Sir Henry Ellis, Lingard, and others have called attention to the irregularity of the entries relating to churches and priests in the Domesday Survey, and have consequently disparaged the evidence that the Survey affords of ecclesiastical organization of the eleventh century. Although there is some truth in their assertions, yet there are certain points which evolve from a study of the subject which I venture to think are worthy of the consideration of this Society.

The mosaic was fixed in a small niche in a wall of the buildings of the Imperial Villa on Posilipo, near Naples. One part of the site, now submerged beneath the sea in consequence of a post-Roman land movement, has already been described, but later surveys of the very extensive antiquities and ruins on the hill above still await publication. Among other discoveries, we have been able to find evidence that this fine property, stated to have been left by Vedius Pollio to Augustus, was still in the imperial possession as late as the reign of Hadrian, and that considerable alterations to the buildings were made at that period.

The Inventory which I have the honour to exhibit to the Society of Antiquaries, by the kindness of its owner the Baroness North, was taken on the death of Henry Howard Earl of Northampton, June 15th 1614, and may not be unworthy of the notice of the Society, whether we consider the historical importance which must ever attach to the character of “The Lord Privy Seal,” as his Lordship is here officially called, disagreeably connected as his memory is with the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury ; or the still existing “Northampton,” or as it is now called Northumberland,” House, built by this same Earl, “with Spanish gold,” says Osborne, about the year 1605.

Before entering upon the consideration of the subject matter of this paper, I would mention that I found some difficulty in selecting an appropriate title for it. It appeared to me that although a generally descriptive title, perforce composed of several long names strung together, or of compound adjectives made up of such words as Greek, Phœnician, and Iberian, would be more correct, it might, at the same time, and without some previous knowledge of the subjects dealt in during the course of the paper, prove to be confusing. I hesitated between “Iberian” and “Pre-Roman.” I think that “Iberian” would, in some respects, have been a more appropriate title, because Iberian influences, both in a geographical and an ethnical sense, undoubtedly predominate, not only in the votive objects themselves, but also in other expressions of that phrase in art with which I am about to deal. “Iberian” is, however, so often and so loosely employed to denote anything and everything that comes from Hispania, that I finally decided upon “Pre-Roman.” It should, however, not be taken in this instance as the chronological definition of a period which ends with the Roman occupation of Spain in 200 B.C., because it may, and undoubtedly does, extend into several subsequent centuries; but rather as indicating that the influences which predominated in the inception of the offerings in no way derive from the Romans, and that they are traceable to pre-Roman times in the Peninsula.

I have again the pleasure of sending you a transcript of some of the numerous documents of antiquarian interest preserved in the Muniment Room of Loseley House, near Guildford. for access to which, as on a previous occasion, I am indebted to the kindness of their proprietor, James More Molyneux, Esq. of Loseley, a Fellow of this Society.

The British people formerly known to scholars as Coritani, but now commonly referred to as Corieltauvi, lived in the region of Leicester, Nottingham and Lincoln, with their capital at Ratae, or Leicester. Their name was recovered as follows. They appear in Ptolemy as Coritani (variant Contavi) and the Ravenna Cosmography as Rate Corion (taken as an abbreviated form). Coritani and Corion resisted every attempt to extract a meaning from them.

Part of an Iron Age shield has recently been identified amongst the collection of Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum, Warwickshire, adding another example to the corpus of Iron Age shields recently published in this journal. The newly recognized remains are in three parts and were recorded in the museum's accessions register as ‘3 pieces of horse armour’. These pieces were re-identified as the boss, spine and terminal discs of an Iron Age shield in the course of a project carried out between September 1992 and March 1994 to fully document and record on a computer database the whole of the museum's collection. Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum is managed by Warwick District Council and the three pieces have the accession numbers M1092.1928.1–3.

The two objects here illustrated are the first recorded examples from Wales of the bronze tool variously called the ‘celt with trunnions’, ‘chisel with lugs at the sides’, ‘flat axe with lateral pegs’, or ‘lug adze’. Trunnion Celt is a convenient name to adopt, as it will cover most varieties of a class of tool which may have served more than one purpose.

In the winter of 1926–7 the owner of Wookey Hole, Capt. G. W. Hodgkinson, undertook the cleansing and opening up of this great cave, and its illumination by electricity. He gave me control of the work, which has been carried out with scrupulous care to ensure that nothing undesirable should be done.

Incidentally, the considerable exploration which it was my privilege to carry out some years ago provided a useful startingpoint for the further development of the entrance gallery (the old cave-dwelling), and that portion still remains in the condition in which we then left it, apart from the erection of a rude supporting pillar of conglomerate, where a great hanging rock near the entrance threatened danger to visitors.

Since the publication of Mr. William Bulmer's paper in 1938 (Antiq. Journ. xviii, 146 f.) several dragonesque fibulae have been found and others—mentioned, but not illustrated, in earlier publications—have been re-located. In figs. 2 to 8 below, the numbers given by Mr. Bulmer to the forty-six fibulae described in his paper are retained; of these, eight were not then illustrated (C5, 18 to 24). The nineteen fibulae additional to the original forty-six are now numbered from 25 to 43. Illustrations are also given, in fig. 9, of certain S-shaped fibulae, three of which were also described by Mr. Bulmer (8, 9, 12).

In the complete list below, the fibulae are grouped under the names of the counties or countries in which they were found, and their present location, where known, is shown in the first column: the number of the fibula follows, with references to publications where these are known to exist.

