Rams Hill is an inconspicuous knoll of the Berkshire Downs (Berks. O.S. 6 in. XIX, NW. and NE.) on the ridge overlooking the Vale of the White Horse. It lies within the 700-ft. contour, with the ground sloping gently to the south and falling steeply to 400 ft. on the northern escarpment. To the west, a mile away, the land rises to White Horse Hill, a bluff over 800 ft. high, crowned by the hill-fort of Uffington Castle and with the eponymous turf-cut Horse on the westward slope slightly below.

The Ridgeway runs along the crest of the downs, south of Uffington Castle but on the north edge of Rams Hill, while along the bottom of the escarpment the Ickneild Way winds in and out of the coombes between the 400- and 500-ft. contours.

The rarity of runic inscriptions from early Anglo-Saxon England, and particularly from the southern kingdoms in the pagan period, makes even a nearly illegible example worth recording. We draw attention here to the remains of such an inscription, hitherto unrecognized, on a sixth-century sword-pommel from the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sarre, on Thanet in east Kent, and we take the opportunity of reconsidering two well-known contemporary inscriptions, on a sword-pommel from the cemetery at Gilton, Ash, also in east Kent, and on the scabbard of a sword from the cemetery on Chessell Down in the Isle of Wight.

In the autumn of 1926 an urn-field (fig. 1) was discovered on the site of the war-time allotment gardens on the southern edge of Little Down Common, and about 500 yards NNE. of Pokesdown Station, lat. 50° 44·5′, long. 1° 49·13′. Its discovery was due to the finding of urns when a new road was driven through a long strip that had been sold for building plots. About nine cinerary urns, mostly of the globular type, were found within a small area by the roadmakers, and these have been preserved by Mr. Homewood, the borough surveyor. Several more were discovered on the adjoining plots when the overlying gravel was cleared away. Unfortunately many of these were destroyed, but two went to the Russell-Coates Art Gallery, one to the Bournemouth Natural Science Institute, and some fragments into private hands (figs. 2, 3, and 4).

Documentary sources and excavated evidence have both shown that blue slate, occurring naturally in the older rock formations of the more westerly parts of Britain, was used to a considerable extent for roofing during the middle ages in a wide area of southern England. The evidence as at present known is summarized in the map, fig. i. Although new evidence occurs from time to time in documents, particularly as building accounts are more fully explored, the main opportunity of obtaining a fuller picture of this medieval trade in slates lies in the preservation of examples found in excavated medieval levels, so that they can be subjected to appropriate petrological examination. It is evident that these slates can expand our knowledge of medieval trade, and this account is presented in order to draw attention to their importance among excavated material.

The existence of ancient pottery sites between the tide lines on the Lincolnshire Coast, north of Skegness, has long been known, but references to them in literature are scanty. The lack of detailed knowledge about them is due to the unusual difficulties which confront the would-be investigator. In the first place they lie buried under six or eight feet of marshland clay. Away from the coast itself they are to be seen only where drains dug to this or to greater depths happen to cut through them. This is naturally a rare occurrence. Along the coast, however, exposures are more common, for there the erosive action of the sea is slowly removing the clays and bringing the pottery sites to view at mid-tide level. The same process unfortunately also removes the material of the sites. Opportunities for investigations are therefore fleeting.

The Holderness district is a vast accumulation of the great Northern Drift, a thick deposit of clay and gravel, with scratched and striated boulders of Scandinavian and other rocks marked by the grinding and drifting of glaciers and icebergs. This Northern Drift rested on the ancient surface of the chalk when that surface sloped from the Wolds, 600 ft. high, to 60 ft. and more below the sea-level. The vast bay that formerly extended from Flamborough Head to Spurn Point thus received the ice-sheets of the Glacial period, which in melting deposited debris frozen into their mass. There was thus formed an irregular crescentic area, 40 miles long and 20 miles in maximum breadth, reaching the foot of the Wolds which was then the seashore with creeks running inland. The tract rarely rises more than 30 ft. above the sea; and the natural drainage, on account of the slope of the drift, is from the seashore towards the centre line of the drift area. The surface drainage from the Wolds also tends to the same line of outflow. In ancient times the outlets of this drainage into the sea would have been higher, as the strata rise seaward; and consequently more water would have been penned up in the prehistoric lakes, and a larger proportion of the area flooded, than would now be possible, since the waste of land by the sea, at the rate of nearly two yards a year, has been going on for many centuries.

