Although fishing, together with most of its principal appliances, was found to be of almost universal occurrence by European explorers as they penetrated the remoter parts of the world, it seems to have appeared as a specialized activity comparatively late in the history of the hominids. Whereas even the anthropians had added the resources of hunting to the vegetarian diet of their simian forebears, it was left to Homo sapiens in his evolved form to explore the possibilities of fishing. Thus the fisherman is entitled to regard his pastime as deriving from an economic activity peculiar to Neoanthropic Man. It is true that a few fish-bones were found with Neanderthal remains at Devil's Tower, Gibraltar, which yielded ‘very few fish remains, mostly indeterminable’; but these may not have been introduced by man and, if they were, need not indicate more than the gathering of an occasional fish from the sea-shore, from which in the form of limpets and mussels the inmates of the rock-shelter derived a large proportion of their sustenance.

This paper examines, from two points of view, a collection of some ninety buildings with base-cruck trusses, and a further group of related buildings, particularly those whose roof trusses incorporate short principals. Examination of the social status of the buildings shows that they belonged to a remarkably homogeneous section of feudal society, and their distribution can be explained largely in terms of the social connections of a class, with some further influence of local schools of carpentry. The typological development of base-crucks and short principals is traced from their twelfth- or thirteenth-century origins to a fifteenth-century devolution into various local sub-types.

The general recognition of man's existence in this country during the deposition of the terrace-gravels of our southern rivers may be said to date from a paper read to this Society by Sir John Evans in 1859; and it was in the same year that McEnery's papers relating to his labours in Kent's Cavern were published, demonstrating the former presence of palaeolithic cave-man on this side of the Channel. The transition from river-drift to cave-deposits, on the other hand, has only recently been illustrated by a close study of the brick-earth deposit on High Lodge Hill near Mildenhall, Suffolk; and the present paper is intended to amplify the evidence for a Moustier period in England, and to bring our deposits of that horizon into still closer relation with the French. If a relative date is incidentally provided for a deposit that has long been somewhat of a mystery to geologists, and if in their turn geologists are moved to do something more for archaeology, the advantage will be considerable. The success that has recently attended what may be called ‘intensive geology’ in connexion with pleistocene man will no doubt find an echo in this country, and our wealth of material has certainly been used with greater advantage in the last few years. The boulder-clays, which are denied to France, should enable workers in this field to straighten out the connexion of man with the glacial period.

Researches conducted during the past twenty years have definitely succeeded in establishing the sequence, both archaeological and geological, of the Boyn Hill or ‘100-foot’ terrace of the Lower Thames. The culture-stages there represented are set out hereunder in ascending order, beginning with the oldest:

(1) Clactonian 1; these specimens, many of which are striated, have been derived from some earlier deposit not yet located :

(2) Clactonian 2 and 3 :

(3) Acheulian :

(4) Early Mousterian (Levalloisian A of mid-Pleistocene times).

The progress of archaeology in Anatolia during the last few years has enabled us to distinguish certain cultural areas of which the chief are (i) the western and south-western, and (ii) the central and eastern (fig. l). Troy belongs to the first group, though its position, its importance, and its foreign elements prevent us from considering it a type-site; Alişar and Bogazköy represent the second group. The differences between east and west, manifested in architecture, ceramics and the smaller utensils, though most conspicuous in the second millennium, exist to a certain extent in the third. Less characteristically Anatolian is the country south-east of the Taurus, whither alien influences from Syria and the east could penetrate easily; while the developments in the extreme north-east are still too obscure to make discussion profitable.

A review of the post-glacial geology and geomorphology of the Severn Estuary provides a context for the description and evaluation of eight sites on the margins of the Severn upstream of the Rivers Avon and Wye where Romano-British occupation debris has been recovered. This evidence provides further confirmation of the extent of the reclamation and settlement of the wetlands of the Severn during the Roman period. In addition, all sites produced clear evidence of ironmaking, employing Forest of Dean ore, and one site produced indications of glassworking. In conjunction with a comparative study of the pottery assemblages from riverside and inland sites, the role of the river as a trade route is reviewed.

The joint investigation of the deposits belonging to the 100-ft. terrace of the river Thames was continued last year under the same auspices as in 1912 at certain spots in the neighbourhood of Greenhithe and Crayford, respectively east andwest of Dartford, Kent. Special facilities were again afforded by the Trustees ofthe British Museum and the Director of the Geological Survey; but the fund drawn on for this work is under the control of Sir Hercules Read, who in his dual capacity as President of the Society and Keeper of the British and Medieval Departmentof the British Museum is anxious to sustain the effort that is being made to bring archaeology into touch with geology, and is at the same time gratified to enlist the sympathies of unofficial workers by having the report presented to the Society.

