In the famous Order in Council of 4 April 1627, it is laid down that the ‘study of antiquities is by good experience said to be very serviceable and useful to the general good of the State and Commonwealth’, and Charles I commands that Sir Edward Dering, for whose encouragement the Order was promulgated, should have ready access to ‘all or any records rolles registers or bookes within the several offices …’. Documentary record was looked upon as the normal style and medium of archaeology, and while such studies have in no way lost their value, they tend to be more and more illustrated by research into the actual facts and productions of bygone life. Research in the form of excavation is as old as the art of plundering tombs, and in some countries, Egypt for example, only a very meagre fraction of burials has escaped rifling hands. The research of the Renaissance, particularly in Italy, was not over scrupulous in its methods, but was at least passionately concerned in preserving its discoveries. While ancient Rome was being treated as a stone quarry during the second half of the fifteenth century, scholars began to dig with enthusiasm, and gradually exposed the great mass of mutilated sculpture which adorns Rome to-day. But the sole purpose of their search was to extract the object, if possible the big classical object, and Sabba del Castiglione complained that as he could not buy good antiques he was driven to buy sculpture by Donatello.

As the periods during which excavations at Stonehenge were continued in the seasons of 1925 and 1926 were short, it has been considered better to give the results of the two years' work in one Report.

Work began on 1st May 1925, and was continued until 8th September following. The portion of the ditch opened was that remaining between two other excavations in the ditch previously examined and reported upon. It formed part of the general excavation of the eastern segment, but as it was essential to complete the exploration of the interior between the rampart and stone circles separately, the ditch in that quarter was left for later investigation

During the winter season of 1927-8 the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania was engaged upon two distinct pieces of work; at the beginning of the season, for about nine weeks, we continued the excavation of the early cemetery discovered in the previous year, while for the rest of the time the whole gang was employed on the clearing of the interior of the great courtyard building which lies in front of the north-east face of the Ziggurat. Field work started on October 17 and continued until February 18, the average number of men on the pay-roll being 130 for the first half of the time, and 170 for the second half. This year there was no architect with the expedition, for the reason that the plan of the courtyard building had already been made out and for the digging of the cemetery the services of an architect would not be required: otherwise the staff was the same as last year, my wife being responsible for the drawings, the Rev. E. Burrows, S.J., for the inscriptional material, and Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan acting as general archaeological assistant. The extraordinary richness of the discoveries meant even harder work than usual, and it was at times difficult to keep pace with them, but by occasional shifting of the gang from the graves to the courtyard this was made possible, the respite so gained enabling us to catch up temporary arrears: but I owe it to my assistants to express my gratitude for their whole-hearted co-operation. As usual, Hamoudi of jerablus was foreman, and was invaluable; his two sons, Yahia and Ibrahim, served under him as junior foremen, and the former did all the photographic work also.

During the second part of the season 1926–7 the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania was engaged in excavating a cemetery, or rather cemeteries, lying inside the temenos wall and at the south-east end of the enclosure. In 1922, during the early days of our first season at Ur, we had dug here a trial trench of no great depth and had found several groups of pottery and some jewellery which, owing to its nearness to the surface, I had assumed to be of late date (see Ant. Journal, vol. iii (1923), pi. xxix). Work of this sort, however, could not be done satisfactorily with the absolutely untrained gang which we had just enrolled, and the discovery of the temple E-Nun-Mah in another part of the temenos enabled me to abandon what the men named ‘the Gold Trench’. Now, after four years, the time had come to complete the topography of the temenos by clearing up what was the only large area within its walls still untested. The negative results of our original trench—negative so far as walls were concerned— and the evident denudation of the site, did not inspire confidence, but the ground had to be proved, and there was at least the prospect of further discoveries of small objects.

On 15th May 1924 Mr. Harold J. E. Peake, F.S.A., read to the Society of Antiquaries a short paper announcing certain new facts regarding this Late Bronze Age hoard that had come to light mainly through research in, or connected with, the Bronze Implements Card Index of the British Association.

Two approximately contemporary accounts of the discovery exist, but these contain so many divergences that it was uncertain whether two distinct hoards were referred to, and Sir John Evans, in his Ancient Bronze Implements (1881), numbers and treats of them separately, with a query as to their identity. Our fresh evidence demonstrates that the two descriptions refer to the same group of bronze implements.

The generosity of an anonymous benefactor to the Research Fund of the Society enabled further work to be carried out in 1927 on the Findon Park Iron Age village site, which is situated just above the 500-ft. contour on a broad flat southward-sloping ridge one mile to the north of Cissbury. We wished to obtain information as to the range of date of the occupation, and the culture of the inhabitants, additional to that reported in Archaeologia, Ixxvi.

