The brasses in Mawgan church suffered severely at the restoration in 1860–1. All were taken from their slabs and the slabs destroyed. Some were removed to Lanherne Nunnery, but subsequently transferred to Wardour Castle, where they still remain.

The following account is mainly derived from old rubbings in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries; from E. H. W. Dunkin's Monumental Brasses of Cornwall, 1882; C. S. Gilbert's Historical Survey and Heraldry of Cornwall, 2 vols., 1817–20; H. Haines's Manual of Monumental Brasses, 1861; The Roman Catholic Families of England—Arundell, by J. J. Howard and H. S. Hughes, no date; and M. Stephenson's List of Brasses in the British Isles, 1926.

The excavation of the harbour site at al Mina having been finished in 1937, the whole of the 1938 season was devoted to the inland mound of Atchana, now identified by the help of the inscribed tablets as the ancient city of Alalakh. Work started at the beginning of March and was carried on until the end of May. Throughout the greater part of the season the number of men employed averaged about three hundred. Even with the invaluable assistance of our foremen, Hamoudi and his two sons Yahia and Alawi (the former of whom as usual was responsible for the photography), this entailed very heavy work on our limited staff, and for the success of the season I am deeply indebted to its members: my wife, who besides doing the drawings of the painted pottery and metal objects helped in the field in every way; Mr. Ralph Lavers, to whom are due the excellent plans and reconstructions of the buildings; and Mr. P. W. Murray-Threipland, who again acted as general archaeological assistant and undertook practically the whole of the work on the catalogue of objects. I have further to express my gratitude to Mr. Sidney Smith for his work upon the tablets, to Mr. R. D. Barnett for information regarding the Hittite inscriptions, to M. Henri Seyrig, Director of the Service des Antiquités for Syria, and to M. Merlat, Inspector of Antiquities for the Sandjak of Alexandretta, for help, both official and personal, ever readily given; lastly, I would thank the Trustees of the British Museum, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, and the many generous friends who have financed the Expedition and made its work possible, and will, I hope, feel that their help has been rewarded by its success.

A unique assemblage of twenty-one objects belonging to the Bronze—Iron transition was discovered over a quarter of a century ago, in a peaty mountain tarn at Llyn Fawr, Glamorgan, 1,200 ft. above Ordnance datum; pl. LXXI shows its position. The hoard came to light when the lake was drained in the course of its transformation into a reservoir: it was presented to the National Museum of Wales by the Rhondda Urban District Council and was published by our Secretary, Dr. R. E. M. Wheeler, in 1921. Figs. 1 and 2 show the range of the hoard, as then recognized.

Last year, on this occasion of our Anniversary Meeting, I was able to begin my address with a reference to the very handsome bequest received by the Society from our Fellow Mr. Garraway Rice. This year I have to report an even larger benefaction, partly immediate and partly in prospect. By the death of Miss May Morris (whose name will always be held in honour among lovers of the beautiful past, for her own sake as well as that of her father), the Society entered into the possession of the legacy of her sister, Miss Jane Morris, amounting to about £8,500. It will also eventually receive, after the termination of a life interest, a bequest of somewhat similar amount from the estate of Miss May Morris herself. The income from these benefactions will be available for the conservation of ancient buildings and monuments, especially of the medieval period, and will greatly increase the power of the Society for good. The fund will also serve as a worthy monument of a family which did much for the appreciation of medieval art, and for the preservation of our historic monuments and the beauties of our countryside.

Pumping operations conducted by the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Co., Ltd., in the large chalk quarry situated between Brook Vale and the Southern Railway track to the east resulted in the normal water-level for the immediate vicinity being lowered by approximately 50 ft. This volume of pumping, however, had the effect of filling to capacity all streams and conduits connected with the outflow, so that archaeological investigation of the low-lying deposits of the neighbourhood was rendered impossible.

In the summer of 1938 operations in the quarry were abandoned, and the pumps were withdrawn for installation in Baker's Hole, half a mile to the west.

Upon the cessation of pumping the water-level immediately began to return to normal at the rate of about 9 in. every twenty-four hours, whilst the beds of the streams and conduits promptly dried up.

