Hoards of coins that include jewellery are uncommon in the middle ages. In England up to 1966 there were only three such hoards known. These are the twelfth-century hoard from Lark Hill, Worcester, which contained six rings; the hoard from Coventry of c. 1290–8 containing two silver ring brooches; and the Thame hoard deposited after 1457 and containing five rings. In 1966 the discovery of a hoard of gold coins and jewellery at Fishpool, Nottinghamshire, added a fourth hoard to this sequence.

More than anywhere else in Europe the Neolithic Period has been studied in Scandinavia, where finds are exceptionally rich, and circumstances have made a sequence possible. Isolated attempts have been made to formulate an evolution series in France (Déchelette, Manuel, i, 514-16; L'Homme préhistorique, 1907, p. 71) and Germany (Prähistorische Zeitschrift, vi (1914), p. 29), but the material is not so abundant, and association of types in hoards or burials not frequent enough to complete the undertaking. Our Fellow Mr. E. C. R. Armstrong has described some associated finds of Irish neolithic celts in Proc. Royal Irish Academy, xxxiv, c, no. 6, but attention in England has been rather distracted by the abundance of Drift implements, and there has been a tendency to class all surface finds as neolithic, internal evidence alone being deemed insufficient to justify a chronological arrangement. Groups of contemporary specimens buried as hoards or deposited with the dead in any kind of grave have been provokingly rare; and an offer made by Mr. Algernon A. Hankey to exhibit a hoard of celts to the Society and subsequently to present them to the British Museum was therefore accepted with enthusiasm. Opportunity was taken to borrow from Mr. Russell J. Colman, who readily acceded to the request, another hoard of five celts found near Norwich; and since the paper was read, the Earl of Leicester kindly lent the President a group of four, also from Norfolk, for examination and inclusion in the present series, to which the Curator of Norwich Castle Museum has also contributed, through Miss G. V. Barnard, outlines of two other hoards from the same county. There are probably other datable groups in public or private collections, but it would be futile to delay publication of those above mentioned till a thorough search of all the literature and museums in the kingdom had been undertaken. These will at least form the basis of a chronological scheme for neolithic celts, the value of which can be estimated by the ease or difficulty of incorporating other groups that may come to light.

Having been present at the meeting of the Society when Mr. Marsden's letter on the Gypsey language, was read, I recollected that, several years ago, I had heard my friend Mr. Bryant mention his having collected a considerable number of words used by this wandering tribe; several of which words appeared to bear a close affinity to those of the same meaning in the languages of ancient and of distant nations.

Two late fifteenth-century rood-screen panels in Sparham church, near Norwich, display images of corpses that are apparently unique in surviving medieval art. One is painted with two standing corpses dressed in finery, the other with a corpse arising from a tomb within a church, with a font to one side. Both panels are notable for their surviving inscriptions, and others now lost. Together, these works constitute one of the most significant English contributions to the genre of death imagery, yet their uniqueness and artistic importance has not been recognized to date. Using a range of medieval and antiquarian sources, this article aims to provide a comprehensive account of the Sparham panels’ physical and historical context, iconography and meaning. The strong possibility that they functioned as a ‘surrogate sepulchral monument’ is discussed at the end of the paper.

Researchers have often assumed that the Iron Age hillforts of the Welsh borders were densely occupied centres of population. One of these is the Breiddin, occupied in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, which was excavated in 1969–76. At its centre was a natural water reservoir, Buckbean Pond, which provided a radiocarbon dated sequence of deposition contemporary with the later prehistoric occupation of the hillfort. The beetle assemblage from these deposits was never properly studied or published due to Maureen Girling's death and, as a result, its implications for understanding the human impact on the pond's immediate environment were not fully appreciated. Despite the remains of four-post structures close to the pond and of roundhouses and associated deposits in the vicinity, both flora and insect faunas indicate a quiet natural pond with little disturbance other than casual grazing by animals. This ‘evidence of absence’ does not square with the archaeological evidence which is here interpreted as deriving from human activity which was neither permanent nor intensive.

The occurrence of orientation in prehistoric structures has long been noticed. It has not, however, received from investigators much more than a passing comment, such as ‘the barrow is directed to the eastward’, or ‘the entrance to the chamber faces the north-west’. If a definite bearing is given, it is rarely stated whether it is ‘Magnetic’ (such as is obtained from a prismatic compass), or a True Bearing, i. e. an azimuth.

In The Society's Journal of 1944, G. C. Dunning F.S.A. published a brief article, with a map, entitled ‘The distribution of black Tournai Fonts’. There has been no other view published since that occasion (at least not in Britain) and indeed J. R. Blatchly and Birkin Haward (1983), writing some forty years later on the font in St Peter's church, Ipswich, reproduced Dunning's map. The body of knowledge of Tournai fonts has advanced considerably since the war and this article offers a more up to date picture. As discoveries of fragments of fonts continue to be made, it does not claim to be exhaustive, though it is most unlikely that there are any more complete bowls to be found (see map fig. 1). In fact further research may show that the list published here may need to be reduced by three or four examples, which are discussed below.