This paper examines the significance of seventeen later Bronze Age wells found during construction at Swalecliffe, in north-east Kent. The unusual depth of the features made for exceptional preservation of wooden structural elements, including steps and revetments, demonstrating rare evidence for woodworking and woodmanship. Extensive biological remains facilitated environmental reconstruction, and a lengthy dendrochronological sequence corroborates the internationally important Flag Fen chronology. Dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates demonstrate around 500 years of seemingly continuous use and replacement of wells. Votive deposits and apparatus used for water collection provide glimpses of small-scale ritual and domestic activities. The highly unusual concentration of wells is compared to contemporary sites regionally and elsewhere.

A leaden anchor-stock found off Porth Felen at the tip of the Llŷn peninsula in 1974 is described. So far unique in British waters, the stock is of a Mediterranean pattern obsolete by the time of the Roman conquest of Wales. From its decoration it may be assigned to the late second century B.C., or possibly a little later. The typology of ancient anchors is considered, and the reasons which may have brought a small Mediterranean craft to that spot are reviewed. The stock is now in the National Museum of Wales.

Mail has been used since very early times and it is therefore surprising that so little is known about the methods and tools used for its construction. As it appeared unlikely that original tools or further information would come to light, recent research has been carried out on new lines. It was hoped that the methods found to be the most practical would produce mail similar in appearance to the medieval riveted mail. These methods would have to be accessible to armourers of the past and as far as possible be methods still in use in the present day, for basic techniques seldom die out. Many of these techniques are so fundamental that it is doubtful if they have changed much in the last 2,000 years. Because so much mail was produced the method would have to be a fast one allowing for division of labour within the workshop. The most skilled task, which is the final linking, would have to be done by the master craftsman, who could be kept supplied with the necessary rings and rivets. The early stages in the production of mail—the simple, laborious tasks—would be left to apprentices and assistants. Such a system is often found in a small workshop.

This insula, which lay on the western margin of the earlier Iron Age city, was uncovered during post-war reconstruction work carried out in Beirut during 1994–6. Laid out in the Hellenistic period, the insula was filled out with a series of small courtyard houses after the Roman annexation. A public portico was added along a main street in the second quarter of the second century, before a period of relative inactivity. The district was revived and rebuilt in the middle of the fourth century and was home to a series of handsome town houses in the fifth century, before being devastated by earthquake in AD 551. The site was then left derelict until the early nineteenth century. This interim report sets these findings within their broader historical and archaeological context, as well as summarizing the results of recent work on the site's ceramics and stratigraphy.

Examination of the Rolleston papers and local field-work have permitted identification of the site of the Sancton II cemetery and ascription of objects in the Ashmolean Museum to individual burials described by Rolleston. It can now be seen that, during the sixth century A.D., a small, predominantly inhumation cemetery close to the village was in use concurrently with the large cremation cemetery, which had begun on the top of the wold in the early fifth century and which was possibly used by surrounding communities, and that the Christian church was eventually built on the same site as the inhumation cemetery.

The seventh-century vernacular laws from the kingdoms of Kent and Wessex specify fines or compensation payments using units of account that have given us familiar terms in the numismatics of this period: scillingas (shillings), sceattas and pæningas (pennies). In light of the use of cognate words in Gothic and Old High German, and the comparative values given in the Old English law-codes themselves and in the fifth-century Theodosian Code, it is suggested that these represent a regular and durable bimetallic system correlating values in gold and silver. This proposition is examined further against the evidence of weighing-sets from sixth- and early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon graves, and it is argued that the results give greater and more precise meaning to the use of gold and silver in Early Anglo-Saxon artefacts, such as the great gold buckle from Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

The area north of the Middle Thames situated between Acton and West Drayton reveals extensive deposits which have been referred by H.M. Geological Survey to the Boyn Hill, Taplow, and Low terraces. As within the valley of the Lower Thames, these features have yielded implements and mammalian remains. In the opinion of the officers of the Geological Survey the formation of the Taplow terrace and its contained deposits occurred prior to the formation of the Coombe Rock which succeeded Early Mousterian times; further, they consider this Coombe Rock is to be equated with the ‘Trail’. It has long been established that the series of deposits revealed in a typical section cut through the so-called Taplow terrace of the Middle Thames in this district shows:

5. Surface soil.

4. ‘Trail’, often composed of slipped material from the Boyn Hill or ‘100-ft.’ terrace.