Such a state of affairs rarely presents itself to the archaeologist, and I forthwith decided to make two excavations at what I considered were likely to prove ‘key’ sites in the bed of the Ebbsfleet. The first spot chosen lay at the junction of Brook Vale and the Ebbsfleet, and the second was at a point a quarter of a mile farther upstream.

Two lots of tablets have been found, one during the 1937 season and one in 1938, the total number of tablets and parts of tablets, excluding inconsiderable fragments, being about three hundred. The 1937 lot falls into two classes, here called A and B, the 1938 lot into three, here called B, C, and D.

A preliminary excavation of this barrow was made in 1936 and an account of the work then undertaken, together with a detailed topographical description of the site, was published in this Journal for April 1937 (vol. xvii, p. 122). The admittedly tentative conclusions which could then be advanced regarding its date and its relationship to the characteristic Neolithic longbarrows were largely based on extrinsic evidence, and positive indications obtained during the excavation itself were not as definite as could be wished. In 1937 Sir Edmund Davis suggested that in view of the significant geographical situation of the barrow further investigation was desirable, and he very generously again agreed to be entirely responsible for the cost. Altogether the work occupied some eight weeks, and during the college vacation I had the valued assistance of Dr. S. Graham Brade-Birks, Head of the Department of Geology at the South-Eastern Agricultural College, Wye. Mr. H. B. Bescoby, Head of the Department of Surveying at Wye, and two of his students, Messrs. D. Vickers and H. Castel, very kindly prepared a contour plan of the barrow, upon which the general plan (pl. XLIX) is based. My best thanks are also due to Dr. A. J. E. Cave, Dr. J. Wilfrid Jackson, Mr. A. S. Kennard, Mr. B. H. St. J. O'Neil, and Mr. Stuart Piggott for their contributions to this report, and again to Mr. H. Read Gillett, Sir Edmund Davis's agent, for many kindnesses.

The Early Christian monuments of Wales are of special interest as the principal material remains of the centuries that elapsed between the end of the Roman occupation and the coming of the Normans.

It has been often stated that the early records of the Court of Chivalry or Court of the Constable and Marshal are lost, and this is in the main true. More, however, by accident than care, as it seems, full records of proceedings in three great medieval ‘Pleas of Arms’ tried in the Court have been preserved. Those of two of the three, namely, Scrope versus Grosvenor, 1385–90, and Lovell versus Morley, 1386–95, are among the Chancery Miscellanea in the Public Record Office and are contemporary if not official records. For the third case, Grey versus Hastings, 1407–17, we have to rely on two relatively modern transcripts of an ancient register of which the present whereabouts, if indeed it still exists, is not now known. Both these two transcripts are at the College of Arms. The older, made in 1582 and 1583 by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, from the original then in the hands of Henry, earl of Kent, the heir of Lord Grey of Ruthin, plaintiff in the suit, is contained in a volume labelled ‘Philpot, P.e. No. 1’. This was printed privately in 1841, at the expense of Lord Hastings, by Charles George Young, York Herald (afterwards Garter) with some illustrative matter as ‘An account of the controversy between Reginald Lord Grey of Ruthyn and Sir Edward Hastings, in the Court of Chivalry, in the reign of King Henry IIII’. This transcript, however, on its own showing (cf. p. 29 of Young's edition) omits many of the depositions, while upon comparison with the other it proves to contain only quite a small proportion of the whole contents of the original.

