This paper outlines the place-name, archaeological and topographical evidence for a special class of Anglo-Saxon open-air assembly site, which we call a ‘hanging promontory’. Discussion of a series of these sites serves to describe the main characteristics of the class as well as their geographical distribution. Consideration is given to the possible functions and dating of the use of hanging promontories. In conclusion, comparisons are drawn with other forms of open-air assembly site to suggest a possible hierarchy of the administrative territories existing in the early medieval period in England.

On two previous occasions, in the years 1865 and 1867, I have given some accounts of the excavations in the Roman city at Silchester. The work was then in its infancy; an interval of six years elapsed since my second Paper was read; and the period thus embraced will he found fruitful in discoveries of interest and importance.

In 1998 the author published ‘Genetics, linguistics and prehistory: thinking big and thinking straight’, a critique of late twentieth-century attempts to synthesize the disciplines of genetics, linguistics and archaeology. This paper assesses subsequent progress, using examples from various parts of the world, including Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Frisia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Micronesia, Portugal, Spain and the Canary Islands. The growing importance of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome, rather than classical population genetics, is emphasized. The author argues that ancient DNA and early linguistic data should be used more. Languages mentioned include Aquitanian, Basque, Celtiberian, Etruscan, Finnish, Hungarian, Iberian, Lepontic, Lusitanian, Pictish, Raetic, ‘Tartessian’, Thracian and the Ladin dialect of the Italian Alps. Aspects of the ancient linguistic geography of Scotland and the Iberian peninsula are discussed, as is the difficulty of deciding the direction of spread of Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. The potential of ancient place and personal names is illustrated from Celtic.

Lord Maynard having directed a further excavation to be made at the Bartlow hills, a gallery was commenced early in April last on the north side of the south barrow. This hill, according to the plan, is about thirty-five feet high, the diameter having been computed at ninety feet, but it exceeds a hundred. The gallery was constructed in the same manner as that opened in 1835 in the largest barrow, and had reached the centre of the hill on the 16th April, upon which day I inspected it in company with Lord Braybrooke and the Honourable Captain Percy. It extended fifty-two feet, and we observed that the tumulus was formed, like the largest barrow, of earth and chalk, in horizontal strata. Our arrival took place shortly after the workmen had broken in upon a hollow, where we gladly anticipated the finding a sepulchral deposit, appearances heing much the same as those observed on first opening the cavity in the centre of the other barrow.

Bronze Age and Iron Age burials are occasionally surrounded by ditches which are, in origin at any rate, functional in that they serve as quarries for the material used in the mound. Such ditches may also have had some ritual significance, particularly those which are covered by the body of the mound. Further proof that they were not always functional is given by barrows whose ditches form a square, which is obviously not the easiest way to make a quarry for a circular barrow. Square-ditched barrows must be carefully distinguished from barrows within secondary square inclosures connected with plantations or land inclosure; however, there is a considerable number whose squared ditches are clearly original, and these can be shown to be a feature of the La Tène culture.

It is now almost exactly twelve years since I first introduced this subject to the notice of the Society in connexion with a then recent deposit of medieval Exchequer Tallies at the Public Record Office; and though I subsequently communicated two further notes upon it, I may plead that even since those were made ten years have elapsed. During that “time there has been a great change in our knowledge of Exchequer procedure. Two or three notable books have appeared and a considerable amount of work has been done, though not all of it has yet been printed, upon the neglected Exchequer Records. Already we begin to look with quite different eyes at medieval financial problems, even though our knowledge of the great mass of the Memoranda Rolls, Receipt and Issue Rolls, Wardrobe Accounts and subsidiary documents still owes practically nothing to any publication of texts from those Records. I have accordingly thought it worth while to submit to the Society a further stage in our knowledge of the financial system, public, semi-public and private, of which Tallies formed so important a part. I have fortunately little to retract from what I said in my previous papers, but there are a few new points to note, some remarks to be extended, and a selection to be offered from a considerable accumulation of further illustrations.

