Very little is known about St. Manchan. He died of the plague in 664, composed a poem of which two lines survive, and may have been the author of a commentary, parts of which are quoted in an early twelfth-century manuscript (British Museum, Harley 1802). But though various attempts were made to establish his genealogy, there were other saints of the same name, so that the references to him are sadly confused, and all that is certain is that he lived in the first half of the seventh century, and gave his name to the place now called after him Lemanaghan, i.e., Manchan's grey land (Manchan's church). This was a small monastery in co. Offaly that has little recorded history and can never have been a house of much importance. In 1531 it was under the charge of the prior of the neighbouring monastery of Gallen, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century it was almost unknown, being described at that time as situated in the middle of an impassable bog. Its chief treasure, the shrine, attracted no notice from the outside world; but it was still preserved there, and there is a record of its existence in the church at Lemanaghan about 1630.

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.

In describing the “Stripple Stones” circle and the excavations which have taken place there, it is my intention to confine my remarks very largely to them, and to bear in mind that the work of excavation was conducted with a view of endeavouring to ascertain the approximate date of construction of this ancient monument. Descriptions, however, will be given of stone circles in the immediate vicinity, two of which the writer took the opportunity of surveying in 1905 and two in 1906, the five forming a group on Bodmin Moors.

The South Gate could not be excavated in 1904 at the time when Houses Nos. X-XIII were laid bare, owing to the existence of a fine walnut tree which it was then impossible to remove. Permission to cut down the tree was, however, kindly given by the trustees of the late Mr. John Lysaght, in 1905, and the uncovering of the South Gate was therefore the first piece of work undertaken in that year.

The site of the abbey of Stanley is a wide valley two and a half miles east of Chippenham, in Wiltshire. It is upon the south bank of a little river called the Marden, which rises on Calston Down some five miles to the east, and joins the Avon just above Oliippenham. Stanley owes its origin to one Drogo, a chamberlain of the Empress Maud, at whose instigation her son Henry, then Earl of Anjou, gave a place called Locwell (now Lockswell) in the manor of Chippenham in perpetual alms to Grod and St. Mary of Quarr, in the Isle of Wight, for the purpose of there founding a monastery.

The following report forms a record of the excavations on the site of the Roman city at Silchester during the past year (1893), and includes an account of various explorations made in the previous year, which, for certain reasons, have not yet been described.

The work began last May, and was carried on until the month of October, but under considerable disadvantages from the great heat of the summer and want of rain, which hardened the soil to a degree that much interfered with the detection of foundations and rubbish pits. In spite of this hindrance a considerable acreage was examined.

Timbers removed from the nave of the chapel in 1965, together with earlier photographs and traces in the surviving masonry, provide evidence of a rafter roof with a tie-beam, and probably a king-post and raking struts, at each couple. Later alterations to it are discussed in the light of what is known or can be deduced about the late- and post-medieval development of the farmhouse to which the chapel is attached. The alterations resulted in a roof largely seventeenth-century in form. It is shown, however, that the earlier timbers cannot be satisfactorily explained as post-medieval intrusions. The earlier design is compared with eleventh- and twelfth-century roofs known in north-west Europe. It was probably that of the original roof of 1056.

Rich remains from all periods of the Copper and Bronze Age have been found in Cyprus ever since archaeological excavations began there, but hitherto there has been no evidence of a Stone Age. A few implements of stone, some celts and one flint-knife, have been found, but none of them in a Stone Age stratum; those of known provenance are all from the Copper and Bronze Age, and no tombs or other deposits of the Stone Age have been discovered at all. As the Stone Age is represented all round on the mainland, a priori one might be inclined to suppose its existence also in Cyprus, and therefore its non-appearance would be strange in view of the frequent finds of the Copper and Bronze Age.

Titterstone Clee Hill lies some five miles due east of Ludlow. It is crowned by a camp which comprises the whole of the comparatively flat top, measuring about ½ mile from east to west and ⅓ mile from north to south. In area (71 acres) and in elevation (1,749 ft. at its summit) it is abnormal amongst hill-forts in Great Britain; both these facts have important bearings on the excavation of 1932, particularly on the lack of finds (see p. 30).

A full discussion of its topographical features and environs will be published shortly in Archaeologia Cambrensis. It will be sufficient here to call attention to the camps on Brown Clee Hill and the connexion between them and Titterstone; and to the main East–West trackway, which passes close under the rampart of the latter. The two main branches of this track to the west are well attested for the prehistoric period, and there can be little doubt that the camp on Titterstone was placed to command their point of junction.

During the course of excavations undertaken in 1941 on behalf of the Ministry of Works on Beaulieu Heath in the New Forest a small, and hitherto unrecorded, barrow was discovered by the writer (fig. i). After the conclusion of the official work this small barrow was excavated in order to establish its cultural position in an area rich in barrow burials, but which does not, to the writer's knowledge, include many others of similar character. It should, however, be mentioned here that such inconspicuous little mounds are hard to find, and the present example was discovered shortly after a heath fire had burnt off the heather.

A re-examination of Fowler Aa, B, and C penannulars leads to a reassessment of omega brooches at Numantia. The inception of particular types of penannulars could be before 75 B.C., certainly before 27, and they continue through Augustan–Claudian times with Aucissa and ‘Hod Hill’-type brooches. The distributions of certain types in pre-Roman Britain, based on Mr. Hull's researches, and of two groups of factory-made brooches and others only found in the area of early Roman conquest in Britain, are contemporary with early omega brooches here. There is no evidence for taking any of these forms into the Flavian period, and the supposed basis for dating some of them into the second century is found wanting. Instead of associating old finds of all these early types with certain forts on the Limes, from A.D. 90, or later, it is suggested that there is evidence for Germani or Celts at these places long before the Province of Upper Germany was formed and the ‘decumates agri’ were taken into it.

