The bronze cauldron here illustrated (pl. 1) has recently been added to the British prehistoric collections in the Ashmolean Museum. It was acquired from the person into whose hands it passed almost immediately after discovery, but of the conditions of discovery it has been impossible to ascertain more than that it was found by some bathers in the bed of the River Cherwell at Shipton-on-Cherwell. Chance was indeed kind when it allowed a vessel of a highly interesting class to be rescued from the mud in which it had lain in a comparatively shallow stream for over two thousand years, in what must, in view of the extreme fragility in relation to its size, be regarded as a quite remarkable state of preservation.

Of all the numerous castles on the Marches of “Wales none can compare with the Castle of Ludlow in importance of position, the extent of its remains, or the part which it has played in history.

For a long series of years it was one of the chief strongholds of the Earl of the March, and at a later period became the place where the courts of the Lords Marchers were held, and the Lords President had their seat.

The following Notes have been arranged partly with the view of affording the means for comparing the Celtic antiquities of the Orkneys with their prototypes situated in other countries, but more particularly in the hope of inducing some resident gentleman of more leisure and antiquarian lore to draw up a detailed description of these interesting Landmarks of Time, many of which are fast disappearing before the efforts of rural industry and agricultural improvement. There is, however, but little cause to apprehend any further dilapidation in the greater monuments of the county; an interest in their conservation is daily gaining strength, and we have the faith to believe that in a short time even a peasant will feel ashamed to remove from the inquiring presence of enlightened men an irrecoverable record of the thoughts and feelings of a by-gone race. The antiquities of the Orkney and Shetland groups will be found upon examination to be well worthy of a careful study, not only from being extremely numerous for the small extent of country in which they are placed, but also from the great diversity of their forms, in many places leaving us unable to determine the purpose for which they have been erected.

For some years past a collection of helmets and portions of plate armour has been exhibited in the Ethnological Museum at Athens which, in spite of the exceptional interest which attaches to it, has up to the present time escaped the serious consideration of writers on the subject of the defensive armour of the Middle Ages. It is especially interesting because, from the time of the discovery of the collection to the present day, there has not been any attempt to restore or alter the condition in which the pieces were found, and when we consider the frequent mistakes made formerly, in other armouries, in this direction, this alone should recommend it to the study of those interested in mediaeval equipment.

This graceful crozier-head (pi. xxxvn, fig. 1) was found in December 1838 in a stone coffin containing an imperfect skeleton, on ground to the north-east of the cloisters supposed to have been the cemetery of the Abbey.

It is of latten, and cast hollow, as may be seen in a damaged part on one side of the volute. The stem is eight-sided; in place of a socket at the base, it has a tang driven into the top of the wooden staff, a short piece of which is preserved; above the tang is a moulding. In respect of the octagonal crosssection and the use of a tang in place of a socket, this example recalls the larger of those found at St. Davids (Archaeologia, lx, pl. LIII). Over the wood of the staff is passed a detached latten knop, above which is twisted a narrow band of metal to prevent splitting.2 The metal has been gilded. The two holes in the leaf may possibly have been filled by beads of coloured glass, or originally left empty as they now are.

This paper describes a Late Bronze Age midden settlement and a later Iron Age ritual complex on Godwin Ridge, a sand ridge that formerly lay mid-stream within the lower reaches of the River Great Ouse, in the Cambridgeshire fens. Numerous ritual deposits and significant quantities of human remains were recovered; some of the latter show signs of having been modified or dismembered. The ritual focus of the ridge was a riverside platform; associated with this was an important assemblage of wetland bird bone. The paper explores the implications of these practices and compares the finds to those from neighbouring and regional later prehistoric settlements, including those with major bird bone assemblages. The ridge-end's findings clearly resonate with human remains retrieved from other watery contexts, such as those associated with the River Thames. The evidence suggests that Godwin Ridge was, during the later Iron Age, a major site for mortuary rites involving riverine interment.

An inscribed marble (figs, 1, 2), until now in the Byzantine collection of the Archaeological Museum at Istanbul, recorded two English knights, Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, who died in Galata outside Constantinople in 1391.

This is an edition of an important and largely unpublished sixteenth-century chronicle from Worcester. The chronicle forms five folios in a manuscript volume of miscellaneous collections and memoranda completed in the early seventeenth century by John Steynor of Worcester. The volume is among the former episcopal estate papers taken over by the Church Commissioners and then lodged at St Helen's Record Office in Worcester. It is structured as a list of the annually-elected pair of senior and junior bailiffs of the city of Worcester from 1483 to 1578; to this list, annalistic entries have been added, within the framework of the city bailiffs' year of office from September to September. In its present form the chronicle is a copy of the early seventeenth century, all in the same hand. The section of the book which contains the chronicle is numbered from fol. 151, although only thirty-seven folios precede this section in its present format.

In August 1984 Mr James Rickett, using a metal detector adjacent to a public footpath in a wood near Dinnington, South Yorkshire, found a bronze torc. Recognizing it as an important find he promptly took it into Sheffield City Museum, Weston Park. Subsequently the landowners, Mr and Mrs J. H. Morrell, generously donated the torc to the Museum (Accession no. SHEFM:1984.515). Later a careful survey was made of the wood by staff of Sheffield City Museums and the South Yorkshire Archaeology Unit.

