The Shapwick Project, Somerset, began in 1989 as a ten-year, multidisciplinary landscape investigation focused upon the evolution of early and late medieval settlement patterns. This interim paper reviews the work carried out to 1996 and summarizes the results of archaeological fieldwork, standing building recording and documentary study. It is argued that the site of the present village and the medieval field system were planned in the late Saxon period and replaced a scatter of dispersed farmsteads, many of which show continuity from the prehistoric and Roman periods. The role of the medieval and post-medieval landscape is emphasized in reflecting and reinforcing social structure.

Nothing appears to have been written in English about a group of powerfully-sculpted lost-wax copper alloy, standing, naked figurines, 30–60mm tall, mainly from mountainous regions of west Daghestan and south-east Chechnya in the Caucasus. More than a hundred of these phallic (male), or otherwise sexually explicit (female and hermaphrodite) figurines have been found at different places at different dates since 1867 up to the present day. Most writers have suggested datings from the first millennium BC and indeed dating between 500 BC and AD 500 has been recently confirmed by the first technical and chemical analysis of a sample of these figurines by Dr Peter Northover. The thirteen figurines which he analysed are catalogued here. However, a Daghestani archaeologist Dr M S Gadjiev has recently proposed that the period of their manufacture is from the sixth to ninth centuries AD, since similar figurines have been found with a small spoon, datable to that period. The author's suggested interpretations of the ‘adoration’ and ‘cup-bearer’ types of figurine, which occur most frequently, do not affect the debate on their dating.

Re-examination of the published evidence from the excavation of the Temple of Nodens at Lydney, Gloucestershire, by R E M Wheeler, FSA suggested a more complicated structural sequence than that postulated by the excavator, whilst detailed study of the numismatic evidence threw doubt on the traditional chronology. In the light of new phasing hypothesized from the theoretical work based on re-examination of the published data, selective re-excavation of coin dated features was undertaken. The results, confirming the theoretical work, suggest that the religious buildings had their inception in the second half of the third rather than in the middle of the fourth century, that there was a refurbishment in the fourth century but that there was serious deterioration of the structures after the middle of the century. Features attributed to the post-Roman period are seen to fall within a Roman chronology.

A total of 268 sites within a region of c 2,000 square kilometres in northern Bulgaria, extending north from the Stara Planina (Haemus) to the Danube, offers a unique opportunity to study the character and extent of economic and social change which separates the Roman Empire from Late Antiquity. The method involves excavations within the Roman city of Nicopolis, along the course of a remarkable Roman aqueduct, and at the ‘type site’ of Gradishte, a Late Roman and early Byzantine fort where one of the primary goals is to reconstruct its palaeoenvironmental history. This is accompanied by site-specific field survey, using geophysics and intensive surface collection, to date and identify different categories of nucleated settlements. Running concurrently, the collection and dating of pottery samples from other sites should help to establish whether there was continuity or dislocation of settlement on the lower Danube in the period of transition between the second and the sixth centuries AD.

One of Winchester Cathedral's most celebrated monuments, the so-called ‘Tomb of William Rufus’, has been officially re-attributed. It is now displayed to visitors as that of Bishop Henry of Blois (1129–71). The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the evidence which has led to the renaming of the monument. Information obtained when the tomb was last opened in 1868 is newly evaluated, leading to conclusions quite different from those of the nineteenth-century investigators, whose analysis of the evidence was coloured by their conviction that they had discovered the remains of the Red King. It is further suggested that William Rufus's bones are indeed located in the mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral presbytery, as inscriptions on those chests maintain.

The results of architectural recording within the North Range of the University's Old Schools are described. Argued to have stood independently as a hall in the later fourteenth century, the progressive development of the Schools' quadrangle, and extensive alterations to it – culminating in Wright's neo-classical facade of 1754–58 – reflects upon the historical development of academic architecture. The prestigious display of the complex in the mid eighteenth century, facilitated through the mass levelling of domestic properties, equally tells of the institutional ‘realization’ of the University.

A three-leaf fragment of an unidentified London pewterer's business records, covering some three months of the year 1551, has been found among the archives of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers and is here transcribed together with a discussion of its contents. It provides an inventory of the pewterer's stock, describes the alloying and casting of over a ton of tin to produce a wide range of pewter flatware, and itemizes the sales and loans of pewterware to named customers. These include other pewterers and Alderman Richard Lambert. The manuscript provides a unique insight into a sixteenth century pewterer's workshop practices. Speculation into the identity of the pewterer has proved inconclusive.

For over two hundred years certain historians and art historians have been asserting that a portrait of Richard III can be found in the presentation miniature of one of Edward IV's manuscripts. This ‘portrait’ was the starting point of this investigation. The history of this myth has been traced, and that of the picture itself, its component parts and the book in which it appears, and it was the second phase of this research which revealed another complex trail of copies and imitations by illuminators and other artists.

In a complex of interconnecting tunnels at Avigliano in South Italy there are two inscriptions at two entrances in eighteenth century lettering referring, one to Inferno, the other to Elysium. The measurements of the spatial components of the tunnels refer to Pythagorean numerology. The complex is on land formerly belonging to the local Corbo family and was probably constructed about 1762 by Carlo Corbo for rituals of the mystical, somewhat unorthodox Neapolitan freemasonry of the time. They can be compared to the tunnels at West Wycombe, England where Sir Francis Dashwood who, like many contemporaries, was acquainted with Italian freemasonry, apparently parodied such masonic ideas. The Avigliano tunnels were still in use in 1838. By then the Corbo were embroiled in revolutionary politics perceived as having masonic links.

