The Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania started its fifth season at Ur on 28 October 1926, and closed down field work on 19 February 1927. Of the staff, three had been with me in the previous season : Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan again acted as general archaeological assistant, Mrs. Keeling was responsible for the drawings, and Mr. A. S. Whitburn was architect ; this year the inscribed material was dealt with by the Rev. E. Buroes, S.J.

In the course of last year I was concerned, together with Mr. R. J. Whitwell, in publishing in Archaeologia Aeliana a particularly detailed account of the construction of a galley at Newcastle-upon- Tyne in 1295. The building of this vessel was part of an extensive naval programme due to the war with France begun in the previous year. Although I was able to trace the accounts of many of the vessels built on this occasion, I failed to find those of the two galleys which the City of London was directed to furnish. Quite recently, I came upon the full particulars of the building of the second of these among the ‘Sheriffs' Administrative Accounts’ at the Public Record Office, which are a subdivision of the class of ‘Accounts, etc.’, formed from the ancient miscellanea of the King's Remembrancer of the Exchequer. With this detailed account I found a summary of expenses prepared from it, and a similar summary of the expenses of some repairs done at the same time and place to two barges. In the similar subdivision entitled ‘Works ’ was a like summary of the expenses of construction of the first galley. The accounts which I had previously found had been classified as ‘Army and Navy’, but the circumstances that in London the sheriffs were responsible for the expenses had led to these accounts being separated from those of the other vessels.

At the end of April of last year the Rev. Charles Overy drew my attention to the presence of broken animal bones, flints, and sherds of pottery in a gravel-pit on the south side of the road from Abingdon to Radley, about a mile out of Abingdon (fig. 1).

The pit lies on the very boundary of the parish of Abingdon in a field at about 200 ft. O.D., just over half a mile north of the Thames and some 30 ft. above the river. On its eastern and southern sides it is bounded by the wide trenches which in the days of the splendour of Abingdon Abbey formed part of the Abbey's fish-ponds ; on the north is the road, and on the east the ground drops to a little brook.

In the autumn of 1926 an urn-field (fig. 1) was discovered on the site of the war-time allotment gardens on the southern edge of Little Down Common, and about 500 yards NNE. of Pokesdown Station, lat. 50° 44·5′, long. 1° 49·13′. Its discovery was due to the finding of urns when a new road was driven through a long strip that had been sold for building plots. About nine cinerary urns, mostly of the globular type, were found within a small area by the roadmakers, and these have been preserved by Mr. Homewood, the borough surveyor. Several more were discovered on the adjoining plots when the overlying gravel was cleared away. Unfortunately many of these were destroyed, but two went to the Russell-Coates Art Gallery, one to the Bournemouth Natural Science Institute, and some fragments into private hands (figs. 2, 3, and 4).

The slabs on which are carved the bas-reliefs with which this paper is concerned are fastened by iron clamps or holdfasts to the south wall of the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, which is the easternmost of the lateral chapels of the choir of the Benedictine abbey church of Fécamp, on its southern side, immediately next to the chord of the apse and the chapels of its chevet. This chapel, and indeed all those on the south of the choir, date from the early years of the fourteenth century, when a daring scheme of rebuilding on a very lofty scale was begun during the abbacy of Thomas de St. Benoist (1297–1307).

The small flake implements belonging to a late palaeolithic industry, some of which are shown in the illustrations of this paper, were collected during about three years' work in some gravel pits which have been opened in a river terrace in the Colne Valley, Essex. That this site represents a settlement, and that the flints are not merely an aggregation of odd implements brought down by flood, there appears to be sufficient proof, first because of the distinctive nature of the industry itself, and secondly by the finding of hearths and depressions, which appear to be either the floors of pit dwellings or for use as wind-screens. The numerous cores and flakes also found suggest that the working places of implement makers have come to light.