When I addressed you from this ancient and honourable chair at the end of my first year of office, I recalled some of the striking variations there have been in the length of tenure of its occupants. In contrasting, for example, the two-year term of Frederic Ouvry (1876–8) with the thirty-four years of Lord Aberdeen (1812–46) and thirty years of Lord Stanhope (1846–76) that immediately preceded it, I showed there was already a precedent for a term shorter than the five-year stretch that has been customary for the last eighty years, and foreshadowed that now in the time of our greatly expanded Society there might be reasonable cause for invoking it. And accordingly, exactly one hundred years after Ouvry decided to decline re-election after holding the President's office for a mere two years, I for my part have decided to mark this particular centenary by not standing for reelection after holding it for three. I am aware that in doing so I have myself created a new precedent, or rather re-created an old one. However, this is but a single and personal decision, and unless and until Council and the Society resolve to shorten the maximum tenure of five years laid down in Statutes, Chapter VI, Section V, there can be no obligation on any who come after me to follow it. The decision has not been reached lightly, and any feeling of relinquishing a burden is offset by very real sentiments of regret, compensated only by the certainty that what is served above all is the best interest of the Society. And this is my opportunity to thank the Society for all the support and friendship extended to me throughout these last three years by the Fellowship at large and especially by members of Council and of the various committees, whose tolerant understanding has been a constant help to me in all our deliberations. In particular I would acknowledge the debt which not only I but all our Fellows owe to my brother officers and, not least, to the Assistant Secretary and Librarian and all our small staff, for their unremitting services in furthering the many-sided activities of this great institution.

The discovery in 1709, at Osmondthick, West Riding of Yorkshire, of a hoard of socketed axes, is described from contemporary sources. The contents of the hoard, its site of discovery, and ultimate fate are considered, as well as its archaeological significance. Contemporary views on prehistoric socketed axes, most particularly those of Thomas Hearne and Richard Richardson, are contrasted, and it is concluded that Richardson's observations mark him as an important but neglected contributor to contemporary antiquarian thought.

We are met today to do honour to the memory of Dame Joan Evans, Gold Medallist and former President of the Society of Antiquaries, President also of the Royal Archaeological Institute and the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society; Honorary Fellow of St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur; a distinguished scholar and author; a very notable collector of jewels and gems; a generous benefactor of many good causes, of many individual students and scholars; to many of us above all a loyal and generous friend.

The development of the earliest Germanic applied disc brooches is followed from their beginning in the Elbe valley to the fifth century in England. Third-century types constructed with rivets on a flat background were produced in the Elbe valley, giving way in the fourth century to a type soldered on to a concave base, and they spread to the middle and lower Elbe valley, to Holland, the Rhineland, Belgium, and northern France, increasing in numbers at the end of the fourth century, but not surviving the fifth century. The main designs were concentric circles, star, floriate cross, scrolls, and animal ornament.

The series goes on in England without any break in continuity of form or decoration, and the earliest types belong to the fifth century, mainly the first half. With the densest concentration in the Upper Thames area, they are otherwise mostly distributed south of the Thames with some along the Icknield Way. As they are associated with a post-Roman stage of metalwork, the Quoit Brooch Style, they must indicate Germanic settlements, no doubt mercenary in the earliest stages.

Two Migration period finds of gold ‘payment rings’ from south-western Norway are identified as sets of balance weights, carefully adjusted to the old system of aurar and ertogar (pl. of ON eyrir m. and ertog m.), metrologically taken over from the Roman system, with the eyrir equivalent to the Roman ounce of 27·29 gm. The sets can be used for weighing with great accuracy at intervals of eyrir, one being adjusted to an eyrir value of 27·42 gm., the other set ingeniously made to be used for weighing in units of two different eyrir values, one of 27·35 gm. (0·06 more than the Roman standard ounce), and another of 29·13 gm., near the maximum of the accepted standard variation of the eyrir as it can be found in other contemporary gold finds of south-western Norway. A general discussion argues that the Roman weight system and standards were taken over and practised in Northern Europe from the fourth century onwards.

A survey of progress in Mycenaean archaeology during the century since Schliemann's address to the Society on 22 March 1877 shows that we now have a coherent picture of material culture and historical events in Late Bronze Age Greece between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Having outstripped Schliemann's faith in Homer and Arthur Evans's hypothesis of a Minoan conquest from Crete, Mycenaean archaeology can now be traced back to the Middle Bronze Age before the introduction of the shaft graves, when the Achaeans had already made contact by sea with Egypt and other advanced centres in the East Mediterranean. The volcanic eruption of c. 1500 B.C, which left the mainland unscathed, enabled them to expand their influence and power to Crete and throughout the Aegean so that by the thirteenth century Mycenaean culture was ubiquitous, though political and territorial divisions remained. Finds of Linear B tablets enable us to form a distinct picture of the political, social, and economic life of the period. The close relationships between Helladic and Minoan art and religion have been systematically studied, while the Homeric poems may describe only one episode, the siege of Troy, in a series of attempts by the Achaeans to establish themselves on the coast of Asia Minor during the temporary collapse of Hittite power. By the end of the thirteenth century Mycenaean centres were being abandoned and destroyed, partly because of the breakdown of their trading links in the East Mediterranean with centres overrun by the Land-and-Sea Peoples, and the civilization as a whole had collapsed.

This paper briefly reviews the historical and artefactual evidence for the dating of the Middle Saxon settlement of Hamwih, Saxon Southampton. This is followed by a seriation of twenty selected pit-groups, each with varying quantities of the five classes of Middle Saxon pottery. The analysis suggests three clusters of pits, some of which can be dated using coins or ceramics found in them. The span of dates, however, is substantially shorter than has previously been proposed, and some possible explanations for this are briefly discussed.

