My task to-night is both easier and more difficult than has been the case on former Anniversaries. It is not now for me, as in other years, to discuss questions of policy. The salutary custom which sets a five-year term to the Presidential office ensures a periodical revision of aims and methods which is essential to such a Society as ours.

Whitehawk Camp, situated on the Brighton Race-course, is one of the eight proved neolithic camps of ‘causewayed’ type in Britain. It consists of four concentric oval rings of interrupted ditches, situated on a saddle between two slight eminences on the back of a north–south ridge on the eastern edge of the town of Brighton. The outermost ring (fourth ditch), which is deficient on the east where the hill falls very steeply into Whitehawk Bottom, encloses about 10 acres, while the inner ring encloses less than two. About half the circuit of the two inner rings, and considerable stretches of the two outer lines, have been levelled or otherwise damaged by the formation of the race-course and by allotment gardens. The general plan (pl. xii) is the result of a careful survey by the writer in 1928, when the vanished portions of the ditches were to a large extent recovered by percussion of the ground—a method which was not, however, of any avail in the allotment gardens where there was no turf, and the ‘boser’ simply sank into soft soil which damped the vibrations.

At one of this Society's meetings last January Mr. Laird Clowes, of the Science Museum, read a paper on the remains of a ship in the Hamble river above Bursledon. The chief feature of this paper, or at least the point emphasized in the daily press, was the conclusion that the wreck—from its shape and the heaviness of its timbering—was probably that of a merchantman of the middle of the nineteenth century.

This suggestion aroused a good deal of indignation locally, since the existence of a so-called ‘Danish galley of about A.D. 900’ was a matter of considerable pride, even though the wreck was generally invisible and always difficult of access. Critics pointed out very promptly that Mr. Laird Clowes had somehow overlooked the fact that even the present remains are quite as wide as the largest opening of Bursledon bridge, which was built between 1783 and 1800, and yet are a mile or more above that bridge. Clearly the ship must belong to a date before 1800, while various peculiarities mentioned by Mr. Laird Clowes seemed to make it impossible for her to belong to either the eighteenth or the seventeenth century. If so, she must date from before 1600, but how much before it was difficult to say.

The twelfth season of work carried out at Ur by the Joint Expedition was also its last, and from this time onwards excavation will give way to the final publication of the results already obtained. It was indeed with a view of completing the material required for such publication that a twelfth season was undertaken and its scope was strictly limited by those needs. Of the many periods illustrated by our work the very important one known, since Professor Langdon's first discovery of it, as the Jemdet Nasr period was inadequately represented; but there seemed every likelihood that much light might be thrown upon it by the further investigation of the cemetery whose existence had been proved in the course of our season 1932–3, and this, therefore, was to be our main objective. Further, in 1932–3 we had found and cleared the north-west side of the Third Dynasty Temenos; but though the corners of it had been fixed, the direction and extent of the walls on the other three sides remained to be determined. The planning of these would complete our knowledge of the Temenos in historic times so far as the ruined state of its buildings allowed: this, then, was our second objective.

On the north side of the ante-chapel of New College, Oxford, lies a brass for John Yong, Warden of the College, who was titular bishop of Callipolis in Thrace. The date of his death, the 25th March, 1526, has not been filled in in the inscription, so it is to be inferred that the brass was put down in his lifetime, say c. 1525.

I was very glad to receive two years ago permission from the Hon. Mrs. Abel Henry Smith and Major Edward P. Smith to calendar the mass of deeds relating to the Woodhall Park estate, at Watton-at-Stone, Herts. These deeds range from the twelfth down to the eighteenth century and cover the villages and hamlets of Watton-at-Stone, Aston, Stapleford, Sacombe, Wempstead, and Waterford, so far as concerns the manors of Aston, Bardolfs, Waterford Hall, Patchendon, Woodhall, Gobions and Lanvars, and Sele.

Of the two earliest of these deeds one, which belongs now to Mr. Vernon Austen Malcolmson, of Aston Bury, Herts., is Queen Adeliza's charter giving the manor and church of Aston, Herts., to Reading Abbey. The other is King Stephen's charter of confirmation of the same, and is still amongst the Woodhall Park deeds.