Wetlands preserve evidence which no other landscape in western Europe can provide. The variety of wetlands is great and conditions for the survival of evidence and for archaeological work are equally varied. The quantity and quality of organic, and inorganic, evidence from wetland sites is now well documented by work in Denmark, Switzerland and Italy in particular, but most European countries have such special sites, where the abundance of evidence can enormously augment our knowledge of the past. The purpose of wetland archaeology must be to expand our very restricted data base into new areas of research, both cultural and environmental. A scheme for the development of priorities for wetland sites and areas may help to direct resources, but the threats to wetlands by current agricultural and other policies are particularly severe, and only concerted efforts will retain these areas in suitable condition for future preservation or examination.

There has been little investigation into the beaker period in the Derbyshire Peak District since Thomas Bateman's activities between 1843–60. This paper describes the excavation, between 1966–8, of Bee Low, a beaker round cairn imperfectly examined by Bateman in 1843 and 1851. The excavation produced evidence of almost continuous usage of the mound by beaker and later communities over a period of some 300 years. The earliest burials (c. 1700 B.C.) were a collective group of six or more inhumations in a stone cist with an All-Over-Cord beaker, a pottery type hitherto unrepresented in the Peak. In all, twenty-three inhumations and five cremations were recorded from the cairn, with further beakers of types N2 (Developed Northern), S2 (Developed Southern), and S4 (Final Southern), the last a further type not previously recorded with certainty in beaker contexts in the area. Burial customs included collective, crouched, and disarticulated interment. Only one inhumation had a metal association—a bronze awl—but two cremations were provided with bronzes, an awl and a small riveted knife. The excavation of this miniature necropolis has added considerably to present knowledge of the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age cultures of the Peak.

George Cruikshank published his satirical print depicting an imaginary meeting of the Society five weeks after one of the most controversial presidential elections in its history. The illustration (fig 1) was the main feature in his monthly magazine The Scourge issued on 1 June 1812 and the accompanying text shows his anonymous informant to have been hostile to the winning faction. ‘The newly elected president, Lord Aberdeen … was dragged into his present situation by the officious interference of impertinent friends, and the intrigues of an individual.’ He is shown addressing the meeting; nobody is listening. ‘The secretaryship of the society is committed to Nicholas Carlisle Esquire; the dull compiler of dull topographical dictionaries.’

This paper focuses on a distinctive region of granite ridges and forests in the parish of Hogdal, well north of the World Heritage rock art area in Bohuslän. In the later second millennium BC, a wide lake, left by the receding sea, provided the setting here for an arc of rock-carving sites along its shoreline. A second group of sites lies near the entrance to a major fjord to the south. The two areas contain Bronze Age imagery remarkable for its variety of scale, subject and artistry. The paper describes recording and analysis work undertaken in 2006 and 2007, offers commentaries on changing environments, chronology, site conditions and preservation, and provides a discussion of Bronze Age imagery and society.

Academic study of eleventh- to thirteenth-century high-status residence in Scotland has been largely bypassed by English debates over origin, function and symbolism. Archaeologists have also been slow to engage with three decades of historical revision of the traditional socioeconomic, cultural and political models upon which their interpretations of royal and lordly residence have drawn. Scottish castle studies concerned with the pre-1250 era continue to be framed by a ‘military architecture’ historio graphical tradition and a view of the castle as an alien artefact imposed on the land by foreign adventurers and a ‘modernizing’ monarchy and native Gaelic nobility. Knowledge and understanding of pre-twelfth-century native high-status sites is rudimentary and derived primarily from often inappropriate analogy with English examples. Discussion of native responses to the imported castle-building culture is founded upon retrospective projection of inappropriate later medieval social and economic models and anachronistic perceptions of military colonialism. Cultural and socio-economic difference is rarely recognized in archaeological modelling and cultural determinism has distorted perceptions of structural form, social status and material values. A programme of interdisciplinary studies focused on specific sites is necessary to provide a corrective to this current situation.

The group of medieval and seventeenth-century buildings which forms the subject of this paper lies in the centre of academic Oxford, between the site of the city wall on the north, Exeter College and its garden on the west and south, and the old Schools Quadrangle on the east. It constitutes indeed the heart of the medieval university. In writing to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, on 14th July 1444 the authorities described the site as eminently suitable for a library because it was somewhat remote from secular noises. In spite of a marked increase in secular noises over the past 500 years in traffic-ridden Oxford, this description remains substantially true today. The buildings, erected then and later, remain in external appearance almost exactly as they are depicted in David Loggan's Oxonia Illustrate. of 1675 (pl. xxvii). They comprise the Divinity School, for which the university was already collecting money and laying the foundations in 1423 ; Duke Humphrey's Library, built over it in the forty-five years following the letter to Duke Humphrey of 1444; Arts End and the Proscholium added at right angles to the east by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1610–12; and Selden End with the Convocation House below, attached similarly to the west in 1637–40. The three upper rooms, Duke Humphrey, Selden End, Arts End, form the core of the ancient buildings of the Bodleian Library: they have been continuously in use for library purposes for between 320 and 360 years.