It is my pleasant duty to begin by returning to you my most sincere thanks for the honour you have once more done me. In electing me your President for the fifth time, and an officer of the Society for the twenty-sixth time, you have completed for me my record, for this is the last time that I shall ever ask for your votes in this room. If I am in my place next year I shall hope then to express to you how deeply I feel this final proof of your confidence; but the very fact that I am now entering on my last year of office turns my thoughts towards the end of my long service, and to the debt I owe to you all for your constant support and encouragement.

Early in March this year, shepherds reported to the Forest Department that they had found a cave, with paintings, on the ancient site of Salamis, Famagusta District. This information was passed to the Museum, for whom I inspected the place. All that was then visible was a large hole in the sand, about 15 ft. deep and 6 ft. wide, which led into a narrow shaft opening on to a round chamber; this was full, nearly to the top, with sand and rubbish. The paintings and upper inscriptions (pl. XI, 2) were all visible, and it was possible to crawl through to the second chamber, which was practically clear.

The eleventh season of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania started on 18th December 1932, and closed down on 9th March 1933; it was therefore a shorter season than usual, and its programme was also a modest one, the object being rather to finish certain tasks that had already been begun than to embark on new sites. About 150 men were employed.

The fort at Castlelaw is one of a group of four, strung out along a front of five miles on the south-eastern slopes of the Pentlands. Like the rest, it does not occupy the summit of the hill (which is just under 1,600 ft. in height) but is built some 990 ft. above sea-level on an elevated spur projecting from the main mass which rises steeply above the fort, just out of bowshot. The spur ends in a slight knoll the oval summit of which is 93 yds. long by 40 yds. wide. This area is enclosed within a very low Inner Bank, while a more conspicuous rampart, Middle Bank, supplemented on the north only by an Outer Bank, impeded progress up the slope. Two rock-cut fosses, superficially invisible, were revealed between the ramparts by excavations carried out during 1931 and 1932. A detailed report of these operations will be published elsewhere, but the results which concern Britain on both sides of the Border may be summarized here.

In the years 1899, 1900, and 1901 Mr. George Bonsor, a British subject residing in Spain, visited the Scilly Isles, the archipelago of tiny granite islands 28 miles south-west of Land's End, for archaeological research. Mr. Bonsor was long a profound student of the archaeology of his adopted country and was interested in the history of the ancient tin trade. It was in this connexion that he visited the Scillies, for he wished to test the hypothesis that they were the Cassiterides, the fabled tin islands of the Atlantic. With regard to the tin trade, his researches proved entirely negative, but in the course of his visits he excavated and planned some of the numerous megalithic tombs that abound in the islands. Mr. Bonsor, however, never published an account of his work in Scilly, but kept the notes and finds at his castle at Mairena del Alcor near Seville for many years. There he was visited in 1926 by Mr. T. D. Kendrick of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, and through him sent a part of the finds to the Museum. At the same time the writer had become interested in the archaeology of the islands, and with the help of Mr. Kendrick was able to obtain more of the finds for the British Museum as well as plans of the more important tombs and some notes with regard to their excavation. The most important plans and an abstract of the notes the writer has included in his Archaeology of Cornwall, but space prevented the use of all of Mr. Bonsor's material. Mr. Reginald Smith, Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, had for a long time urged Mr. Bonsor to communicate the results of his excavations to the Society of Antiquaries, but the latter died without having done so. Subsequently Mr. Smith obtained Mr. Bonsor's plans and the full account of the excavation of the most important tomb, and these he has kindly permitted the writer to publish.

There are two main types of these beads. The first type which is much the more usual has the pattern made with white lines on a background of the natural colour of the stone. The second type has the whole surface of the stone whitened and then a design in black made upon it, the whitened surface of the stone forming a white background. Specimens of this type are very uncommon.