The nineteenth century development of Irish crannog studies, attitudes to archaeological research and traits in public and private artefact collecting are examined through the parts played by several leading antiquaries and institutions in the 1839 discovery and later exploitation of Lagore, near Dunshaughlin, County Meath. Connections between Irish and Swiss antiquaries are noted, and contemporary attitudes to their respective ‘lake dwelling’ discoveries contrasted.

One of the objects on display in the ‘Celtic Iron Age’ gallery of the British Museum is so small that in fact it may not be immediately appreciated for what it is – a cast bronze knife with exquisite curvilinear decoration which measures a mere 11omm in length (figs I a−b 2a−c).

To date only the briefest of descriptions of the knife have appeared in print accompanied by illustrations which, it must be said, hardly do it justice.2 Thus, some further notes may be added to draw further attention to one of the miniature insular masterpieces of what, despite the best efforts of many, is still widely termed ‘early Celtic art’.

A small lump of copper alloy, roughly ovoid in shape and measuring 45mm in length, 28mm in breadth and 10mm thick (fig I a), was excavated at Alchester in 1927 beneath the courtyard of a building just inside the east gateway, apparently associated with mid second-century pottery. In his report, published in our Journal, J H Iliffe calls it merely an ‘irregular lump of bronze, flat on the back’. It was presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford together with other finds by the Alchester Excavation Committee and the Accession register carries a somewhat fuller description: ‘Bronze object of uncertain use. Oval; flat on one side, convex on the other. On the flat side four hollows with undecipherable decoration within them – a weight? A bronze ingot?’ Over twenty years ago our Fellow, Mr P D C Brown, then Assistant Keeper in the Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, took an impression of this face (fig I b). The hollows were clearly identifiable as two confronted pairs of serpent heads, and the object was thus a die for manufacturing the terminals of serpent bracelets and rings. Presumably it was used by taking a strip of gold or silver, bending it into a hoop and hammering the ends into the impressions. One pair is larger, with a width of 10mm, and was certainly employed for bracelets; the other is slighter at 7mm and the heads are closer together and they could well have been employed for rings.

The purpose of this note is to mark the transfer to the Society's museum of three Roman gemstones which came into my possession as gifts at different times and which I decided I would like to share with the Fellowship in general. The Society, indeed, has long owned a number of medieval and later seals and sealings, a few of which were recently displayed in the entrance lobby, and it has long seemed to me that the inclusion of Roman intaglios would make its holdings more representative for future students. Historians of medieval sigillography in the past were rather ignorant of Roman gems and, indeed, of Classical iconography in general and more curiously were hardly aware that the seal use of the Middle Ages almost exactly parallels earlier Roman practice. However, since the recent publication of a general book on sealing, the basic continuity of the tradition should be obvious to all.

In late 1996 a heraldic parcel-gilt badge (fig 1) was found during a metal detecting rally by Mr Martin Hay of Horley, Surrey, in a field just to the north of Chelsham Court Farm, near Chelsham, Surrey (National Grid Ref: TQ 388 586). The badge was subsequently brought by Mr David Williams of Reigate, Surrey, to the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum for identification. It was established that the find had been made on land belonging to Earl Compton of Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire. The Chelsham estate was acquired by the Sixth Marquess of Northampton in 1943 and passed on via family Trustees to The Earl Compton in 1994. As this single find was made before the Treasure Act came into force on 24 September 1997, it does not qualify as Treasure under the terms of the new legislation. As a casual loss under the old regulations of Treasure Trove, ownership of the object was claimed by the landowner who has generously agreed to lend it to the British Museum for display purposes.

The octagonal copper artefact illustrated in figure 1, dimensions 27 by 22 by 2mm and weight 8.60g = 132.7grs, bears on die obverse a shield of arms within a double octagonal border, the outer denticular, and the incomplete inner border linear; this looks like an impression from a professionally engraved seal-die, though one perhaps of a provincial goldsmith's rather than a metropolitan standard. The reverse, in contrast, is from a crudely engraved die which nevertheless shows in places an octagonal border of pellets; its device is a merchant's mark with sign of four to left, a letter H in base and a letter C on the upright, the whole between two fleurs de lis, all in relief. The die axis is 180°.

One of the pastoral consequences of the English Reformation was a change in the way that the viaticum was administered. For many centuries the sacrament had been reserved in churches, and this had been compulsory since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Holy communion was taken to the sick and dying, often accompanied with much ceremonial, but now this was brought to an end. Every edition of the Book of Common Prayer had contained a form for ‘the communion of the sick’, a celebration of the eucharist in ‘a convenient place in the sick man's house’. The 1549 book also had provision for what we should now call ‘communion by extension’, taking the consecrated elements to the sick after a celebration in church, but that disappeared in 1552, and is disallowed by a strict following of the rubric in 1662. William Kennedy long ago argued that communion by extension had probably been legal after 1552, but that he had found no mention of it in the visitation papers of the period. ‘With infrequent communions provided in the year – three or four, or twelve at the most – the opportunities for ‘carrying the communion’ to the sick were very few, and communion by means of a private celebration became the regular method.’