An important petrographical study of Anglo-Saxon and medieval honestones has been made recently by Mr. S. E. Ellis (British Museum, Natural History), and the object of this paper is to identify the hones of the pagan period mentioned therein, and to provide illustrations of them as well as comments on their archaeological contexts. Most of the stones used as hones were picked up locally, but there is a possibility of the export of Kentish Rag from Kent and greywackés from southern Scotland. Ritual is evident in connection with a few of the hones.

The Holcombe mirror was found buried in a pit in a late Iron Age settlement, and beneath a Romano-British villa occupied from the late first until nearly the end of the fourth century A.D. A study of the design and motifs indicates that it was produced by a western school of metal-smiths active in the first half of the first century A.D.

The present report covers the fourth and fifth seasons of excavation on the Ilôt de l'Amirauté at Carthage. Evidence from a borehole suggests that the pre-fourth-century B.C. sand previously taken for ‘natural’ may be a 5-m. thick fill above a level containing pottery. The later Punic sequence seems to indicate that the island and circular harbour were not made until the construction of the stone shipsheds in the late third or early second century B.C. The earth and timber ramps of these shipsheds were discovered with barnacles and probable ships’ nails lying on their surface. Much new evidence for the superstructure of the shipsheds was also found and an attempt has been made to reconstruct their appearance. Evidence for the Roman monumental rebuilding of the island in c. A.D. 200 has also been increased to the point where reconstructions can be attempted, and a large body of new information has been obtained for the structural sequence on the island from c. A.D. 200 to 700. Uncertainties remain over the interpretation of its function throughout the Roman period, although the rebuilding c. A.D. 200 might be associated with the creation of the African corn-fleet, the Classis Commodiana, in A.D. 186; and the site was possibly known as forum Karthag(inis) in the late fourth century and ‘the maritime agora’ in the time of Justinian.

Apart from further small-scale work, the present excavations are concluded; some further study of the early environmental sequence in the harbour area will be carried out in the next two years. A fifth and final interim report is planned to cover the excavations since 1976 at the north side of the Circular Harbour.

In 1910 Mr. G. Wyman Abbott read to this Society a paper in which he gave some account of his discoveries of early British remains at Fengate, Peterborough (see Archaeologia, lxii, 352 ff.). Since that date he has been assiduous in collecting from the same locality such further material as has been brought to light in the process of gravel-digging. This new material already serves to indicate that the site was occupied continuously from Late Neolithic down to Late Celtic times, and, if only for that reason, is of the highest importance, since it is but seldom that a site with signs of habitation covering so long a period comes to light in this country.

The results of the 1968–9 seasons of excavations at Bottom Pond Farm, Owslebury (SU 525 246) are described, especially the layout of the pre-Roman settlement. Problems of the siting of the settlement, the land usage and the function of storage pits are discussed, and two inscribed bronze rings and an embossed bronze plaque are described in detail.

Encouraged by the attention you paid to the subject when I had the honor of conversing with you on it, I take the liberty of presenting you with two comparative specimens of the languages spoken in Sumatra and other parts of the east. The one exhibits simply a list of fifty words; of universal use from the nature of the ideas they express; as spoken in twelve different countries or districts. The other exhibits a view of those words in the Sumatran and neighbouring languages; which are observed to correspond in sound and signification, with words in the languages of places situated at a distance from thence.

Shortly after the presentation of the Second Report to the Society, in March 1926, the gravel-workings from which the material for both this and the First Report had been obtained were abandoned, the site of House XX marking the southerly limit of the land leased for exploitation. On a tour, however, of the district south of the Thames between Drayton and Long Wittenham in 1930, I found that a wide drift had been cut leading southwards from the Drayton-Sutton Courtenay road immediately east of Council cottages newly erected, and that new workings had been for some time in progress under the management of the Berkshire County Council, along the eastern boundary of the older pit.

At the eastward extremity of Castle Hill, Scarborough, below medieval and Anglo-Saxon chapels and the foundations of a Roman signal-station, have been found several filled-up pits containing pottery fragments of a date long anterior to the work of about a.d. 370, as the Roman walls had been carried over some of them with no precautions against settlement, and the contents showed no admixture of Roman date. In fact there must have been an interval of several centuries, as the potsherds can hardly be later than La Tène I, and belong more probably to the first part of the Early Iron Age, generally named after Hallstatt, the typical site in Upper Austria. About half an acre has been excavated by Mr. F. G. Simpson, now Director of Romano-British Field-studies at Durham University, on behalf of the Scarborough Corporation, with the active co-operation of H. M. Office of Works; and a preliminary report on the Roman building has been written by our Fellow Mr. R. G. Collingwood for the Corporation (see also Archaeological Journal, lxxix, 390).

The compilation of the Ravenna Cosmography, as we have it, belongs to the late seventh century. It was done by a cleric of Ravenna, for one Odo, whom he describes as ‘dearset brother’ and ‘friend’, and the object of the work is to furnish a list of the countries, towns, and rivers of the known world, compiled from Greek, Roman, and Gothic authors. The author, who nowhere states his name, observes that a list was chosen as the form for the work, for brevity's sake (i, 18), in preference to a map or an itinerary; and its composition was governed by the Judaic version of the division of the world, as prescribed in the tenth chapter of Genesis, in order to harmonize with contemporary Christian belief. The authorities cited are divided (i, 5) into sancti patres and huius mundi philosophi, in an attitude of humane tolerance expressed by the phrase, adiuvante Christo cum munimine philosophorum.