It is well known that Luton in Bedfordshire is a mine of prehistoric and historic remains. Our late Fellows Major Cooper-Cooper, of Toddington Manor, and Sir John Evans recorded finds of prehistoric graves, pottery, palaeolithic and neolithic flint implements in Luton and the surrounding hamlets of Leagrave, Biscot, and Stopsley. The late Mr. Worthington G. Smith discovered at Round Green in Luton a palaeolithic workshop similar to the one he found at Caddington, and his account of the latter will be found in Man the Primeval Savage, that of Round Green in Archaeologia lxvii. Sir John Evans found in and around Luton many British and Roman coins, also specimens of Roman pottery. Mr. Worthington Smith found both British and Roman coins in considerable numbers at Limbury. Specimens of Roman and Roman British pottery have been found in all parts of Luton. I dug up a large Roman pot at Turner's Knoll, Luton, which Mr. Reginald Smith thinks was used for storing grain. It has been restored by Mr. Axtell, and measures 16 in. in height and 15 in. in diameter. I found many Roman tiles in a field at Luton called ‘Lower Thirty Acres’, and other Roman remains have been found in Waller Street and in various parts of the town.

About two hundred and fifty yards west of Harlow railway-station, in the Essex border-parish of Latton (Ordnance Survey 6-in. map, XLI, NW.), a small gravel-capped oval hill known as Stanegrove or Standing Groves rises to a height of some 20 ft. above the marshy banks of the river Stort. In 1764 and again in 1819 ‘very strong walls’ were observed here; and other foundations ‘evidently Roman’, tesserae, many other Roman relics, and a stone coffin are recorded to have been discovered in the fields extending for a mile to the north-east, more particularly during excavations for gravel within 250 yards of the mound itself. Coffins thought to be of Roman date were found also near the station when the railway was built in 1841 and were re-buried in the station-yard. Amongst the finds from the area are specially noted ‘a great number of Roman coins chiefly of Emperors from the first Claudius to Valentinian’, including ‘several silver pieces of Sabina, Faustina the Elder, and Constantinus Junior’, and a few British, of which the following are specified: (1) one with a helmeted head, with CUNOBELINA; reverse, a hog and TASCHOVANIT (sic); (2) another ‘with a head on one side; on the other a man striking upon an anvil; (3) ‘one with a star, between the rays of which are the letters VERLAMIO; reverse, an ox’. The general character of the evidence closely resembles that obtained from similar riverside gravels in many parts of south-eastern Britain, and indicates a fairly extensive and continuous occupation, perhaps not of a very high order, from later prehistoric times to the last quarter of the fourth century.

In the winter of 1926–7 the owner of Wookey Hole, Capt. G. W. Hodgkinson, undertook the cleansing and opening up of this great cave, and its illumination by electricity. He gave me control of the work, which has been carried out with scrupulous care to ensure that nothing undesirable should be done.

Incidentally, the considerable exploration which it was my privilege to carry out some years ago provided a useful startingpoint for the further development of the entrance gallery (the old cave-dwelling), and that portion still remains in the condition in which we then left it, apart from the erection of a rude supporting pillar of conglomerate, where a great hanging rock near the entrance threatened danger to visitors.

At the close of the description of the site itself in the first report i t was stated that the rise in the level of the trench east of the pit containing Hearth 4 suggested the presence of a causeway beyond. It is now more than doubtful whether the evidence is capable of such interpretation. Just beyond the top of the slope where all signs of the usual cultural layer had disappeared, a fine specimen of a comb and some sherds were found, but after that nothing but occasional flakes of flint and a very few sparse sherds.

A Roman kiln was discovered in 1906 by Mr. Harold Falkner, a member of the Surrey Archaeological Society, and described by him in the county Archaeological Collections, vol. xx, pp. 228–32, with diagrams of the kiln and representative pottery ; but Mr. Falkner states that this kiln was empty when he discovered it, and that he never properly understood this site.

There is a popular idea that magnifying glasses are a relatively modern invention, and that consequently all antique die-sinking and gem-cutting must have been done by people with very short sight, which is equivalent to having a magnifier permanently attached to one's eyes. This idea is so prevalent that when ancient magnifying glasses are found, scholars go to the trouble of trying to find some other use to which they could be put, the favourite suggestion being that they must have been ornaments.