John Carter's newly catalogued papers and correspondence in the archives of King's College London throw considerable new light on his relationship with members of the Society of Antiquaries and his patrons, and include previously unpublished sketches of several of them. His memoirs show that a small group of wealthy antiquaries recognized his skills as an accurate and conscientious draughtsman and encouraged him faithfully to record historic – and especially medieval – buildings and monuments. Many of these buildings were later altered or destroyed, and his numerous surviving drawings are thus of immense value to scholars. The opportunity has also been taken to publish a postscript with additional comments and corrections to the Society's monograph, John Carter and the Mind of the Gothic Revival (1995).

The first three seasons of excavation at Nicopolis ad Istrum have established that the castellum, a strongly defended enclosure of 5.7 ha., represents the site of the late Roman city of the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. In addition to a well-preserved early Roman gate and road, excavations have uncovered a fourth-century building, a sixth-century Christian basilica, workshops and a late Roman gate. Finds include reused architectural material from the Roman city, early and late Roman pottery, glass, seeds and bone, three inscriptions and a wide range of small finds in bone, iron, bronze and gold.

In his account of the leaf-shaped bronze swords of the Hallstatt period, the late M. Déchelette wrote: ‘Doubtless one might ask whether this weapon might not have been brought to the British Isles by the first Celtic invaders, but that is purely conjectural (une conjecture fragile), for it is difficult among the British finds the same period to detect any really characteristic analogies’ (vol. ii, pt. 2, p. 724). The same paragraph points out that bronze swords of identically the same type have been found in regions as widely separated from each other as Scandinavia, Bohemia, and Ireland, to which one might add Finland and Southern France. The conclusion is irresistible that these swords were derived from a common centre of dispersal, and that they were not evolved independently in each region. Had the evolution taken place locally there might have been similarity, but not identity of type. I propose to bring forward evidence in support of the hypothesis that, towards the close of the Bronze Age, the British Isles were invaded by the first wave of Celtic-speaking peoples, bringing with them leaf-shaped bronze swords, many other entirely new types of bronze objects, and at least two types of pottery new to these islands and evolved somewhere on the Continent. I suggest that these invaders may have been Goidels, arriving about 800–700 B.C. Possibly the new types under review may not all be strictly contemporary; and there may have been more than one wave of invasion. But there can, I think, be no doubt that an invasion on a large scale took place at about this time.

Needham lies on the Norfolk side of the Waveney valley, not far west of Harleston. East of the village is the large gravel pit owned by Mr. H. Dean which has revealed the site (fig. 1) here to be described. This pit has already produced a Bronze Age food vessel, and is known as the site of a microlithic industry and of a first- and second-century Romano-British village. Commercial working has laid bare from time to time dark pits and ditches on the surface of the gravel, which have yielded the normal debris of the Romano-British peasant settlement. One of these ditches, however, lying to the south of the area of later occupation, has yielded remains of the Claudian period which throw considerable light upon the manner and date of the earliest attempt to romanize East Anglia.

Excavation near and adjacent to Rivenhall church in 1971–2 revealed a sequence of occupation beginning in the Iron Age. The present church, thought to be a nineteenth-century rebuild, was shown to be largely a late Saxon structure, with medieval additions. It seems to have been preceded by a small wooden church constructed of upright timbers set in wall-trenches. The whole overlies the remains of a large Roman villa. Finds of pagan period and later Saxon pottery suggest continuous occupation from Roman to medieval times.

Structural and stylistic analysis of the earliest remains of St. Andrews cathedral reveal the following building-sequence: east and south presbytery walls: north presbytery wall: choir-aisle walls: choir piers, south transept west wall, and nave south wall: presbytery clerestory. Documentary evidence implies work began in 1162 and proceeded without major interruptions until 1178 at least. The date and style of those architectural details attributable to the initial constructional phases imply the existence of a hitherto unrecognized phase in the transitional architecture of northern Britain which antedates the Byland group of designs. The influence of St. Andrews on the abbeys of Arbroath and Jedburgh, and the priories of Hexham and Tynemouth emphasizes the seminal importance of its design, which is in part due to its historical position as the national shrine and mother church of the Scottish kingdom.