Niello is a black material composed of one or more metal sulphides. It contrasts particularly effectively with the metal when inlaid or fused into a recessed design in gold or silver, but is also found on bronze and brass. X-ray diffraction analysis of niello from 180 objects spanning the period between the first century A.D. and the present, from Europe and the Middle and Far East, has established that, as a general rule, Roman niello is composed of the sulphide of one metal only, either silver or copper and, furthermore, the niello is usually made of the same metal as that of the object into which it was inlaid. Sulphides made with silver and copper together were introduced at the end of the fifth century, though silver sulphides were still being made, particularly in the areas dominated by Rome. The manufacture of niello of more than one metal represents a technological advance as, unlike the single sulphides, they can be fused into an engraved design without damaging the metalwork. Lead was added to the ingredients as early as the eleventh century A.D. in eastern Europe. This composition will flow well when melted and therefore can be used to fill more complex designs. Leaded niello superseded the other types almost completely and is still made today. Gold silver sulphide, a hitherto unrecognized type of niello, was found on a number of gold items of various dates.

The author, having on 10th November 1938 laid before the Society a paper on the Palaeolithic contents of the higher part of the Boyn Hill Terrace between 160 and 200 ft. O.D., as represented at East Burnham, Bucks, now desires to discuss the archaeology of the lower division. As researches have also been conducted on the Berkshire side of the Thames, the present record includes a summary of discoveries made on both banks.

The discovery of the site of ‘Karamallos’, near Apliki, was due to the late Mr. Carl Allen, one of the mining engineers of the Cyprus Mines Corporation. In 1938 the Corporation was engaged in opencast exploration of the South Hill of Apliki. In cutting into the hill they uncovered many fragments of large jars belonging to the Late Bronze Age. One or two whole vessels, together with some stone tools, were brought to the Cyprus Museum for identification.

The accompanying illustrations (Plates LXIX. and LXX.) were recently taken from a war balloon by Lieut. P. H. Sharpe, R.E., and represent Stonehenge from a point of view from which that famous monument has probably never before been photographed.

The study of the Viking Age in this country has in the past remained largely the province of the historian, using the material afforded by the written sources and by the scientific investigation of place-names, and what systematic work has been done on the antiquities of the period, outside the fields of architecture and sculpture, illumination, and fine metalwork, is in considerable measure due to the labours of Scandinavian scholars. The contribution of archaeology to the problems of the period has until recently been quite inadequate and this state of affairs is all the more surprising in view of the important and controversial question of the origin of the English towns, the historical evidence for which, being both sketchy and ambiguous, has now been argued almost to the point of exhaustion. The publication in 1927 of the material remains of the Viking period from London in a manner appreciative of their equal value with the documentary and place-name evidence for the history of the site was exceptional, and in recent years the investigation by deliberate excavation of towns and settlement sites of the Viking Age, at Norwich, Oxford, Southampton, and Thetford, and far away in Shetland at Jarlshof, has gone some way towards compensating for earlier neglect. The systematic investigation of such sites, however, is only now beginning and so far no comparable work has been undertaken in the lands north of Humber, where from the time of Halfdan's settlement in 876 a thriving Viking province maintained with varying fortune its individuality until the Conquest and beyond. At York, the political centre of the Danelaw, the historical and place-name evidence indicates a thoroughly Scandinavian occupation, but the abundant archaeological material of the period, considering the importance of the site, has never received the attention in detail that it deserves. This material constitutes one of the largest groups of town finds of the Viking Age in the country and although for the most part recovered by chance in modern building operations and ill recorded in consequence has far too long been ignored.

It is not necessary, by way of introduction to the story of Whitby Abbey, to repeat the history of the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity in the seventh century, but the immediate causes of the foundation of the monastery may be shortly set down.

Maumbury lies a third of a mile (500 m.) SSW. of the county town of Dorset alongside the Roman and modern road from the town to the harbour at Weymouth (SY 691899). The site is now a public park wedged between two railway lines. It lies just below the crest of a low chalk ridge at a height of 260 ft. (78 m.) and overlooks the lower ground to the north east towards the River Frome and areas of the present town (fig. 1).

Excavations in 1969 within a 35-acre enclosure at Marden on the north bank of the River Avon in the Vale of Pewsey confirmed its association with the Grooved Ware ceramic style and its superficial resemblances to the Durrington Walls enclosure ten miles downstream. A survey of the enclosure produced an unusual plan bounded by a bank with an internal ditch and on the south side by the River Avon itself, whilst the position of the Hatfield Barrow was established by geophysical means. Within the north-entrance causeway a small circular timber structure was recorded in a comparable position to the much larger building at Durrington Walls.