This description of the structure and function of the salt-making site at Peldon, together with comparable evidence from other sites, demonstrates a degree of specialization within Iron Age society with interesting consequences for any view of social structure. The possibility of trade in salt, over and above production for local needs, must also affect our view of the extent to which economic factors could over-ride the basically tribal organization of Britain at this time.

The present phase of the rescue excavations caused by the construction of the Cirencester relief road has ended and this interim report includes details of excavations during 1973–6. Work outside the town on the roads, cemeteries, and a building shows extensive use and a new alignment for the Fosse Way. The Bath Gate has been located and partly examined. Work within the town has added to the understanding of the military occupation, revised the position of some streets and found a new public building south of the basilica. In insula XII a farm has been identified. The north aisle wall of St. John's Hospital has been found, showing it to be a hall with nave and two aisles.

The article describes the seals employed by the Lord Edward in the administration of his appanage during the period 1254–72. The number and condition of surviving impressions is considered and the use and import of the different coloured waxes. The sealing arrangements followed in the constituent parts of that appanage, including the lordships of Ireland, Gascony, the Channel Islands, and Chester, are discussed and comparisons made between them.

Trajan's engineering works on the Danube as part of his Dacian campaign of A.D. 101–106 are commemorated on monuments and coins as part of imperial propaganda. Trajan's Column shows an unrecognized depiction of canal-building on the Danube, next to a supply-base scene. Coin imagery illustrates the use of the Danube as a line of communication and the enrolment of the great river on the side of the Romans in their conquest of Dacia.

When the town organ in the parish church of Appleby-in-Westmorland was damaged by flooding and had to be dismantled for repair and restoration, it was found that the pipes and stops of the Great Organ were practically contemporary, and must date from the instrument's existence in Carlisle Cathedral before its transference to Appleby in 1683. Certain unusual features in the flats were found to have a parallel in a Sienese organ of 1510 or thereabouts, and consideration of this latter instrument showed that a series of carved open-work panels, now incorporated in other fittings in the church, had been part of the original organ-case, a certain asymmetry in the topmost panel being designed to correspond with the irregular centring of the appropriate bay in the quire at Carlisle. Certain heraldic evidence in the ornamentation points to a date between 1542 and 1547, and the present form of the organ was influenced by its transfer to Appleby in 1683—quite possibly under the supervision of the famous ‘Father’ Smith—and its eventual erection under distinguished patronage in 1722.

A study of seven collections of clothing accounts reveals that in the period 1660–1700 ten firms held a dominant position in London as suppliers of clothes and materials to the nobility. Below this group there were numerous tradesmen with only one aristocratic patron at a time.

Fragments of an applied brooch found among the tiles of the collapsed roof of the Roman bath building in Lower Thames Street, London, were exhibited to the Society in March 1969, and they again raised the question of the date of this type of brooch. The applied saucer brooch in Anglo-Saxon England has often been discussed in connection with the cast saucer brooch, and as the two types are very similar in appearance, it would be as well at the outset to remind ourselves of their several distinguishing features. The Anglo-Saxon applied brooch consists of a disc or back plate of metal, usually bronze and concave, but sometimes flat; the spring lug and pin catch at the back are often separate pieces of metal fixed through slots in the disc, and the pin is of iron or occasionally bronze. On top of the back plate is fastened, by means of some adhesive material, a disc of thin, gilt, bronze sheet, decorated with a repoussé design. There was sometimes an intervening packing of perishable material no longer traceable. A circular band of bronze is fastened on the edge at an angle to the disc to form a rim. When found, the rim and decorative plate have usually become detached, and have often been lost altogether. It is not surprising, therefore, that an alternative method was adopted to make a more durable construction in one piece; the base plate with spring lug and pin catch, together with the decorative surface and rim, were all cast in one piece, so forming the saucer brooch. This was a development of the applied brooch, but the two types continued in use at the same time, and as one design often occurs on both types, they are usually considered together. As there are very few saucer brooches on the Continent, however, possibly contemporary specimens are mainly excluded from the present review, nor will any attention be paid to the larger applied brooches found almost exclusively in this country, many of which are ornamented with animals in Style I and belong mainly to the sixth century.

Excavations at St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, showed that the site was occupied in the second century by the Roman municipal tile works which was abandoned by the fourth century. The ruined church which now stands on the site shows two successive building phases pre-dating a Norman arcade; excavation established part of the plan of this late Anglo-Saxon church and also uncovered part of the tenth- to thirteenth-century cemetery. Documentary evidence suggests that this was the ‘new minster’ built by Æthelflæd and Æthelred of Mercia. Taking other historical and archaeological evidence into consideration, Gloucester can be argued to have had, in the late ninth to early tenth century, a special significance for the rulers of Mercia.

Specialist reports are offered on the stratified medieval pottery, and on the inscribed bell-mould from the tenth-century church.

Excavations in the church and churchyard at Asheldham revealed a complex series of building phases preceding the existing structure. Domestic occupation of the middle and late Saxon periods was followed by a timber building, interpreted as a church, with associated graves. The early structures were built alongside and aligned on a Roman road, and the cemetery associated with the first (Norman) masonry church encroached on this road, causing its diversion. The excavation of this key site has demonstrated the likely Roman date of an extensive road and field system which survives throughout the Dengie peninsula. A preliminary discussion of the historic landscape and its future potential for study is offered.