The numerous tombs cut on the rocky ground at Malta have been considered, up to the present, to be of Phoenician origin. An attempt was made by later students to classify these rock-cut tombs in three periods, corresponding to the shape of the burial chambers and to the approach to them, mostly a more or less regular shaft.

The present notes, with their accompanying photographs, have for their purpose the placing on record of some English alabaster carvings which either differ in style, in noteworthy details, or in iconography from pieces previously illustrated or described, or supply fresh examples of some uncommon technique or unusual subject. The objects have not hitherto, so far as I know, been published.

The Bursledon Brick Company's works are situated on rising ground north-east of the Southern Railway's branch line from Southampton to Fareham, and some 600 yards east of the tidal river Hamble, as shown on the plan (fig. 1). The geological formation is London clay; the beds have been exposed here to a depth of 40 ft, the section showing 1½ ft. of humus on an upper stratum of brownish-red clay resting on a bed of grey clay. The country immediately around supports oak, hazel, and alder.

The little church of Berrow, which lies behind the sandhills on the Somerset coast of the Bristol Channel a few miles north of Burnham, has a nave, chancel, and south aisle only. Its walls were besmeared with a thick coat of modern plaster, on the removal of which a niche of considerable dimensions was found in the centre of the north wall (fig. 1). Its projecting ornaments had been stripped off and its cavity built up flush with the general wall line with brickwork on edge that could not have been much later than the Commonwealth. On the removal of these bricks a tabernacle cross-head was found behind them. It was in eleven fragments; one large main piece comprising all the figures, seven small ones, whose fractures fitted on exactly, and which I have put back into their proper positions, and three others belonging to the lost upper part, which cannot be replaced. All are in Ham Hill stone. In addition to these there were inserted in the niche many fragments of carved work in a different stone, some of which may have been parts of the niche itself or, more possibly, of a reredos, but there is no certainty. On visiting the church to examine and report on these fragments I naturally set on foot a search for the cross-base, and was soon rewarded. Some 30 ft. south of the porch was a fragment of an octagonal shaft, II in. in diameter, and projecting some 9 in. above the ground, which rises sharply at this point from the level of the porch entrance.

In the Sutherlandshire Report of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (no. 44), under the parish of Clyne, a short description is given of a chambered cairn on the left bank of the Allt-nam-Ban, a small burn which briskly flows into the eastern side of Loch Brora. The description is dated 25 August 1909, and shows very clearly that when Mr. Alexander O. Curie, then secretary of the Commission, surveyed the cairn on that day, it was already in a much dilapidated condition. I visited the cairn on 27 April 1928, and was shocked to find that the whole of its southern half had been carted away for road-metal, exposing the interior construction with all the distinctness of an orange cut in two. As additional information is thus available with regard to the structure of the cairn, and also because the whole monument will probably disappear within a very short time, I made a careful survey of the cairn, and have pleasure in submitting the following description, along with a plan and photographs.

Springhead lies in the valley of the Ebbsfleet, a small stream which joins the Thames at Northfleet, near Gravesend. At Springhead the valley is crossed by the Watling Street in its course from Rochester to Dartford, and the valley between Springhead and Northfleet contained a considerable population in Romano-British times.

The ruins of Kindrochit Castle stand in the heart of the much-frequented village of Braemar, near the head of the river Dee, amid the wild mountains of western Aberdeenshire. The castle occupies a very strong position on the east brink of a rocky gorge formed by the Clunie Water, and on the other side was defended by an ancient mill-lade, taken off the Clunie above the castle, and rejoining it below, so as to complete the insulation of the site. In the name of the castle (Kindrochit = ‘bridge-head’) is enshrined its early importance as a fortified post guarding the passage of the great north road across the Clunie Water. The map (fig. 1) clearly indicates how the significance of the castle is to be found not in the east-and-west or blind-alley strategy of the Dee valley, but rather in the north and south or transversal strategy of the ancient trunk roads converging northwards across the ‘Mounth’ or mountain barrier between Strathmore and Mar.

M. de Morgan's remarkable discovery of early civilizations in the possession of painted pottery and copper at Susa in 1897 has remained for about twenty years an isolated addition to our knowledge. But the explorations of the last years have suddenly revealed its real import. In the two civilizations which he found succeeding each other at Susa there seem to be represented large cultural provinces. Their ultimate importance lies furthermore in the fact that they have both contributed elements towards the great culture of the Plain of the Two Rivers, and it seems at present possible, without allowing hypotheses to play an illegitimate part in the argument, to define with some precision the respective elements and their relation to the three great historical problems for which the title of this paper stands.