Between the rivers Test and Itchen in Hampshire, to the west of Winchester, and to the north-east of Romsey, there is a tract of high ground, forming the watershed between these two rivers, rising at Farley Mount, close to the Roman road from Venta to Sorbiodunum, to a height of 500 ft. above the sea. A part of this tract, particularly the area above the 300-ft. contour, in the ecclesiastical parishes of Farley Chamberlayne and Braishfield, is specially rich in surface flint implements of Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. The Broom Hill site is at the southern boundary of this area, on the borders of these two parishes and in the civil parish of Michelmersh. The position is latitude 51° 2′ north, and longitude 1°27′ west. It happens to be marked on O. S. 6-in. xlix, NW., by a triangle, showing that the place was used as a trigonometrical station, and is, therefore, readily visible for some miles around. The height of the point above sea-level is 330 ft.

Here at intervals, during the years 1932 and 1933, the writer discovered some neolithic pottery which will be described by Mr. Stuart Piggott. The site is approximately 150 yards wide from east to west, and some 250 yards long from north to south. It is a ridge of chalk, capped by a sandy clay, above which again is a rough pebbly gravel in which the pottery was found, about twenty to thirty inches below the turf. The fact that there is clay under the gravel causes the land below the hill to be exceedingly marshy, and this state of things was probably even more pronounced in ancient times. The site is a narrow neck ending in a broader portion, entirely surrounded, except at the southern end, by steep slopes or marsh. The form of the site cannot be judged from the shape of the 300-ft. contour on the map, for there is an under-feature which causes the site to assume the form of a peninsula jutting northwards. But at the narrow southern end there is no sign of any defensive bank, which might, perhaps, have been expected; but the site shows signs of having been under plough, though not in living memory.

Flint implements were first discovered in the working of the sand-pit immediately to the east of Selmeston church almost mid-way between Lewes and Polegate, Sussex, by Mr. W. J. Parsons, who at that time was resident in the neighbouring village of Alciston. The news soon reached the ears of Dr. E. Curwen, F.S.A., who arranged to secure the flints as they were recovered. Towards this he enlisted the aid of Mr. H. A. Davies of Selmeston, who has not only maintained a vigilant watch over the pit, but has also been of great assistance in various ways during further investigations on the site. The present author noticed the few specimens then in Dr. Curwen's collection in his Mesolithic Age in Britain, pp. 83 and 84. When on first visiting the site with Dr. Curwen the section of what appeared to be a pit-dwelling was discovered, it became clear that excavation would greatly enhance our knowledge of the site. Accordingly, with the generous permission of Dr. Curwen and the kind assistance of Mr. Parsons, the pit (pit 1) of which we had seen the first indications, and the remains of another (pit 2), were excavated early in the month of June 1933. Subsequently, another pit-dwelling (pit 3) becoming apparent during the normal course of working back the section of the sand-pit, the author undertook further excavations in the autumn, when he was assisted by Mr. Davies. We should like to acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. Osborn & Bennet of Eastbourne for allowing us to excavate in the sand-pit. Finally the report is made more valuable by identifications by Messrs. Christopher Hawkes, F.S.A., and J. C. Maby, B.Sc.

In the farm of Hatteberg, formerly belonging to the barony of Rosendal to the south of Bergen, there was found in December 1932 a Viking period hoard (pl.xix) consisting of a gold armlet of twisted wire (weight 164·62 grammes), a large silver torc of the same workmanship (weight 403·5 grammes), and a silver brooch of penannular type. The objects lay together about 2 ft. deep in the ground without any protection, the armlet being threaded on the torc. Evidently this was no burial but a treasure, of a kind well known all over northern Europe in the Viking period, from Russia to the British Isles. The torc and armlet are of well-known form and technique, but among the best and most valuable of their class. Of greater interest is the brooch. It is a casting scarcely if at all finished by the chisel. The hoop is flat on the back, which is unornamented. On the front of either terminal a thin gold plate is fitted into a frame, and held in place by a silver rivet with large round head. The plates are ornamented with filigree of notched gold wire, and the rivet-heads also carried some silver filigree. This, however, now shows traces of wear, as does the hoop. As for the rest, the form and decoration may be seen from the illustration.

The pottery recorded in this paper was found at Flints sandpit on Lordship Farm early in 1933 by Mrs. C. Wager, till recently of Holwell, to whom thanks are due for permission to publish. The sand-pit is half a mile south of Holwell, a village 2¼ miles north-west of Hitchin. It is situated on a slope facing westwards, at 200 ft. above sea-level, and the soil is a patch of sand on boulder-clay (plan, fig. 1).