I have examined the colours found on the walls of the Roman house discovered at Bignor in Sussex, and I find that they are similar in chemical composition to those employed in the baths of Titus at Rome, and in the houses and public buildings at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The recent discovery of the finest known example of an English Astrolabe of the largest size, signed by the Elizabethan maker, Humphrey Cole of London, has afforded an opportunity of gathering together some notes on all instruments now known to have been made by him, and of setting forth the chief biographical details of his life. The result shows that he must be regarded as the leading English scientific instrument maker of his century.

Complete agreement has not yet been reached among students as to the part played by Egypt in the history of Early Christian and Early Byzantine art. There are two problems around which discussion has chiefly centred. The first concerns Alexandria. Some authorities believe that this town remained a stronghold of Hellenistic art throughout the Christian period, and that it maintained the highest classical standard at a time when most of the Mediterraneancountries were already submerged in what are commonly called the Dark Ages. This theory has, however, been contested by other writers who think that Alexandrian art sank as early as the fifth century to the level of provincialism, and that from that time onwards Constantinople was the chief centre in which the classical tradition was preserved.

It would be foreign to the purpose of my paper to enter upon the much debated and still unsolved question as to who were the Iberians and from whence they came, nor, indeed, has that question any direct bearing upon the subject-matter with which I deal. A few words as to the state of the country during the period under review, the organization of the peoples who inhabited it, their physical and moral conditions, and the influence of their surroundings upon their practice and methods in war and in strife may, however, not be out of place.

‘Edward Vth ended his reign on the 25th [of June 1483], and with his brother, Richard, then disappears from authentic history. How long the boys lived in captivity and how they died is a matter on which legend and conjecture have been rife with no approach to certainty. Most men believed, and still believe, that they died a violent death by their Uncle's order.’ In these words Bishop Stubbs summed up a mystery which has never failed to fascinate those who have attempted to probe it.

In the first part of this article are listed the architectural fragments found at or near the site of the temple of Apollo Phanaios in South Chios, including several hitherto unpublished mouldings. The discussion of them is prompted by the excavations conducted by the British School at Athens from 1952 to 1955 at Emporio, some 8 km. from Phanai, and the discovery there of parts of more than one early Ionic building. The similarity of the Emporio mouldings to those from Phanai led to a study of the latter. They have so far been neglected by most writers, but since they afford evidence of some important local fashions it seems of value to record them fully, both for their own sakes and for the light they throw on the Emporio buildings. The full publication of these must await that of the rest of the site. To the Phanai pieces are added a number of other early mouldings from Chios, other than those found at Emporio.

The purpose of the present memoir is to place on record an account of what, in many respects, is one of the most valuable discoveries ever made in Britain of weapons, implements, ornaments, and other things belonging to the Bronze Age. Discoveries of objects of that period have usually consisted of a single article or more accidentally lost, of hoards of founders or vendors, secreted for one reason or another, and of the various sepulchral remains which have been found in barrows, cairns, or other places of burial. These all are of greater or less importance as illustrating the condition and habits of life of the people of that time, and the stage of cultivation and civilization to which they had attained. But the discovery with which this account is concerned possesses a very much higher value than that of any hoard of however great a number of articles, or of any series of objects which relate to a section only of daily life and occupation. It gives us, though perhaps in a lesser degree, much the same information that the lake dwellings of Switzerland and other countries have so abundantly supplied. “We possess, in fact, in the discovery about to be described a record in the very things themselves of the entire equipment of a family as it was possessed by them when they perished in their home, as I believe, by a sudden and unforseen catastrophe.

Excavations undertaken at Quarrington, near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, revealed part of an Early and Middle Saxon settlement with associated fields or enclosures. Several timber buildings were identified, both round and rectangular, and there was evidence of ferrous and non-ferrous metalworking at the site. Finds included a large and regionally significant pottery assemblage, showing that Quarrington had an extensive trading network and obtained pottery from Lincolnshire and Leicestershire in the Early Saxon period. Pottery from the Northamptonshire area dominated the assemblage in the Middle Saxon period, with a smaller component from Lincolnshire and a limited quantity from Ipswich. Spatial variations in the Saxon ceramic assemblage suggest that the focus of settlement shifted towards the west or north west in the Middle Saxon period.