3. Brickearth, with thin layers of pebbles in its lower portion representing land-surfaces, overlying gravel with black seams.

2. Gravel, unstratified, much contorted, and containing large included masses both of solid Chalk and of London Clay.

1. Gravel, stratified, but showing a disturbed and deeply eroded upper surface penetrated by deposit no. 2.

London Clay.

Whereas deposits nos. 1, 2, and 3 have all been regarded as having been laid down by the river during the Taplow terrace stage, it would appear that this is not the case. There are reasons, archaeological and geological, for considering that these beds represent three separate periods and that only one of them (deposit no. 1) belongs to the Taplow terrace sequence proper.

It is the purpose of this article briefly to enumerate the facts which cause the correctness of the official geological reading of this type-section to be questioned.

In this paper an extensive structured system of carved stones in Peru's Chicha valley is presented in its local setting, analysed within its agricultural and social context and compared with similar landscape features elsewhere. In any agricultural society, the timing of planting, irrigation and harvesting events is crucial to maintaining crop yields. To a state system where the administration is dependent on non-written systems of record-keeping, highly visible landscape markers would be essential in defining labour allocations and designating the appropriate allotment of irrigation water. This paper presents evidence that boundaries for water distribution and for management of the irrigation cycles during the Late Horizon period of Peruvian prehistory (c AD 1438–1534) were clearly set out and marked in a manner that enabled state administrators to manage the agricultural round. Though clearly the use of quipu-based recording systems should not be underestimated in this context, timing of the agricultural cycle on a local level could not solely be dependent on central directives from Cusco: local cakndrical tools were necessary to ensure successful agricultural seasons.

The Colchester Celtic mirror has been known to students of the period since a photograph of it was published by Henry Laver in the Proceedings of our Society (x·x, 1905, p. 213) as one object in an important grave-group. Laver noted that the back of that portion of the mirror-plate which is preserved is ‘ornamented with a spiral pattern’, but this pattern is not to be seen in the reproduction. Another reference in the literature is that by R. A. Smith, Archaeologia, lxi, 338, who mentions ‘traces of engraved scrollwork’ and an ‘imbricated filling, not of the usual basket-pattern’. Mr. E. T. Leeds produced another group photograph of the find; Celtic Ornament, fig. 10 and p. 30.

The writers of this article collaborated for the purpose of studying the ornament, and of reconstructing the complete design, if that should prove possible. The incised work was found to be very difficult to follow owing to a pustule-like corrosion all over the mirror fragment. Thus, as one of us remarked after the first attempt, ‘it is only here and there, either in a strong cross-light, or with the lens, that one can see and copy it’.

Thereafter both of us worked on the mirror fragment, and gradually the pattern emerged; it is reproduced in fig. 1. This drawing is necessarily an imitative representation of the original; it records not only actual marks on the bronze, but also direct inductions, such as the continuation of a partly preserved curve or circle, a line drawn on one side to match a line preserved on the other, and the development of the ‘matting’ or hatching from intermittent appearances. We have thought it well to indicate corrosion, but the dense obscurity of the original due to this cause cannot be reproduced.

Portions of the rim of the mirror survive. This is as usual a separate strip of metal bent in a C-shape round the edge of the plate. The handle of the mirror is an attractive variant of a familiar design which can be better appreciated in the drawing than in the photographs previously published.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and illustrate the development of shields of arms and their accessories upon the seals of English men and women from the simple devices of the later twelfth century to the complicated armorials and complete achievements of later times. The great seal of William the Norman, like that of Edward the Confessor, had two sides. On one William was shown seated in majesty as king of the English; on the other, unlike Edward, he appeared fully armed upon horseback as duke of the Normans. This equestrian representation of a knight fully equipped with the arms and armour of his time was the type of seal adopted by the greater barons in the early twelfth century. It was upon the shields borne by these horsemen that armorial charges first appear. Part I of this paper deals with this equestrian type.