In the course of sand-digging, some pits were cut into and destroyed on the north side of the sand-pit. The pits were about 5 ft. in diameter and 4 ft. deep. Other pits may lie to the north. Mr. W. H. Lane, of Letchworth, has kindly sent the following note: ‘In one of the pits there were two hearths. The first hearth was at a depth of about 4 ft. 6 in. Above this was silted material sloping at a rather acute angle from east to west. The pit had then been levelled by dumping surface-soil, and the second hearth made some 2 ft. above the first.’

In considering the question whether London did or did not survive as a substantially intact administrative unit throughout the Pagan Saxon period, Sir Laurence Gomme and others have laid stress upon the supposedly Roman origin of the wide territorial rights of the medieval Londoners. These rights, it has been claimed, take us ‘behind the Norman conquest, and behind the Anglo-Saxon rule also, for there is nothing in Anglo-Saxon institutions to which [they] can be referred’: they represent the old ‘territorium ’ of Roman London and are good evidence, therefore, of an unbroken civic tradition from Roman times. The doubtful details with which enthusiasm or fantasy have tended to enrich this theory do not necessarily deprive it of essential validity; and I venture to think that it is in fact rather more securely founded than Gomme's own statement of it would lead us to infer.

Titterstone Clee Hill lies some five miles due east of Ludlow. It is crowned by a camp which comprises the whole of the comparatively flat top, measuring about ½ mile from east to west and ⅓ mile from north to south. In area (71 acres) and in elevation (1,749 ft. at its summit) it is abnormal amongst hill-forts in Great Britain; both these facts have important bearings on the excavation of 1932, particularly on the lack of finds (see p. 30).

A full discussion of its topographical features and environs will be published shortly in Archaeologia Cambrensis. It will be sufficient here to call attention to the camps on Brown Clee Hill and the connexion between them and Titterstone; and to the main East–West trackway, which passes close under the rampart of the latter. The two main branches of this track to the west are well attested for the prehistoric period, and there can be little doubt that the camp on Titterstone was placed to command their point of junction.

During the past five years I have confined my study of the ‘100-foot’ terrace to the gravel-pit at Swanscombe which commands a view eastwards over the Ebbsfleet valley. Within a few weeks the ballast will have been wholly cleared from above the chalk. For this reason a summary of the evidence the site has furnished will not be out of place, more especially as up to the present only a very incomplete account has been published.

The area north of the Middle Thames situated between Acton and West Drayton reveals extensive deposits which have been referred by H.M. Geological Survey to the Boyn Hill, Taplow, and Low terraces. As within the valley of the Lower Thames, these features have yielded implements and mammalian remains. In the opinion of the officers of the Geological Survey the formation of the Taplow terrace and its contained deposits occurred prior to the formation of the Coombe Rock which succeeded Early Mousterian times; further, they consider this Coombe Rock is to be equated with the ‘Trail’. It has long been established that the series of deposits revealed in a typical section cut through the so-called Taplow terrace of the Middle Thames in this district shows:

5. Surface soil.

4. ‘Trail’, often composed of slipped material from the Boyn Hill or ‘100-ft.’ terrace.

3. Brickearth, with thin layers of pebbles in its lower portion representing land-surfaces, overlying gravel with black seams.

2. Gravel, unstratified, much contorted, and containing large included masses both of solid Chalk and of London Clay.

1. Gravel, stratified, but showing a disturbed and deeply eroded upper surface penetrated by deposit no. 2.

London Clay.

Whereas deposits nos. 1, 2, and 3 have all been regarded as having been laid down by the river during the Taplow terrace stage, it would appear that this is not the case. There are reasons, archaeological and geological, for considering that these beds represent three separate periods and that only one of them (deposit no. 1) belongs to the Taplow terrace sequence proper.

It is the purpose of this article briefly to enumerate the facts which cause the correctness of the official geological reading of this type-section to be questioned.

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.

Apart from the Scandinavian crescentic flint sickles recently described by Dr. Grahame Clark (Proc. Preh. Soc. E. Anglia, vii, 67–81) we are not aware that any demonstrable flint sickle-blades have yet been observed in Britain. It is therefore all the more interesting that in the sand-pit at Selmeston, Sussex, where Dr. Clark has excavated mesolithic dwelling-pits later occupied by Peterborough folk (Antiq. Journ. xiv, 134), there has lately come to light a flint flake that has indubitably been used as a sickle.