The parish of Skee, in western Bohuslän, has a wide variety of ancient monuments, among which is a small rock at Döltorp that displays a range of Bronze Age and Early Iron Age rock carvings. The new recording presented here identifies a number of hitherto unrecognized images and details. Some of the carvings are now considered to be of the late second millennium bc, while the bulk of the images are of mid-first millennium bc date. They include a particularly large decorated boat, with its crew finely detailed, as well as a number of carvings of warriors, discs, horses, spirals and smaller boats. The site lies in a landscape well inland from the Bronze Age shoreline, and its selection for carving was probably related to the existence of an earlier cairn high on a ridge to the west of the rock-carving site, perhaps linked to it by additional stones. Other sites in the immediate lowland region suggest that we should not view such sites as static creations; rather, we should consider them to have had long and episodic lives, maintaining and augmenting a societal awareness over many generations.

This paper describes a group of wooden objects (a trough, ladder, mallet and other pieces) found in 1817 in a salt mine in north-eastern Austria-Hungary, now Ukraine, which have recently come to light in the Hungarian Central Mining Museum in Sopron. It presents new radiocarbon dates indicating that the objects date to the Bronze Age, except for one that belongs to the early medieval period. Their function is briefly considered in the context of recent excavation and survey work in Romania, and specifically the remarkable discoveries from Băile Figa near Beclean, northern Transylvania, where several similar troughs and other objects have been found. Taken together, the finds shed light on the scale of salt exploitation in central and eastern Europe in prehistoric times.

This short note puts on record three fragments of an Iron Age decorated mirror found in 1998 in a field near Ruxox Farm, in the parish of Maulden, Bedfordshire, the fifth such mirror to be recorded from that county. The significance of the find is discussed within the context of the overall archaeology of the Ruxox area and compared to other mirror finds from the region.

RIB 1389 is an inscription, found in 1751, that records building work on Hadrian's Wall in ad 158. The stone is lost and there have long been doubts about its exact findspot. The source for the reading of the inscription and the discovery of the stone is a manuscript in the British Library. Re-examination of this shows that: 1. the inscription was found in the Newburn area (Wall Mile 8 or 9) and not near Heddon as is usually stated; 2. RIB 1389 certainly came from the curtain of Hadrian's Wall or one of its structures, and not from a fort; 3. there is a second contemporary illustration of the inscription which confirms that the previously published text is without doubt correct. The stone can be seen as part of a group of stones whose inscriptions indicate an extensive building operation. Given that it is now generally accepted that the Antonine Wall in Scotland was only held for a brief single period, the building programme of ad 158 can be seen as marking the decision to abandon Scotland and make a permanent return to the Wall on the southern isthmus.

The Roman city of Melite, on the central Mediterranean archipelago of Malta, had, in common with other provincial outposts of the Empire, a diaspora Jewish colony for which there is testimony in six hypogea that prominently display the seven-branched Menorah. There is apparent evidence for a religious, and perhaps administrative, set-up in a Greek inscription that marks the burial place of a gerousiarch and lover of the ‘commandments’ who could have been the head of a Council of Elders in the synagogue of the city, and of his wife, Eulogia ‘the Elder’. The title presbytera used in the text has a special significance and suggests that husband and wife held prestigious posts in the running of the colony. A second inscription incorporates the seven-branched Menorah and commemorates another woman, named Dionisia, who was known by the ritualistic name ‘Irene’. Two other texts appear to be simple farewell messages but are of interest because they are accompanied by a stylized painted Menorah and a boldly incised sailing vessel that has the appearance of a Roman ship. The paper takes a close look at these and other archaeological material related to Jewish presence and influence in Malta. The hypogea are discussed in the context of the Maltese culture of rock-cut burials, starting in the prehistoric period and finding special significance as the prototype influence on the Romano-Punic tomb.

The archaeological landscape of the Mun River valley in north-east Thailand is dominated by many large, prehistoric settlements. These are easily recognized from the air, since they are encircled by banks and moats. Several of these sites were later occupied under the Angkorian kingdom, and incorporate brick temples. These sites present both an enigma and a challenge. Few have ever been excavated, and then only on a very small scale. This article presents the results of a fifteen-year research programme designed to illuminate the cultural sequences at several sites, investigate the social organization as it changed over time, and to identify the period when the moats and banks were constructed. Three sites have been excavated and a cultural sequence covering more than 2,000 years has been dated. This paper concentrates on the Iron Age (450 bc–ad 500), a period of effervescent social change that may be linked with population growth, engagement in a maritime trade network that incorporated India and China, the development of militarism and, in due course, the rapid transition into the period of the early states that anticipated the foundation of the kingdom of Angkor.