Excavations outside the walled area (of the ancient city) have added much to our knowledge of Lincoln's historical development and have demonstrated the potential of the suburbs for further problem-orientated investigations. Evidence was recovered in 1972 for a late Iron Age settlement on the east bank of the Brayford to the south of the later Roman city. The Ermine Street frontage here was heavily built up from the mid-second century for a distance of at least 400 m. from the south gate of the extended colonia. Only slight traces of Roman occupation, however, have been recovered outside the east and west walls of the lower town. Investigation of the medieval suburb of Butwerk revealed a sequence of domestic structures from its origin c. A.D. 1000 through to the post-medieval period, while the development of the ecclesiastical site of St. Mark's church in Wigford reflected to a large extent the changing fortunes of this important southern suburb. Limited work on the north and east banks of Brayford Pool exposed remains of early medieval waterfronts, but the exploitation of the city's waterside is as yet little understood. Further progress has been made in understanding the structures connected with the water supply to the Roman city, and an interesting Roman tile kiln 10 km. south-east of the city is also described.

In 1956–7 a bronze statuette of horse and rider and another bronze object (a poletip or rattle) were found in a field a quarter of a mile south-west of Luscotes Lodge, Brigstock, and were published in Antiq. Journ. xxxvii, 71 with pi. xviii. In June 1958 a bronze statuette, cast solid, of a second horse, without rider, was found in the same field and is described below (no. 1). These finds seemed to confirm the possibility of a shrine or temple in the neighbourhood, and in consequence when deep ploughing seemed imminent the excavations described above by Mr. Greenfield were undertaken by the Ministry of Public Building and Works. In the course of this work further votive objects, including a third bronze statuette of horse and rider were discovered as recorded above. Of these, the statuettes and certain other objects form the subject of the following article.

The three Barrows described in this paper are in the northern part of Llantwit Major parish in the Vale of Glamorgan. Being nameless, they are defined by (a) the nearest farmstead, and (b) the height of their crests above O.D. The work of excavation was begun on 5th December 1939 and finished on 25th February 1940. It was thus carried out during the severest winter weather of modern times. Alternations of frost and thaw played havoc with sections and floors, and prolonged delays ate into the time available. Thus in many respects the effects were irremediable, and the record suffers.

In view of the stimulating discoveries made by Messrs. Schwantes and Rust in the districts of Hamburg and Kiel, I am prompted to write a preliminary note on two Mesolithic ‘floors’ recently discovered in the Ebbsfleet Valley, west of Northfleet, on the right bank of the Lower Thames. The horizons in question are located in a stoneless calcareous silt containing shells of both land and freshwater types. Subsequent erosion phases have considerably denuded the silt, which, at the present time, is overlain by some 6 ft. of alluvial deposits. The marked differences between the implements of the lower and upper ‘floors’ are best summarized as under:

1. The artifacts from the lower ‘floor’ are invariably patinated blue or white, whilst those from the upper ‘floor’ are always in an unaltered condition.

2. The blades from the lower ‘floor’ are much longer and broader than are those from the upper ‘floor’; some of the former attain 7½ in. in length (figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).

3. Core-scrapers are not present in the lower ‘floor’ though of common occurrence in the upper ‘floor’.

4. The gravers from the lower ‘floor’ (figs. 6 and 7) approximate more closely to those of Upper Palaeolithic times than do the examples from the upper ‘floor’ (fig. 8).

5. Though none has so far been recovered from the lower ‘floor’, the upper ‘floor’ has yielded shouldered points (figs. 9 and 10), a characteristic form in the Hamburg culture.

The series of carved and sculptured stones built into the walls of the church of Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire, has long attracted attention, not only by reason of the unusual excellence and delicacy of the carving but also from the remarkable forms that the carving itself assumes. The fact that, in spite of some timid opposition in the past, the theory that these carvings are the work of late twelfth-century craftsmen has hitherto held the field, is sufficient excuse for my bringing the subject before the Society, believing as I do that an entirely wrong date has been assigned. The alternative date—the latter part of the eighth century—which I shall put forward, will, if established, at once place the series in a foremost position in the history of English art, and supply an entirely new chapter in its development.

The restoration in 1967–8 of the tomb of Archbishop Walter de Gray in the south transept of York Minster was undertaken during the general programme of restoration of the Minster as a whole. The dismantling of the tomb afforded an opportunity to open the underlying coffin and examine its contents. Both coffin and contents proved to be of outstanding interest and the results were communicated to the Society on 7th November 1968 by some of the authors responsible for this paper. The second tomb, identified as that of Archbishop Godfrey de Ludham, was opened in February 1969 and the contents, though less spectacular, afford so many useful comparisons with those from the de Gray burial that it was thought useful to present the findings in a combined paper. I must emphasize that my own contributions, on the pastoral staves, are brief factual statements inserted in the interests of speedy publication; they are not intended to replace the full discussion of them which had originally been hoped for from Mr. Michael Taylor before he relinquished his post at the British Museum. The Society is deeply indebted to the Dean, the Very Reverend Alan Richardson, M.A., D.D., and Chapter of York Minster for permitting the original communication and for encouraging the subsequent study and publication of the notable material from both these tombs. Grateful thanks are also due to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) and the Trustees of the British Museum for the provision of the excellent photographs which illustrate this paper (pls. XXXVI–LXV) and for their permission to publish them.