It has generally been accepted as an axiom that the date of a seal can be determined within close limits by the style of the lettering of its legend. The late G. Demay, in his Inventaire des sceaux de la Normandie, published in 1881, was the first to give serious attention to the subject, and he naturally drew his material almost entirely from French sources. In 1887 the late Sir William Hope, in his paper on the Seals of English Bishops, offered some suggestions as to the date of the different styles of lettering, basing his conclusions on the fact that a bishop's first seal must be of the same date as his appointment to his see. His classification was as follows:

(1) 1072-1174. Roman capitals.

(2) 1174-1215. Rude Lombardic.

(3) 1206-1345. Good Lombardic.

(4) 1345-c. 1425. Bold black letter.

(5) c. 1425-1500. Fine close black letter.

(6) After 1500. Roman capitals.

The Roman villa on Lockleys Estate, Welwyn, was discovered accidentally in 1930. On that occasion a small portion of it was uncovered; but it was not until 1937 that, by the permission, and with the very generous co-operation, of the Welwyn Garden City Company, it proved possible to examine the site scientifically. The building was completely cleared; and although it was not sufficiently well preserved to justify the expense of preservation, the Garden City Company have undertaken to keep the site free of building, and the complete plan has been laid out on the surface in turf and brick. Of the many persons who by their help made the excavation possible I can only here record the work of Mr. W. R. Hughes, the secretary of the excavation committee, who bore the whole burden of the preliminary arrangements and gave invaluable help in the actual work of excavation and later in the preparation of this report; of Mr. A. E. Hick, who did nearly all the photography; and of Mr. Clarke, who undertook the whole of the surveying. My debt to Dr. Wheeler at all stages of the work is so apparent as hardly to need statement. To Dr. Davies Pryce also, to Mr. K. P. Oakley, and to Mr. Derek Allen I am deeply indebted for reporting respectively upon the Samian, the foreign stone, and the coins; to Mr. Hawkes for much help and advice, particularly in relation to the Colchester material; to Miss Kenyon for examining the fourth-century pottery; to Miss Scott for her collaboration upon many points of detail; and to all others who have given me their advice.

The halberd is of sufficiently frequent occurrence and of a sufficiently distinctive character to be a most useful ‘type fossil’ by which may be traced connexions and the trend of cultural developments in prehistoric Europe. That another paper on the subject is not a superfluity in archaeological literature is evident from the lack of any paper dealing at once with the Irish and Continental material. That this paper should be written in Ireland is fitting because the amount of the Irish material is so large. When Coffey wrote his valuable paper on ‘Irish Copper Halberds’ (frequently referred to in the following pages), he had before him the material in the National Museum of Ireland, which comprised at that time 49 halberds. This number has in the meantime increased to 71, while the total number of Irish halberds of which I have been able to get particulars is 143, 67 having known localities. This body of material, which is considerably greater than that from any other country, makes it clear that the part played by Ireland in the story of the European halberd must have been an important one. When we come to study the typology, evolution, and distribution of the weapon, we shall get further proof of this importance.

The importance of professional affiliations in the history of archaeology has tended to be underplayed. There have been a number of histories of individual professional societies and especially of museums, both of which had significant roles in the institutional development and acceptance of the field during the nineteenth century (e.g. Clark 1925; Evans 1949a, 1949b, 1956; Hawkes 1962; Hinsley 1981). Also, both museums and professional organizations have been generally touched upon in the course of biographies of individual archaeologists—primarily as background information (e.g. Evans 1943; Woodbury 1973; Green 1981; Hawkes 1982). What has not been considered sufficiently is the pervasive character of professional connections and the institutions or societies that made them possible (Trigger 1985; cf. Levine 1986). Organizations, together with accompanying journals, charters, meetings, statements of policy, special committees and so on, form the very basis of a discipline. This was particularly true in the nineteenth century when many sciences or other fields of interest—including archaeology—had yet to find a place in the academic world (Woodruff 1923).