Among the places which Count Roger I conquered during his campaign in Southern Sicily in 1086, Gaufredus Malaterra mentions the Arab town of Narû, the present Naro, in the province of Agrigento. Naro, like nearly all towns in inner Sicily, is dominated by a castle and a church which stand some hundred yards distant from one another on two rocky heights at the top of the mountain on which the town is situated. The church stands, as is shown by recent excavations, on the site of a pagan temple and an Arab mosque. Here Roger I had erected the first Christian church after the Norman conquest. A century later this building was renovated and extended. The Englishman Walter of the Mill, from 1169 archbishop of Palermo and before that dean of Agrigento, whose diocese also included Naro, is said to have been the builder. The new building was started in 1174, when Bartholomew of the Mill, Walter's brother, was bishop of Agrigento, and it was consecrated in May 1263 by Rudolf, cardinal bishop of Albano, attended by two archbishops and four bishops. Since 1867 the church has not been used and has become a sad ruin. The ceiling has fallen in, weeds grow on the floor, all its interior ornaments have been destroyed and have disappeared. There is, however, one exception: on the west wall of the north transept, opposite the apse, still stands one large sarcophagus. This sarcophagus is made of yellowish-white marble. Its lower part rests on four seated lions, and is shaped like a bath, round the top of which run two mouldings. In vertical section the lid is pentagonal, the upper point forming the ridge of the saddle-roof. This ridge is not strictly horizontal, but is raised a little towards the middle. From both the side-mouldings one member is left out, having perhaps been reserved for an inscribed ribbon, probably inlaid in metal. On each of the slopes are three round medallions worked in relief. The outer ones contain the symbols of the four Evangelists, the inner ones the half-length figures of Christ, with sceptre and orb, and the Holy Virgin.

Since the publication, several years ago, of my paper on the relationship of rostro-carinates to certain Lower Palaeolithic handaxes, a great deal more evidence bearing on this matter has come to light. I have been able to examine large numbers of handaxes, found in this country and in very widely separated places abroad, which exhibit, in their profile and in other characteristics, an extraordinarily close resemblance to rostro-carinates. Such palaeolithic specimens I have called rostrate hand-axes, and their number and wide distribution are beyond dispute. If it is a fact that the rostro-carinate is the ancestral form from which the earliest hand-axes were developed, then it would be reasonable to suppose that the oldest group of these, being nearest in time to the rostro-carinate epoch, would contain the largest number of specimens of the rostrate hand-axe type. Moreover, it would be expected that, in the later hand-axe groups, traces of the ancestral form would gradually fade out, and, except for certain specimens of what may be called atavistic form, be eliminated. That is the theory, and it is sometimes the fate of theories to be killed by facts, but in the case under consideration the reverse holds true. For few things in prehistoric archaeology are clearer than that rostrate hand-axes are most numerous in the Early Chelles period, or that the traces of the rostro-carinate form become ever less in evidence in the later epoch of St. Acheul. Though this is the case, however, the matter is not so simple and straightforward as was perhaps at first supposed.

Among the Lukis MSS. in the Lukis Museum, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, are some plans of burial chambers in the neighbourhood of Bennac, a small village in the commune of Salles-la-Source, in the Aveyron. Bennac is about two and a half kilometres south-east of Salles-la-Source itself, and some nine kilometres north-west of Rodez, the chief town of the department. These plans were made by Sir Henry Dryden and the Rev. W. C. Lukis during a visit to Rodez, and they include one of a chambered long barrow (fig. 1), here reproduced by kind permission of the authorities of the Lukis Museum. This plan is dated 17th September 1872 and is described as ‘Oval Barrow no. 2 at Vennac’: the total length of the barrow is given as 101 ft. 3 in., while, according to the plan, the maximum breadth is about 65 ft. The barrow is orientated from east to west with the chamber set in the broader east end: from the western edge of the barrow (the outer line) to orthostat D is given as 78 ft. 5 in., and from orthostat D to the eastern edge of the barrow as 22 ft. 10 in. The chamber is a short rectangular gallery from 13 to 14 ft. long and about 5 ft. wide: a note appended to the plan gives the lengths of the orthostats as follows: A, 13 ft. 8 in.; B, 5 ft.; C, 5 ft. 6 in.; and D, 4 ft. 11 in. The height of D is not given, but to the west of this stone, Lukis had written, ‘another chamber?’; which suggested that D was perhaps only a sill-stone.

As far back as 1880 the late Mr. W. Whitaker noted signs of several terraces on the left bank of the Thames, down-valley from Maidenhead, but he did not specifically mention the locality east and north-east of Taplow, Buckinghamshire (fig. 1). In this district, which includes the parishes of Burnham and Farnham Royal, terrace features resemble those discernible between Cookham and Bray Wick, Berkshire, where Messrs. Ll. Treacher and N. J. Osborne White believed that the Boyn Hill Terrace consisted of two divisions, the lower separated from the higher by a step of about 20 ft. According to them also, two pre-existing benches were buried by the aggradation.