In pursuance of its policy of making small exploratory excavations in as many as possible of the prehistoric sites near Brighton, the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Club examined the earthworks on Thundersbarrow Hill during the spring of 1932. This was very largely made possible by generous contributions from numerous individuals as well as from the Sussex Archaeological Society, in addition to which valuable assistance was rendered by Mr. G. P. Burstow, Mr. B. C. Hamilton, Mr. G. Holleyman, Mr. J. D. M. Stuart, and Miss T. Hawkins, in digging, surveying, and washing pottery. Thanks are also due to the land-owner, Mr. F. S. C. Bridger of Hove, and to the tenant, Captain Torr of Little Buckingham, Shoreham, for permission to carry out the work.

In 1912, when I undertook a survey of the distribution of the Anglo-Saxon saucer-brooches, I endeavoured to bring that survey into line with the historical records of the period, and thus was compelled to use the campaign of A.D. 571 as the pivot round which the results of my examination of the material must be made to revolve. Certain deductions in regard to distribution of types and decorative motives ensued, but the main result attained was the demonstration of a wider diffusion of the saucer-brooch and the ‘applied’ or ‘composite’ form than had been previously appreciated, and, further, the Saxon character of the material from a large group of cemeteries eastwards of the Thames-Ouse watershed.

The document which forms the subject of this article is published by the kind permission of Capt. G. Wolryche-Whitmore, of Dudmaston Hall, near Bridgnorth, Shropshire, among whose family papers I came across it some years ago. It presents several peculiarities, and raises some questions which are perhaps easier to ask than to answer.

Mr. F. H. Cheetham, F.S.A., first drew my attention to the Roman altar in use as a font in Lund church, and persuaded me to write this note, the justification for which lies in the fact that the interesting reliefs on the sides have never yet been reproduced, though that on the front has been published. The back is plain, and there is no trace of any inscription.

Earthworks are not numerous in Norfolk, owing no doubt to the fact that the county is a somewhat flat one, and Hadrian Allcroft in Earthwork of England is almost silent upon the subject of camps in this district. Probably one of the best known is the Roman camp at Brancaster (Branodunum) on the north coast between Hunstanton and Wells, which encloses an area of 8¼ acres. The square is clearly visible, although becoming yearly more reduced by the action of the plough.

The pottery described in the present paper is that found during the excavation of the site of a small Romano-British settlement on Thundersbarrow Hill in Sussex. The work was carried out by Dr. E. C. Curwen in the spring of 1932, and is described by him in the preceding paper.

The existence of the Coleshill helm had been a mystery for so long that its rediscovery by the Duke of Rutland, who exhibited it before the Society on 24 November 1932, was quite unexpected (pls. XXI, XXII).

Mr. Preston discovered the Colbury barrow, the first of those here to be described, in April 1931; shortly afterwards, with the permission of the New Forest Deputy Surveyor, he excavated it, and found it to contain cinerary urns assignable to what is usually called the Deverel-Rimbury class of Late Bronze Age sepulchral pottery. Those which could be selected as still practically complete were presented by the Forestry Commissioners to the British Museum. Mr. Preston had previously, in 1928 and 1929, excavated two other barrows, at Landford and Plaitford not many miles away, which had yielded urns of the same class, and in the present paper all three have been brought together. The material for the description of each barrow and its contents is naturally the excavator's: I have collaborated with him in its interpretation, and in doing so have ventured on one or two more general considerations.

Some rock-cut tombs in Mallorca and near Arles were described by the present writer in Archaeologia, lxxvi, 121–60. As subsequent discoveries have cleared up certain doubtful points, and support or modify suggestions then made, a further note seems to be desirable.

BY the courtesy of Mr. Arthur Deane, F.R.S.E., M.R.I.A., Curator of the Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, Belfast, I am permitted to direct attention to a vessel of outstanding interest among the magnificent collection of Irish prehistoric pottery under his charge. For help in studying it during visits to Belfast in September 1930 and 1931, I would express my gratitude also to his Staff and to Miss M. Gaffikin, whose photographs are here reproduced (pl. XL).

The pot (no. 332–1924) appears to be a degenerate example of a beaker of the Early Bronze Age. It came to the Museum with the collection of the late Mr. J. Theodore Richardson, then living at Cultra, co. Down, in July 1924: the manuscript list describes it as ‘No. 12, Cinerary Urn from near Bushmills’, but no positive evidence is extant to show that it was associated with a burial and no particulars of its discovery are forthcoming. This is the more regrettable on account of the rare occurrence of beakers in Ireland.