Few rural sites of Early and Middle Saxon date have produced sufficient faunal material to permit an analysis of changes during the fifth to eighth centuries until now; the large bone assemblage from Quarrington indicates changes in diet and the husbandry of domestic animals through time, with sheep becoming more important as pig diminished. Alterations to the slaughter profiles of cattle and sheep were also evident and may indicate changes from subsistence to surplus production. An apparently isolated Neolithic cremation and a post-medieval stone building were also revealed.

Material for a third report on the site of the Saxon village at Sutton Courtenay, Berks., has been gradually accumulating since the second was presented in 1926, but so slowly that it seemed advisable to wait until, as appeared likely to happen in the near future, the limits of the occupied area should have been reached. In the meantime, however, an important addition to our knowledge of the early Bronze Age has been obtained from Cassington, Oxfordshire, and since this presents several interesting points of comparison and contrast with the more recent discoveries of the same age at Sutton Courtenay, it has seemed preferable to anticipate the Third Report on the latter site by including the Sutton Courtenay material of Bronze Age date in a combined account. The numbering of the pits at Sutton Courtenay follows on those described in the Second Report in Archaeologia, lxxvi.

It is hardly too much to say that no period in the history of mediaeval church architecture in England is so important as that which immediately followed the Norman Conquest. It is important in respect of the marvellous extent and quality of its own achievement; of its influence on the subsequent history of English architecture; and also (which perhaps cannot be asserted of any other period) of its influence on the architectural development of western Europe generally. By the time of the Conquest the Norman school was fully formed, and was achieving such masterpieces as Jumièges and Saint-Étienne, Caen. The Conquest provided an opportunity of which the immense energy of the Norman bishops and abbots took full advantage. In their greater churches they built on a scale which they had hitherto rarely attempted in their own country. Such activity bred experience, readiness in solving structural problems. The Norman character naturally led them to develop the logic of construction, and they were innovators in the practice of expedients which only needed fuller development to reach the essentials of what we call Gothic. It is true that this great development was not English; it was essentially Norman, the accident of the Conquest, but its importance is none the less on that account, and needs fuller recognition than perhaps it has yet received.

In September 1943, in the course of repair work made necessary by the air raid of May 1942, certain fragments of wax images were found by one of the cathedral masons on the top of the stone screen which surrounds the quire. They were hidden behind the cresting in a wide open joint of the masonry, loosely packed with broken pieces of glass, slaked lime, oyster-shells, and splinters of stone, and over the tomb of Bishop Edmund Lacey (1420–55) (pl. XIX, a). All the fragments of wax are unpainted and all have been cast in a mould; they vary in colour from a dirty pale yellow to a deep terra-cotta; they are very brittle and dry to the touch, without the soft, silky feel of a wax doll.

This paper offers a provisional assessment of the development of settlement in part of Cranborne Chase between the Mesolithic and the Late Bronze Age. It builds upon the results of Pitt Rivers' work in this region between 1880 and 1900, as well as more recent excavation and field survey. Special emphasis is placed on three factors: the relationship between activity in this area and settlement both in central Wessex and on the coastal plain; the place of the more prominent ‘public’ monuments in contemporary patterns of settlement and exchange; and the relationship between cemeteries and contemporary living sites. We present the first results from the extensive excavation of two Deverel-Rimbury enclosures and associated barrows, and a new analysis of Pitt Rivers' work on the urnfield at Handley Barrow 24.

Damascening, defined in this context as the inlay of one metal into a different metal base, is a rare decorative technique in the Early Bronze Age, known only from seven bronze artefacts found north of the Alps. This paper reports on the first thorough scientific examination of one such find, the axe from Thun-Renzenbühl grave no. 1. This interdisciplinary project involving several institutions in Germany and Switzerland investigated the axe by means of neutron radiographic imaging and X-ray microprobe methods, supported by microscopic examination. The result is an attempt to reconstruct the fabrication and decoration process and to reconsider the enigmatic question of the origins of the damascene technique north of the Alps.