‘What's not devoured by Time's devouring hand?

Where's Troy, and where's the Maypole in the Strand?’

That couplet is not, I need scarcely tell you, a contemporary one; it was written by the Reverend James Bramston in the eighteenth century. However, in the predicament now facing our heritage the title of the work might well suggest contemporaneity: it is The Art of Politics. And in the present climate of cuts, economies and withdrawal of grants to worthy causes, I might add my own doggerel:

There's every indication that the State

Resorting in extremity to Fate,

Whose way it is to ravage and destroy,

Would Schedule scarce a hectare of Troy

Or, even less, would lend a ready hand

To Designate the Maypole in the Strand.

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.

The results of the excavations at the Iron Age hillfort at Danebury between 1977 and 1980 are briefly discussed. The main features include a number of Iron Age round houses found in stratigraphical sequence in the lee of the ramparts, rectangular buildings in the centre of the fort which may have had a religious function, and other occupation traces including pits and post-holes. Among the finds discussed are a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age bronze hoard, bronze horse trappings, and a scrap iron hoard containing cauldron hooks. Excavations are continuing.

As mentioned in the President's Anniversary Address (p. 4), the original Tessa Verney Wheeler Memorial Fund has been reconstituted as the Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler Memorial Fund. An appeal for contributions was circulated jointly by the Society and the British Academy in the autumn of 1980 and by May of 1981 approximately £8,000 had been received; with the original small capital of the Tessa Wheeler Fund and a supplement from the Society's General Fund, a total of £10,000 has now been invested with a view to making the first travel grants in 1982. A list of donations follows, as a mark of the Society's gratitude, but it is emphasized that further donations would be much appreciated. Sincere thanks must go to Mr. R. K. Swan and the firm of W. F. and R. K. Swan (Hellenic) Ltd., not only for their contributions but also for their kindness in arranging for the appeal leaflet to be circulated with their cruise literature.

About three dozen bronze anvils are known from Bronze Age Europe. They are small in size, probably indicating that they were used for delicate work. Simple, Beaked and Complex forms are distinguished, based on the presence of special features such as work surfaces, beaks, swages and punching holes, which were used in various processes of manufacture and decoration of small bronze and gold artefacts. The anvils are widely distributed throughout north-west Europe, and dated examples belong to the later Middle and Late Bronze Age (c. 1200–700 B.C.). Thirty-six anvils are catalogued and briefly described.

The demeanour of the figure represented on the Greek metrological relief in the Ashmolean Museum indicates that it must have been made before the Athenian decree regulating weights and measures, variously dated between 449 and 420 B.C. All the dimensions of the slab imply the use of a cubit of 52·3 cm, the length of the Egyptian royal cubit which in a Greek context suggests a provenance on Samos. Finally, the slab was not used for the practical purpose of comparing or checking measures. The width and the angle of the surface point to its being set over a door, perhaps the entrance to a room devoted to the control of weights and measures.

Further excavation at Torksey established that the borough was an open settlement; a medieval ditch merely separated the village closes from the common. One such close contained three more pottery kilns. Two kilns were found immediately south of the village, bringing the total to seven. The pottery industry seems to have started by the middle of the ninth century and lasted through much of the twelfth; it may have been or become subordinate to that of Lincoln.

An inscribed Attic marble grave stele of the fourth century B.C. with a family group of four persons in relief has recently come to light near Dublin in what was in the eighteenth-century part of an estate belonging to the first Earl of Charlemont. The stele itself and its place in Charlemont's collection are discussed.

The glass, now comprising a three-light Crucifixion between two royal figures and their patron saints, reflects the style of Leiden and can be dated c. 1515-27. It may have stood originally in three linked windows in Waltham Abbey Church, and been padded out after the Dissolution to fit the five-light window of the chapel of New Hall, Boreham. On its transfer to Copt Hall c. 1740 William Price the younger replaced some of the glass, and must have overpainted and refired most of the rest. A local glazier, James Loton, was responsible for transferring it to St. Margaret's in 1758.

The evidence for the site of the temple of Victory on the Palatine at Rome is re-examined: (1) a passage in Dionysius of Halicarnassus which implies that the temple was topographically related to the Lupercal, (2) two inscriptions recorded in the eighteenth century, which were found near the western corner of the Palatine, (3) the Porta Roman(ul)a, which according to Festus was infimo clivo Victoriae, and (4) the Palatine hut, which was evidently next to the temple of Iuppiter Victor in the precinct of Victory. By applying these indications to the archaeological remains, the two hitherto unidentified podia near the Magna Mater temple may be identified as those of the temples of Victory and Iuppiter Victor.

A textile fragment from the Crimea acquired by the British Museum in 1848 is identified as a Han Chinese monochrome figured silk. Pieces of the same cloth are also in the Hermitage, Leningrad. The context of the find and the associated grave furniture are re-examined and a production date for the silk within the first century B.C. or early first century A.D. is proposed.

In 1729, a decorated fourth-century Roman silver dish bearing a Christian inscription was found at Risley Park, Derbyshire. Damaged when found, the fragments of the vessel were soon lost, but an illustrated account of it was published by William Stukeley in 1736. Stukeley and later authorities interpreted the inscription as implying that the dish had belonged to a late Roman church in France, and considered that it had been brought to Britain as loot in the Middle Ages. This paper presents a description and assessment of the Risley Park lanx in the light of the greater knowledge of late Roman silver plate now available, and makes the suggestion that the vessel may have been imported into Britain in the Roman period.

In conjunction with a survey of Roman sword finds, an attempt is made to classify the varying types and dimensions of blades into categories indicative of their function within the Imperial Army. In particular, a category is defined as being that most likely to represent examples of the standard gladius as issued to the legionary infantryman.

Excavations outside the walled area (of the ancient city) have added much to our knowledge of Lincoln's historical development and have demonstrated the potential of the suburbs for further problem-orientated investigations. Evidence was recovered in 1972 for a late Iron Age settlement on the east bank of the Brayford to the south of the later Roman city. The Ermine Street frontage here was heavily built up from the mid-second century for a distance of at least 400 m. from the south gate of the extended colonia. Only slight traces of Roman occupation, however, have been recovered outside the east and west walls of the lower town. Investigation of the medieval suburb of Butwerk revealed a sequence of domestic structures from its origin c. A.D. 1000 through to the post-medieval period, while the development of the ecclesiastical site of St. Mark's church in Wigford reflected to a large extent the changing fortunes of this important southern suburb. Limited work on the north and east banks of Brayford Pool exposed remains of early medieval waterfronts, but the exploitation of the city's waterside is as yet little understood. Further progress has been made in understanding the structures connected with the water supply to the Roman city, and an interesting Roman tile kiln 10 km. south-east of the city is also described.

Mr. John A. Green undertook the exacting conservation of the tomb of Sir John St. John, 1st Baronet, d. 1648, in Lydiard Tregoze Church, Wiltshire. The article indicates the extent of the work done, which involved the complete rebuilding of the monument. The Revd. B. G. Carne places the monument in the setting of the life of Sir John, and suggests that it deserves to rank very highly in any list of our monumental inheritance from the seventeenth century.