Plantation Farm, Shippea Hill, is situated in the south-east corner of the Fenland, some seven miles ENE. of Ely. The vast Fenland plain, formed essentially by the filling-up of a corrugated basin of Jurassic and boulder clays with post-glacial peats, silts, and clays, provides a field for the study of post-glacial changes of environment in relation to man without equal in Britain. As reported in a recent number of the Antiquaries Journal, a Research Committee has been formed at Cambridge under the presidency of Dr. Seward, F.R.S., to organize research in this work and to secure adequate co-operation of specialists in the different sciences. Notwithstanding great advances in the technical equipment of research, remarkably little has been added to our knowledge in this field since the publication of Skertchley's Geology of the Fenland in 1877. We have had, therefore, to begin at the beginning, and this report, which establishes the stratigraphical context of the Early Bronze Age in the deposits of the south-eastern fens, represents one of the first-fruits of our activities. Sir Charles Hiam very kindly allowed us to work on his land, and the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund generously made the excavations and borings possible. We may also take the opportunity here of thanking Mr. Charles Leaf for his part in the initial discovery of the site.

In his elegant prospectus to the four volumes of his Concilia, issued in 1733 in order to obtain subscriptions for the great enterprise, David Wilkins, once a penniless Prussian orientalist, now Archdeacon of Suffolk, has included a complete list of contents. He has affixed, he tells us, asterisks to each document in the list, indicating its source; one if it came from Spelman's Concilia, two if it hailed from Archbishop Wake's own collections, three if it was drawn from his own. This starring is adopted in the prefatory list of contents at the beginning of each volume of the Concilia. In a recent paper the present writer was able to identify the Archbishop's collections as vols. ccciv–cccxxxix in the Wake Archives at Christ Church, Oxford. He pointed out there that Wake's design had been to augment his volumes of transcripts and extracts originally made for his State of the Church and the Clergy of England (1703) with a view to a new and revised edition of Spelman's Concilia. Wilkins's own collections, for many years at Leeds Castle before they passed into the Phillipps Library, were sold with the Fairfax papers in 1898, and nothing has been heard of them since; but Spelman is with us, in two solid volumes of print, and we have among Wake's letters direct testimony to show that these two volumes (the second compiled by Dugdale) served as the basis for Wilkins, when, on the Archbishop's instructions, he set out to augment and correct that valuable text for the new edition of the Concilia.

From time to time during the past 150 years traces of Saxon burials have been discovered at Hawks Hill, Fetcham, Surrey, and in the year 1907 a Saxon cemetery was definitely located there. The hill stands at an elevation of 300 ft. above sea-level, and overlooks the valley of the Mole; and the conclusion arrived at in 1907 was that it was the burial-ground of a Saxon population, which probably had its settlement at the foot of the hill, in the valley of the Mole, during the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

Among various tools and other objects of iron included in two hoards of blacksmith's scrap recovered from the bottom of a pit and a well during the excavations at Silchester in 1894 and 1900 were some plough coulters (pl. LXXVIII, I ), the importance of which in connexion with agriculture in Britain during the Roman period has hitherto passed unnoticed. Six examples altogether were found, and although each varies somewhat in size they are generally of the same form and character. They may be described as heavy iron bars, roughly octagonal in shape and from 1 to 1Image-1 in. in section, with one end forged into a knife-like form resembling the blade of the ordinary Roman butcher's-knife or ‘culter’. The blades are from 7Image-2 to 9 in. long and 3 to 3Image-3 in. in breadth at their upper end, tapering to a point at the lower end. In length overall they vary from 26Image-4 to 28 in., with one exception, which has obviously been broken off short in use. They are all much worn, which no doubt accounts for their having been consigned to the scrap-heap. The circumstances of their finding leave no possible doubt that they belong to the Roman period, but no coins or other associated objects allow of any precise date being fixed.