The imitation cameos placed around the frame of the Westminster Retable had a deeply entrenched cultural context in the re-use of classical gemstones in many examples of medieval goldsmiths’ work. But the cameos on the Retable had arguably a more local and immediate thirteenth-century context, both stylistically and iconographically, in the choice of images displayed. This paper relates the paired jugate heads in a cameo known from photographs but now lost, and the one surviving cameo head with its very specific winged headdress, to similar images in other media – book painting and sculpture – both in England and in France. It also, though very tentatively, given the loss of the great bulk of the cameos formerly on the frame, attempts to identify the persons represented in the cameos in relation to the overall programme of the Retable, not restricting this identification to any obvious antique parallels.

The 1350 foundation statutes for the College of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, contain unique provisions for a corporate signum or badge. The badge was specifically assigned to the college by its founder, William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich (1289–1355). Over time Bateman's personal arms replaced this signum in identifying the college and its property. The badge is often called Bateman's personal badge, but this is not supported by the statutes of the college or by the evidence of the badge's use in surviving books in the college library. The instructions for the college signum and its specific function in the marking of the college's books represents an interesting development in the indication of corporate, rather than personal, ownership using heraldic insignia. This paper discusses Bateman's instructions for the college signum and the evolution of the Trinity Hall arms.

The three copper-gilt and enamel plaques from Warden Abbey are the most important examples of late medieval metalwork from an English Cistercian abbey. They are currently exhibited at the British Museum and dated to the mid-fifteenth century. A reinterpretation of the monograms decorating the plaques allows their patron to be identified as Abbot Walter Clifton (c 1377–97). An analysis of the plaques’ style and iconography also suggests a late fourteenth-century date. Clifton's personal devotions and an unusual aspect of the plaques’ iconography can be explained by reference to the spirituality of the Cistercian Order. The plaques’ closest parallel is a roundel decorated with the badge of Richard ii. Evidence from inventories and comparison with Continental material suggests that the Warden plaques were, in all probability, morses, used to fasten a cope.

Though Britain was the predominant European power in India from the middle of the eighteenth century, British scholars at first lagged behind their European contemporaries in the study of Indian antiquities. There were, quite simply, no British counterparts to such celebrated figures as Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron and Carsten Niebuhr. This paper investigates the efforts made by the Society of Antiquaries of London to remedy this situation, as demonstrated in particular by the publication of two early eighteenth-century accounts of the cave temples at Kanheri and Elephanta near Bombay in volume 7 (1785) of the Society's journal, Archaeologia. It argues that the impetus for the Society's efforts was provided by its Director, Richard Gough, who had family reasons for an interest in India and the East, but that the Society's role was largely superseded when Sir William Jones founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal.

John Carter's newly catalogued papers and correspondence in the archives of King's College London throw considerable new light on his relationship with members of the Society of Antiquaries and his patrons, and include previously unpublished sketches of several of them. His memoirs show that a small group of wealthy antiquaries recognized his skills as an accurate and conscientious draughtsman and encouraged him faithfully to record historic – and especially medieval – buildings and monuments. Many of these buildings were later altered or destroyed, and his numerous surviving drawings are thus of immense value to scholars. The opportunity has also been taken to publish a postscript with additional comments and corrections to the Society's monograph, John Carter and the Mind of the Gothic Revival (1995).

It is generally assumed that no medieval figure sculpture has survived from the north front of the nave of Westminster Abbey after three and a half centuries of successive restorations. This assumption was challenged by the appearance at auction in 2007 of a life-sized statue of Henry iii bearing some of the stylistic hallmarks of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The statue, according to its vendor, was acquired from the masons’ yard at Westminster Abbey in 1980, during the most recent major restoration of the north front carried out by Peter Foster, Surveyor of the Fabric until 1988. It was removed from the site with the consent of the contractors. Until the auction, it had been chained to a wall in the vendor's garden. The art dealer who bought the figure identified it as Henry iii from its close resemblance to the thirteenth-century tomb effigy of the king in Westminster Abbey. He purchased the statue in anticipation of it proving to be of a similar date. The purpose of this paper is to review the documented history of the figure sculpture on the north front of the abbey's nave and find a place for this statue within it.

The ‘William Allen box’ is a rare survival of a collection of antiquities, mostly of Roman date, collected in the Victorian period. This paper discusses the identity and life of the collector and some of the more notable objects before examining the provenance of some of the material, in particular the findspots ‘Ad Fines’ and ‘Croydon’. The importance of the collection in the context of the antiquarian age in which it was assembled is also discussed.

This paper identifies the ways in which the enormous upsurge in the volume of commercial archaeology in England since the introduction of PPG 16 in 1990 has affected our knowledge and understanding of Roman Britain. The difficulties in establishing a comprehensive database of interventions are discussed, but overall it is estimated that around 6,600 separate interventions sampled Roman deposits between 1990 and 2004. While many important excavations have been published in conventional formats, a considerable amount of information resides only in grey literature. Commercial work has generated major advances in our understanding of non-villa rural settlement and its associated land use, while analyses of material culture and, to a lesser extent, biological remains have considerable potential for wider synthesis and inter-site comparison. Improvements in collection methodology and reporting standards are suggested, and the need to integrate the results of commercial investigations with data derived from other sources is stressed.