An unusual group of gold jewellery was discovered by a metal detectorist near Winchester in southern England in 2000. The hoard included two possibly unique massive necklaces made in a clearly classical style, but different from typical classical necklaces and from the torcs and collars of Iron Age Europe. The hoard also contained extremely rare gold versions of types of brooches commonly made in bronze and iron in north-west Europe during the first century BC, the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age. This paper describes these unique objects and the results of an archaeological investigation of their find spot. Detailed scientific analysis of the objects’ technology has proven crucial for interpreting their origins and broader significance. Finally, the broader consequences of the find for interpreting the significant changes that took place in southern Britain in the century before the Roman conquest are discussed.

The development of open-cast ironstone mining has made necessary emergency excavations on an apparently undefended Iron Age and Romano-British settlement of at least 20 acres, situated immediately near the Jurassic Way six miles south of the Humber estuary. In the Iron Age, the site was characterized by complex ditch systems and small irregular gullies, and only two huts, both circular, have been located in an excavated area of 1.7 acres. The main occupation probably began around 100 B.C. with an Iron B pottery assemblage. The sequence continued, apparently without abrupt break, into an Iron C assemblage very closely related to the ‘Aylesford—Swarling Culture’ of the Thames estuary region. More marked modification early in the first century A.D., most clearly defined by the introduction of Gallo-Belgic pottery, resulted in cultural similarities with Camulodunum. The occupation continued throughout the Roman period. The site was then characterized by an irregular system of metalled roads flanked by ditches, and plots of land defined by ditches and fences. Within these plots stood individual rectangular buildings of timber and stone, together with ovens, wells, pottery kilns, and other structures of an industrial or agricultural nature.

In 2009, a metal-detector find of a rare garnet-inlaid composite disc brooch at West Hanney, Oxfordshire, led to the excavation of an apparently isolated female burial sited in a prominent position overlooking the Ock valley. The burial dates to the middle decades of the seventh century, a period of rapid socio-political development in the region, which formed the early heartland of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. The de luxe brooch links the wearer to two other burials furnished with very similar brooches at Milton, some 10km to the east and only c 1km from the Anglo-Saxon great hall complex at Sutton Courtenay / Drayton, just south of Abingdon. All three women must have been members of the region’s politically dominant group, known as the Gewisse. The burial’s grave goods and setting add a new dimension to our understanding of the richly furnished female burials that are such a prominent feature of the funerary record of seventh-century England.

The Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania started its ninth season at Ur on 1st November 1930, and continued in the field until 20th March 1931. The season was a long one and a larger number of workmen than usual was employed, the average for the first three and a half months being 280 and for the remainder of the time 200; the amount of actual excavation done was in consequence greater than in any previous year.

The Staffordshire Hoard was found by a metal detectorist on arable land in the parish of Ogley Hay in south Staffordshire in July 2009, and was recovered by archaeologists from Staffordshire County Council and Birmingham Archaeology. More than 3,940 pieces were retrieved, mostly of gold or silver alloy and mostly representing what appear to be martial battle goods. The date of the material has yet to be ascertained but the artefacts appear to range from the late sixth to the early eighth centuries AD. The reasons for burial remain, as yet, largely unknown. The choice of location, on the north-western spur of a prominent ridge, could have been intended to facilitate its rediscovery, unless the locale held a symbolic significance within the wider landscape. The second stage of fieldwork, in March 2010, identified a number of undated field boundaries and undated palisade trenches perhaps associated with a small farmstead of pre- or post-Roman date, unlikely to be associated with the hoard.

This paper is an expanded version of two lectures presented at meetings of the Society held on 12 October 2006 and 11 January 2007. It considers the changing contexts within which industrial archaeology in Britain has evolved and continues to develop, some of the issues affecting its wider realization and the challenges of conserving such physical evidence as will allow future generations to gain an understanding of the great age of industry as it affected British society, the economy and landscape.

In August 1951 skeletons were found during the building operations of the Buckland Estate, Dover, Kent, and were brought to the notice of the late W. P. D. Stebbing, who visited the site and supervised the excavation of one grave. The contents of this grave were sent to the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, and the writer supervised the remainder of the excavation under the auspices of the Inspectorate.

For some time past Mr. J. E. Sainty, of Norwich, has subjected the cliffs and the foreshore of the north-east coast of Norfolk to examination, with a view to finding there examples of flint implements. His researches, conducted with much care, have resulted in the finding of many interesting specimens, and, at his request, I now place on record a discovery of considerable importance.

The results of the first systematic excavation of a cane sugar factory attached to the Lusignan Manor of Covocle (Kouklia), combined with a comparative study of similar installations in the western part of the island, demonstrate the importance of the cane sugar industry in the economy of late medieval Cyprus. Of interest in a wider historical context is the new evidence recovered for contemporary technology and mechanical devices. At the same time, a first comprehensive analysis of the characteristic industrial pottery from the site contributes to a better understanding of the process and the organization of cane sugar production.