Winchcombe, a leading Mercian centre, was a royal burial-place and, later, the cult-centre of the alleged royal child-martyr Cynhelm. The antiquary Leland refers to an ancient chapel of St Pancras at Winchcombe lying between its two major medieval churches, both of which are arguably of Anglo-Saxon origin. The chapel is very probably one described in 1320 as having a cellarium, which may have been a crypt. The paper suggests that this chapel was, until the late tenth or early eleventh century, the free-standing mausoleum of Cynhelm and perhaps also of his father, King Coenwulf of Mercia, and discusses its precise whereabouts.

The areas which bound the Irish Sea and North Channel possess physical diversities which offered differing degrees of attraction to megalith building peoples. This paper attempts a discussion of those regional differences and of their influence on settlement and intercommunication during the centuries in which the different types of megalith were being built. The Irish Sea basin and its narrower northern strait are fringed by lands in which lie the major portion of our British megaliths. The main reason for this is to be found in the existence of marine highways along the Irish Sea and along the arms which it pushes into the land, and in the presence of connecting routes across the peninsulas which bound its bays.

In a previous article the writer described the technique used by the armourers of the past to make mail. Very little is known about the craftsmen who made it. It is not yet possible to date pieces of mail with the same degree of accuracy with which pieces of plate armour can be dated. There are several reasons for this lack of knowledge. In the first place mail is a structure which does not lend itself to the use of armourer's marks, and though pieces are marked in one way and another, experts are so far unable to trace them to their sources. Secondly, a mail garment is not necessarily restricted to one known wearer, but because of its stretching and contracting qualities will fit almost anyone reasonably well. Thirdly, at the time when mail-making was at its height the armourer's craft had not developed to the same extent and had not yet acquired the social and decorative importance which it was to have in later years. Thus the mail-maker was more obscure and his work had no characteristic sculptural quality by which it could be recognized. On the other hand, in the early days of armour, mail garments were few and very valuable with the result that they frequently changed hands, the stretching quality permitting their use by different owners. Lastly, mail suffers from rust because it exposes a vast surface of metal to the air. When it is worn the constant friction between one ring and another wears it out comparatively quickly even if it is never permitted to get rusted. For this reason the rings in mail shirts are often thinner round the hips than on shoulders, chest, or back. Most of the early mail has been destroyed by wear and time and only fragments remain. It is not possible to say with certainty to what type of garment these fragments once belonged.

Since 1985 a team under the direction of the author has been carrying out excavations at the site of St. Veit-Klinglberg, Land Salzburg, Austria (see map, fig. 1). This interim report gives an account of the background to the work and the results so far obtained, and outlines current hypotheses concerning the site's function and significance. One more season of work is planned, but more importantly the analysis of the material from the excavation is still only at a very preliminary stage.

According to John Flete, the fifteenth-century historian of Westminster Abbey, Abbot Richard de Berkyng (d. 1246) bequeathed to the Abbey two curtains or dorsalia which he had procured for the choir, depicting the story of the Saviour and St Edward. Nothing is known about the appearance of these textiles; but they were presumably of fine quality, befitting the patronage of a Treasurer of England, and were evidently intended to hang in the choir stalls. There they remained until after the Dissolution. According to a sixteenth-century commentary with transcriptions of the original texts in the hangings by Robert Hare, discovered by M. R. James (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, MS 391 [611], they were of ‘faire arras worke’, and so were tapestries rather than embroideries; they were also described as ‘wrought in the cloth of Arras’ by Weever in 1631. They hung in the church until 1644, whence they were removed to the chamber of the House of Commons in the Palace; according to Brayley ‘a large remnant’ of the scene of the Circumcision was still preserved in the Jerusalem Chamber at the Abbey in the early nineteenth century. The tapestries were one of the most extensive recorded instances of English thirteenth-century textile production. They provide evidence too for a genre of monastic choir decoration analogous to the lost Old Testament narratives in the choir at Bury St Edmund's and the typological pictures formerly adorning the choir-stalls of Peterborough Abbey. Moreover, they anticipate the mixture of purely narrative material in the surviving fourteenth-century paintings above the dossals of the choir stalls of Cologne Cathedral, and especially the tapestries depicting the lives of St Piat and St Eleutherius from the choir of Tournai Cathedral, Arras work dated 1402.

Alist of ring-swords and beads known to date was published in 1967, and a few more items and observations may now be added. Another jewelled example has just come to my notice in the museum at Laon (Aisne), France (pl. lxiva–c). The basic metal is presumably bronze as it is covered in places with green corrosion products. It is a form which began early, i.e. a triangular middle section with animal head terminals at each end, as in a Snartemo grave. The pommel is hollow and was fastened to the rest of the grip not by lateral rivets, but by the tang of the sword which projects slightly through a hole in the top. Its measurements are 5.1×1.5 cm. and the middle triangular faces are inlaid with garnets in curved cloisons at each corner, and framed in a zigzag border presumably inlaid with silver or niello. From the arced segments each side of this a tongue-shape, also decorated with zigzags, runs up each incurved side towards the apex. At one end is a splayed curved terminal, no longer an animal head but bearing ribbon animal ornament in relief. The corresponding opposite end is not decorated, but on top is a small hollow, and a piece at the extremity is broken off and missing. This end section is a pad for the reception of a missing ring-knob, with the end of the vertical bow fitting into the hollow.

During the history of Art, from the earliest times to the present day, certain pigments have remained common to the artist's palette, and while some have dropped out of use, others have been added. Although a great deal of information on the subject has been collected from the examination of old records, and, in addition, by the occasional analysis of the actual pigments used, the whole subject seems to me to be deserving of a more exact inquiry than it has as yet received.