On a number of occasions recently cooking-pots of the type here considered have been discovered at or near Roman sites, and have been taken for medieval by the finders. In the present paper, besides giving drawings of sufficient rims to show the range of variety in the main type, I have collected the evidence for the distribution and date of Derbyshire ware, first distinguished by Professor Collingwood, though it will appear presently that it is to be given a considerably shorter period than he suggested. It is hoped that this will make it easier for the ware to be recognized as Roman in the future.

Amongst a quantity of broken pottery of various periods found last year during excavations in the moat of the Tower of London is a vase which throws some light on the obscure question of the origin of Netherlands maiolica. The vase is complete except for the foot, which was missing and has been restored in plaster in what is probably a correct reconstruction of its original form. The shape is well enough shown in the accompanying illustrations (pls. LV, LVI) to call for no description. It is virtually the same as that of a vase in many respects similar which was dug up some years ago in the City of London and was bought for the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1938 at the sale of the collection of the late Mr. William Ridout (pl. LVII); of this second vase also only the body and neck remain, the missing foot having similarly been made good in plaster.

Roman roads are frequently described as having ditches beside them, but these are usually large hollows of varying depth and width from which material has been scooped to form the agger of the roadway. The ditches discussed here are of quite a different type, and so far only four instances of them are known, though it is very probable that others exist. They are quite small, usually 3–7 ft. wide and a few inches deep; are cut in accurately straight lines parallel with the road and distant from it on each side by a space roughly equal to the width of the actual roadway; and are apparently found only in places where the road is crossing high and fairly level ground.

The burial-mound under discussion appears to have been situated some five miles from Wimborne, by the Blandford road and near the hill-fort of Badbury Rings. Nothing remains of it to-day, and our information as to its structure and contents is due to the Rev. J. H. Austen of Ensbury, who in 1845 found the barrow was being ploughed out and was already two-thirds removed when he excavated and described what remained. The remarkable find of a stone with representations of metal axes and daggers upon it, hitherto unillustrated, renders a republication and discussion of the site desirable.

The massive gold finger-ring, the subject of this paper, was, I am informed, discovered in the city of York and may be thus described. Within a mount of seven circles of wire, alternately plain and ornamental, having three circles in front, three behind, and one on the edge, is set a solidus of the emperor Valentinian I, A.D. 364–75. The shank, which is of plain, thick wire, is beaten out at either end into a flat semicircle, and is attached to the reverse of the coin and to the mount, whilst to the shoulders are applied a considerable number of pellets of varying size (pl. XLII, 1).

The braids which form the subject of this study were found with a stole and maniple on the body of St. Cuthbert when the tomb was opened in 1827. The vestments are embroidered in coloured silks and gold thread: the stole with figures of prophets, and the maniple with those of saints. Both have an inscription embroidered on the ends, with the names of the donor, Ælflæda, and the ‘pious Bishop Fridestan’ for whom they were worked. Fridestan became the Bishop of Winchester in A.D. 905 and Ælflæda, second wife of Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, died in A.D. 916, so that the gift must have been made between these dates. It is further probable that this stole and maniple are identical with those recorded as having been presented to the shrine of St. Cuthbert (then at Chester-le-Street) by King Athelstan, stepson of Queen Ælflæda, in A.D. 934. Fridestan had died in 931, and this circumstance, together with the close connexion of the king's family with Winchester, supports the story.

The National Gallery at Melbourne, Australia, purchased in 1922 a fine example of English painted glass of the middle of the fourteenth century. The panel shows the portraits of Sir John of Hardreshull and his wife Margaret, daughter and coheir to Sir James Stafford of Sandon. The figures are all in white glass, of an ivory tint, and the outer narrow margin is also white. The diapered background is of a rich blue colour, the plain border is ruby glass poudrée with yellow roses (pl. LXXXV, 1).