Anglo-Saxon monastic archaeology has been constrained by the limited scale of past investigations and their overriding emphasis on core buildings. This paper draws upon the results of an ongoing campaign of archaeological research that is redressing the balance through an ambitious programme of open-area excavation at Lyminge, Kent, the site of a royal double monastery founded in the seventh century ad. The results of five completed fieldwork seasons are assessed and contextualised in a narrative sequence emphasising the dynamic character of Lyminge as an Anglo-Saxon monastic settlement. In so doing, the study brings into sharp focus how early medieval monasteries were emplaced in the landscape, with specific reference to Anglo-Saxon Kent, a regional context offering key insights into how the process of monastic foundation redefined antecedent central places of long-standing politico-religious significance and social action.

A geological and geomorphological survey, combined with sedimentological results, has provided a detailed, trans-zonal famework in which to examine the significance of an eclectic variety of artefactual and documentary evidence relating to prolonged human activity on the tidal stream known as Magor Pill.

The shoreline, underlain by estuarine silts and peats of the Flandrian Wentlooge Formation, has retreated by a minimum of some 800m since Iron Age-Roman times, leaving exposed on the modern foreshore the earlier but silted-up courses of Magor Pill. As the coast retreated, fishing stakes, one a double row from the tenth century, were set up on the widening lower foreshore. The palaeochannel deposits yielded small amounts of stratified Iron Age, Romano-British, medieval and early modern occupation debris, together with woven baskets and hurdles related to the early modern and probably also medieval fishing activities in the area. One of the palaeochannels contained the wreck of a medieval, clinker-built boat carrying high-grade iron ores. By far the largest amounts of occupation debris, however, were transposed and mixed into semi-mobile foreshore gravels. This material demonstrates that there was a thriving Romano-British settlement at Magor Pill, apparently in sea connection with the southern shores of the Bristol Channel. From the eleventh to the early fourteenth century, there existed a port to which much pottery from various English sources was imported. In early modern times at Magor Pill, a vigorous outward trade in store cattle to west and south-west England was balanced by pottery imports chiefly from Devon and Somerset. Coastal erosion not only destroyed the primary evidence for these activities, and the wetland landscapes in which they occurred, but also forced, probably in late medieval times, the repositioning inland of the (?) Romano-British sea defences of the area. As part of the general process of reorganizing the defences and drainage of the wetland, the seabanks along Magor Pill and its tributaries were shortened in a number of stages and the outfalls moved further seaward.

The present article gives the account of the excavation of the Temple of Nabû in Kouyunjik, the larger mound of Nineveh, under British Museum auspices. A brief description has already been given in our A Century of Exploration at Nineveh (Luzac, 1929, referred to herein as CEN), and so we shall avoid repetition so far as is consistent with due description. Besides the excavation of this temple, our digging revealed the first chambers of a palace of Ashurnasirpal at 23 to 26 depth, and in digging out part of a house built by Sennacherib for his son Ashursumusabsi (?) (here abbreviated to SH) we found a practically perfect prism of Esarhaddon, and about fourscore more pieces of prisms of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal (see CEN 83), as well as numerous pots and lamps.

The following paper is the first published account of an excavation that took place at Stonehenge during April 2008. As this was the first excavation to take place within the stone circle for some forty years, the excavation has attracted an uncommon degree of interest, hence its publication in the Antiquaries Journal as an interim account of work in progress, in the form of an edited transcript of a paper first given at the Ordinary Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 9 October 2008. The paper explains that the 2008 excavation set out to date the construction of the Double Bluestone Circle at Stonehenge and to chart the subsequent history of the bluestones and their use at the monument. Evidence is presented for a provisional working date of around 2300 bc for the construction of the Double Bluestone Circle, while it is argued that the history of the site is far more complex than has been allowed for in existing interpretations, with a multiplicity of overlapping and intercutting (though not continuous) events, including substantial late Roman, medieval and early modern activity. The excavated material, and the evidence from the surviving stones, supports the suggestion that bluestones were brought to the site because of their perceived special qualities, perhaps for their supposed healing properties, and that some knowledge of those qualities remained current in later times with the result that in excess of two-thirds of the original bluestone volume has now disappeared.

Most commentators have acknowledged a significant role for coal in Roman Britain (e.g. Collingwood 1937, 37; Collingwood and Myres 1937, 231-2; Richmond 1955, 125-6 and particularly Frere 1987, 288). Forty years ago Graham Webster reviewed the archaeological evidence for its use, and his account (Webster 1955) superseded earlier national and regional accounts (e.g. Cunnington 1932, 173; cf. Webster 1955, 199 n. 2). Since 1955, however, a considerable expansion in both excavation and publication, coupled with developments in recovery, recording and identification procedures, has resulted in a commensurate increase in the quantity and quality of the available evidence, which makes a detailed re-assessment of coal's significance overdue.