The excavation described in this paper was occasioned by the impending destruction of the Quernhow barrow in the course of construction of a new carriage-way on the Great North Road. Proposals for the preservation of the monument had been advanced prior to the last war, but these proving inexpedient, the complete investigation of the structure was requested by the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate of the Ministry of Works, at the instance of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, and the writer invited to supervise the excavation. A generous grant towards the cost of labour having been made by the Ministry and the Society undertaking to meet all other expenses involved, work commenced on 2nd May 1949, and continued for six weeks, four men being employed throughout this period. At no time was the weather ideal, alternating between an exceptionally long dry spell, which made the study of the barrow structure an extremely difficult task, and a period of continuous rain which unfortunately coincided with the investigation of the primary burial complex.

In examining some material in the reserves of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, I noticed a small necklace which includes beads of blue faience (pl. vii a). The entry in the museum's Accessions Book stated that it had been presented in 1917 by Mr. A. Amos, ‘from a barrow on Beacon Hill, North Molton’, and that it had been ‘found with cremated bones, an urn and flint implements’. After many difficulties I succeeded, with the help of Mr. R. Tucker, agent to Lord Poltimore for his North Molton estate, in obtaining details of the discovery. I am much indebted to him for his services, and to Mrs. Lamb and Miss Amos of Dawlish, and to Mr. Passmore of North Molton for the information they so readily provided about an event of so many years ago.

Since the publication of Mr. William Bulmer's paper in 1938 (Antiq. Journ. xviii, 146 f.) several dragonesque fibulae have been found and others—mentioned, but not illustrated, in earlier publications—have been re-located. In figs. 2 to 8 below, the numbers given by Mr. Bulmer to the forty-six fibulae described in his paper are retained; of these, eight were not then illustrated (C5, 18 to 24). The nineteen fibulae additional to the original forty-six are now numbered from 25 to 43. Illustrations are also given, in fig. 9, of certain S-shaped fibulae, three of which were also described by Mr. Bulmer (8, 9, 12).

In the complete list below, the fibulae are grouped under the names of the counties or countries in which they were found, and their present location, where known, is shown in the first column: the number of the fibula follows, with references to publications where these are known to exist.

In examining an old Home Guard trench on a spur overlooking Felmersham Bridge to the north, Mr. Peter Crossley-Holland found much pottery, and with the consent of Mr. J. D. Hensman the site was further examined, with minor excavation of some features showing in the trench sides, by Mr. Crossley-Holland, my wife, and myself.

In June and July 1950 a trial excavation of four weeks' duration was carried out at the site of Old Paphos (Palaepaphos) in Cyprus, a city renowned for its Temple of Aphrodite, erected, it was said, to commemorate her legendary birth off-shore from the foam of the sea, and her landing there. The site is occupied today by the small village of Kouklia, and lies on a bluff of soft limestone dropping steeply to a coastal plain which here narrows to the width of something like a mile. It is situated in the south-west of Cyprus, nine miles to the south-east of Ktima (map reference 3217 on sheet 2 of the 1/50,000 Map of Cyprus).