It is only rarely that Romano-British brooches can be dated with the precision possible in the case of coins, or even of decorated Samian ware; their chronology is, more often than not, based on stylistic arguments, and even where stratigraphic evidence of date is available, the possibility of “survival” is a serious impediment to the formation of definite conclusions.

Our ancestors were making horseshoes of a characteristic type at the very beginning of the Roman occupation. It was a highly developed type, and its elaboration, whether here or upon the Continent, presumably occupied many preceding years. It is this first type which it is proposed to describe as the Iron Age horseshoe. Its various characteristic features were slowly modified during succeeding centuries, but they were not finally lost until about the twelfth or thirteenth century A.D. From a survey of the various specimens which seem to have been in use during this long period there emerge derivatives of the Iron Age shoe, some of which are sufficiently distinctive to deserve the status of subtypes. Towards the end of the period we begin to meet with shoes which are medieval in their general characters, but which show that the technique of the Iron Age was still not wholly forgotten. Such specimens are conveniently described as transitional, but it is sometimes difficult to be sure whether individual shoes are genuine derivatives of the Iron Age shoe or examples of an entirely new, and possibly Norman, pattern, modified by traditional methods of manufacture.

In Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were employed, for the adornment of the altar, certain objects which would appear, although perhaps originally designed for another purpose, to be closely related to the altar-cards now commonly (and even in the sixteenth century to some extent) a feature of the celebration of the Mass. Their employment would seem to have been fairly extensive, since a good many examples, of one kind or another, still survive. The Spanish name for them—sacra—is the same as that for the altar-cards, three in number, now ordinarily set upon the altar in Roman Catholic churches, in other countries as well as in Spain; and, correspondingly, the name I have heard applied to them in English is ‘altar-card’. They are of considerable interest, not alone because, as often, of their design or their workmanship, but also, seemingly, from their position as relics of a step in the liturgical history of the Roman Church in Spain.

Needham lies on the Norfolk side of the Waveney valley, not far west of Harleston. East of the village is the large gravel pit owned by Mr. H. Dean which has revealed the site (fig. 1) here to be described. This pit has already produced a Bronze Age food vessel, and is known as the site of a microlithic industry and of a first- and second-century Romano-British village. Commercial working has laid bare from time to time dark pits and ditches on the surface of the gravel, which have yielded the normal debris of the Romano-British peasant settlement. One of these ditches, however, lying to the south of the area of later occupation, has yielded remains of the Claudian period which throw considerable light upon the manner and date of the earliest attempt to romanize East Anglia.

At the present time, when the thoughts and sympathy of many are with our Norwegian friends and allies, it may be of interest to recall certain other occasions on which they have had to face invasion from the sea. Moreover, the fortifications erected in Norway during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are of particular interest for comparison with those of this country during the same period, since, doubtless owing to their geographical position, both countries seem to have been influenced only gradually and spasmodically by the developing military science of the middle European peoples, the Germans and Italians.

Most of the artillery fortifications existing in Norway, as described in Festninger og andre militœrbygninger, date from the late seventeenth century or later, but even very brief research at the time of the International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences at Oslo in 1936 showed that some portions of earlier work still exist at various places, largely incorporated in later defences. No extensive survey of these remains can be attempted here, since the material is not readily available, but the two illustrations of Oslo (Christiania) here reproduced form an excellent introduction to the study of such defences.