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.

Works of art dating from the Early Iron Age of Britain have an interest proportionate to their scarcity, and two examples to be added to the list are destined for public museums. The Society is privileged to examine them before they leave London for their permanent homes in the West.

On July 4, 1928, I had an urgent message to call at the Bursledon Brick Co's. works as the men were again working on the site described in the Journal, which they had abandoned n i October 1927 for another sector of the clay pits, and had found evidence of a deeper shaft.

Qaṣr Burqu⃓ is one of the most remote of the Jordanian so-called ‘desert castles’ (quṣūr) of the early Islamic period: it lies some 200km east of⃓Ammān (figs. 1–4). However, it is neither a castle, nor is it in the desert, rather it represents a variety of building types and lies in the dry steppe (areas receiving less than 100mm of rainfall per annum) of the bādiyat al-šām (literally, the steppe lands of Damascus). Furthermore, most of the architectural elements are not necessarily attributable to the early Islamic period, namely the Umayyad Caliphate of the seventh and eighth centuries, despite a ‘building’ inscription (E4: see below, pp. 206–7) of Walīd b. ‘Abd’l-Malik (Caliph AD 705–15), dated AD 700 (H. 81). Rather, the various architectural entities at the site, and their use, span the time from about the third-fourth (probably a little later) to the eighth centuries AD. This time range and the Qaṣr's remote location are significant in relation to the political and economic history of the Near East, particularly in regard of nomad-state relations across the verdant-steppic interface. The time range of the various constructions includes the period following the dissolution of the limes arabicus which had been extensively refurbished and augmented under Diocletian and later under Justinian in the third and sixth centuries AD. Many of the more remote erstwhile fortlets, forts and legionary fortresses were colonized by villagers and nomads, as well as monks and pious hermits. Between the fourth and sixth centuries (particularly in the sixth century under the Ghassānids), purpose-built monasteries and ‘residences’ for hermits were established throughout greater Syria, some of them far out in the steppe. The military station at Nemāras about 80km to the north-east of Qaṣr Burqu⃓, for example, may have become one of several centres, functioning as a παƍεμβολή νομάδον of the Lakhmids in the region, under the leadership of Imru'l-Qays who was called ‘king of the Arabs’ and who was buried there in AD 328. Places like Qaṣr Burqu⃓ and Deir al-Kinn, on the other hand, may have been founded or re-established as monasteries.

The purpose of this article is to address a philological point which is of greater complexity than has been assumed by previous writers on the topic, namely the possible emendation of a restored Romano-Celtic name in a famous inscription from Chichester, Sussex (TUB I.91J. This also requires the weighing-up of alternatives for its interpretation and for the emendation and interpretation of apparently related names in other sources. I conclude guardedly, on the balance of probabilities, that the emendation can be shown to be justified, but only if we accept that the name involved is probably not British. Instead, it may be Continental Celtic.

Excavations at Hembury (Devon) in 1980–83 have revealed a new Neolithic earthwork to the north of the causewayed enclosure excavated by Miss D. M. Liddell in 1930–35. The eastern defences of the Iron Age hillfort have been examined for the first time and a sequence of box rampart followed by dump rampart demonstrated. The latter phase of construction is datable to the second or first century b.c. On the Roman conquest of the region the northern end of the hillfort was occupied by Roman troops who constructed a series of regular planned timber buildings, including a structure identified as a fabrica. This occupation probably ended in the 60s a.d. and thereafter the hillfort remained in disuse.

Two La Tène I swords found in the River Thames more than a century ago are in the remains of iron scabbards decorated with dragon-pairs. These designs, which have only recently been revealed, are similar to those on La Tène scabbards throughout Celtic Europe from France to Romania: ninety examples can now be listed, and half of them have been added in the last decade. The discovery of dragon-pairs in the Thames emphasizes the links that must have existed between Britain and the rest of the Celtic world in the decades around 300 B.C.

In May 1957 a mail shirt of quite exceptional quality was acquired for the Tower of London Armouries. The purchase was made through Master Sergeant G. A. Gordon, a member of the United States Army serving in Germany, who was good enough to draw the writer's attention to the shirt and subsequently to arrange for it to be sent to the Tower for examination.

This mail shirt, which is now in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh and was in the Meyrick and Noel Paton collections, dates from the fourteenth century. A little is known about its more recent history. Apparently it was bought by a Jewish dealer from an ancient family at Sinigaglia, near Bologna, ‘in whose possession it had been beyond any of their records’. It has been published before but because it is in such a good state of preservation, because mail shirts of the fourteenth century are rare, and because something is known about its history, it is important that it should be republished.

In November 2000 metal detectorists located a decorated copper-alloy mirror, a single silver Knotenfibel brooch and some pottery sherds at Pegsdon, Shillington, Bedfordshire. Subsequent excavation of the findspot uncovered a Late Iron Age cremation burial pit associated with further pot sherds and a single fragment of calcined bone. The opportunity is taken in this preliminary account to revisit both the occurrence in southern England of the brooch type and to discuss the mirror's decoration in relation to the variation of views as to the British mirror series as a whole, and in particular with regard to other recent mirror discoveries. The burial is discussed in its local context and the possible significance of the topography in relation to the site is highlighted.