanx from Banwell is not an artefact, the results provide guide lines for the study of other pierced phalanges, using as examples specimens from Upper Palaeolithic sites in France. The experimental work also produced circumstantial evidence to support and to extend ideas put forward by other workers on the development and use of whistles in Upper Palaeolithic times.

The River Axe in Wookey Hole cave drains a large area of Central mendip. Three of the tributary streams enter St. Cuthbert’s Swallet after flowing through disturbed land, where lead mining was carried out from pre-Roman times until the early twentieth century (Gough 1967). Analyses of sediments collected from an excavation in the Fourth Chamber of Wookey Hole were compared with those from elsewhere, to permit an assessment to be made of the extent and magnitude of contamination by the former lead industry.

A series of sediment samples were taken from Goatchurch Cavernand Sidcot Swallet in order to reconstruct the conditions of deposition within the cave systems and also the conditions prevailing in the Burrington Combe area as a whole. Little evidence could be found to suggest any stream-laid sedimentation in Sidcot Swallet and only a discrete deposition of similar stream sedimenst could be identified in Goatchurch Cavern. It is tentatively considered that Goatchurch Cavern and Sidcot Swallet were connected prior to the downcutting of the West Twin Brook Valley. A new survey is presented of Sidcot Swallet.

This paper gathers together all new data on the cave since the 1953 report of Bendall and Pitts; including explorations of Polldonough North, Polldonough West and Pollclabber.