A number of techniques capable of generating descriptions of data have been developed in the area of Artificial Intelligence. Their suitability for use with a data set compiled to record the details of Anglo-Saxon structures in Britain is considered. An appropriate method which describes the data by means of decision trees is chosen and, after some adaptation, is used to generate descriptions of this data in the form of decision trees. The resulting descriptions compare favourably with interpretations obtained by archaeological analysis.

In 1985, a stone-built tomb of the second or third centuries AD was found in the Samtavro cemetery on the outskirts of Mtskheta, the ancient capital of the Caucasian kingdom of Iberia. Its rich contents included a Mesopotamian cylinder- and an Achaemenid pyramidal stamp-seal, three sardonyx vessels, several pieces of silver plate bearing Greek and Parthian inscriptions, Roman coins and bronze vessels, and distinctive jewellery inlaid with carnelian and turquoise. The Society of Antiquaries is pleased to offer the hospitality of its pages to its Georgian colleagues

The earth-works at Great Berkhampstead which form one of the finest examples of a Norman Castle have also an interest almost unique in that they provide an example of (what may well be) siege-works of the thirteenth century. That this was the case was first suggested by Sir William Hope some ten or fifteen years ago, but the matter does not appear to have been fully considered in the light of all the available evidence.

It has long been thought that Laurence Nowell, Dean of Lichfield and Laurence Nowell, antiquary and tutor in the household of Sir William Cecil, were one and the same person. However, evidence embodied in a Court of Requests Case of 1571 has recently given rise to doubts as to whether the dean and antiquary were, indeed, one. A re-examination of evidence already known and the discovery of some new documents sheds further light on the career of Laurence Nowell, antiquary, and tends to substantiate the claim that the dean and antiquary should be ‘separated’. The evidence remains inconclusive but the reputation of Laurence Nowell, antiquary, as a scholar and cartographer suffers in no way from the possibility that he may not have been Dean of Lichfield.

Surviving records afford only a very incomplete impression of the appearance of the fine Gothic cross erected by the Fraternity of the Holy Cross in the market place at Abingdon in the 1440s and destroyed by Parliamentarian troops in 1644. An early seventeenth-century painting of the Abingdon cross at Christ's Hospital in the town shows it after it had been substantially altered during restoration in 1605, but its original appearance can be partially reconstructed from what is known of the Coventry cross, set up between 1541 and 1545, which was closely modelled on the Abingdon example, the most elaborate of its type built in the fifteenth century.

In 1792 the Society published in Archaeologia an engraving of ‘An antient Mortar at Eridge Green’, with the claim that it was the first gun made in England. Subsequent writers on the history of artillery, while noting the gun's importance as one of the first examples of a wrought-iron cannon or bombard (to give it its correct name), believed that it had been destroyed. In fact, by the date of its publication, the bombard had been removed to Boxted Hall, Suffolk, where it remained unrecognized until its transfer to the Royal Armouries, H. M. Tower of London, in 1979. This article traces the history of the bombard, the method of its construction and concludes that it was probably made in England, in the Weald, during the fifteenth century.

In 1923 the British Museum purchased the series of barbaric ornaments and jewels in the collection of the late General Bertier Delagarde, a well-known Russian archaeologist. The acquisition was made in order to secure a more worthy representation of the culture from which the industrial art of the early Teutonic tribes, including that of the Anglo-Saxons, derived its most characteristic features. We are now able to see in proximity examples illustrating the first and last stages in a long process of development, and observe the marked identity of style in the work of peoples separated from each other in time by three or four centuries, in space by the whole length of Europe. The two plates demonstrate this identity by an instant appeal to the eye. All that is required in addition is a brief indication of the source from which this far-travelling style was derived.