In 1948 the ruined Arab town, sixty-five miles north of Mombasa, known as Gedi was declared a National Park, and an archaeologist was appointed as Warden of the Royal Gedi National Park and the Coastal Historical Sites of Kenya. In the ensuing eight years dangerous trees were cut down, crumbling walls were consolidated, and the fallen rubble round the principal buildings was removed. Gedi is now presented to the world as a place of interest and public resort. Excavations were carried out to discover when it was built, and by whom, and the way of life of its inhabitants. Excavations were also undertaken at a number of other sites to recover the history of the coast of Kenya (pl. XII). From these excavations it has been proved that from the thirteenth century there were extensive Arab or Arab-African settlements all down the coast of Kenya. The extent to which the East African coastal culture of the later middle ages can be regarded as truly ‘Arab’ is still undecided. I am beginning to think that there is a tendency to overstress, or to assume, a state of ‘arabism’ in provincial towns, such as Gedi and Ungwana, which never existed. These towns from their foundation would have comprised a mixed population which had come from the older settlements in Somalia. This mixed population would have contributed Hamitic, Bantu, Persian, Indian, and perhaps Indonesian elements to the predominantly Arab culture of East Africa.

We hypothesized that the important early second millennium churches in England may have been aligned using a magnetic compass. If true, the building orientations would enable the post sixteenth-century geomagnetic observatory records to be extended back several hundred years. Directional data were collected from 143 sites, most of which were constructed between the mid-eleventh and late twelfth centuries, including all of the old English cathedrals and many large church buildings in use today, as well as numerous ruined monastic sites. However, processing the data revealed that the compass was not used to align the buildings. Attempting to explain the data, we exhumed Wordsworth's suggestion that church orientation was governed by the sun's position as it rose above the horizon on the feast day of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. The data obtained in the present study suggest that Wordsworth's basic hypothesis might hold for as many as 43 per cent of the churches if sunrise and sunset positions are considered; sun-based Easter Day and equinoctial day orientations could explain a significant majority of the remaining sites.

In a previous paper the subject of Long Barrows, unchambered and chambered, was treated of, and we may now proceed with the second division of the subject—Round Barrows; premising only that the Introduction, with which the first part was prefaced, belongs equally, or even more decidedly, to that on which we now enter.

The results of many years' search and inquiry are included in this paper, which is supplementary to the account of the Caddington palaeolithic ‘floor’ given in the author's Man the Primeval Savage (1894). The deposit has now been recognized in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, Caddington beingformerly divided between the two counties; and the discoveries here to be described must be regarded as originally connected with the Caddington ‘floor’, though the three sites are now isolated hills separated by rivers that have formed, and considerably deepened, their channels since man was living in the neighbourhood during the formation of the brick-earth. The two new sites are dealt with separately, and as far as possible on similar lines, so as to facilitate comparison.

In late antiquity, as under the earlier Empire, Tripolitania was a small and somewhat isolated territory. The creation of a separate province of Tripolitania, in the closing years of the third century, was no more than the official recognition of an established geographical fact. There continued to be important military and cultural links with the provinces to the west; but the natural isolation of the territory was inevitably increased by the decline in public security; and although the church came under the primacy of the bishop of Carthage, the records of the church councils bear eloquent witness to the hazards and difficulties of travel from such outlying districts. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the surviving Christian antiquities of Tripolitania exhibit a robust regionalism; or that artistically, with the single exception of the mosaic in the church that Justinian built at Sabratha, none is of outstanding intrinsic merit.

The paper discusses the siting of Middle and Late Bronze Age hoards in south Hampshire, Sussex and parts of Surrey and Kent. It presents the results of fieldwork at the findspots of a hundred metalwork deposits and discusses the most informative ways of studying them on the ground. On the coastal plain the hoards were not far from occupation sites, and can be associated with evidence of burnt mounds and occasionally with field systems. That was less common on the chalk. Throughout the study area these deposits were normally located along watercourses, with a special emphasis on small areas of ground beside, or overlooking springs and confluences. It seems as if the deposition of bronze metalwork was governed by certain conventions. For that reason it may be possible to predict the pattern of future discoveries.

The subject of this Report is one of several Romano-British sites in the Hambleden valley, about a mile south of the village of that name, not far from the south-west corner of the county of Buckingham. The finds lead to the inference that the homestead was built before the middle of the first century A. D., and occupied until the end of the fourth, the latest coins being dated 392-5. The southernmost extremity of the enclosure is barely 300 yards from the Thames at Hambleden Lock. The Oxford-London road, at a point a mile nearer Henley than Great Marlow, runs east and west, close to the Bucks, bank of the river, and a branch road turns off almost opposite the lock, and runs north to Hambleden Skirmett, Turville, Watlington, etc. The homestead is in the western angle formed by these two roads, and is on the Greenlands estate of Viscount Ham-bleden, to whom not only I personally, but I think all antiquaries, owe much for his liberality in financing the protracted excavations, and in building the Museum to house the results.

It is not too much to say that our knowledge of the dwellings of the Anglo-Saxons, at any rate of the earlier period, has hitherto been practically a blank. Practically so, because discoveries evidently similar to those to be described and found only a few miles away at Yelford and Standlake, Oxfordshire, were recorded by Stephen Stone as far back as 1857, while more recently and close by at Milton, Berks., sherds have been collected by Professor Stenton of Reading University, which must undoubtedly have been deposited under similar conditions.

Classical pottery such as terra sigillata has no parallel in the post-classical world, and was studied by scholars for many years before the methods of its manufacture were known. It is remarkable that practically none of the research on the technical aspect was carried out in England, and, in spite of their great interest, the processes involved still seem to be little understood here. It is the purpose of this paper to review these processes, to show how various misconceptions have arisen in regard to them, and also to suggest some more probable explanations in the light of work done recently at the British Museum laboratory.

The cemetery at Heath Wood, Ingleby, Derbyshire, is the only known Scandinavian cremation cemetery in the British Isles. It comprises fifty-nine barrows, of which about one-third have been excavated on previous occasions, although earlier excavators concluded that some were empty cenotaph mounds. From 1998 to 2000 three barrows were examined. Our investigations have suggested that each of the barrows contained a burial, although not all contain evidence of a pyre. A full report of the 1998–2000 excavations is provided, alongside a summary of the earlier finds. The relationship of Heath Wood to the neighbouring site at Repton is examined, in order to understand its significance for the Scandinavian settlement of the Danelaw. It is concluded that Heath Wood may have been a war cemetery of the Viking Great Army of AD 873–8.

A multiple round barrow with three ditches and a double circle of stakes. The first phase was a bowl barrow with a buried inner ditch and a Beaker primary accompanied by a fine group of grave goods; the second phase was a ditchless refurbishing with a stake revetted mound for a cremation; the third phase was a bell barrow with an outer bank for an unaccompanied inhumation. There were at least twenty-two inhumations and one cremation interred over a time span of the order of 350 years.

Lord Rothschild's family has possessed, since the middle of the nineteenth century, one of the most interesting and important extant Roman cut glasses–the famous glass cup with metal mounts, the glass portion of which bears in open-work relief-cutting an elaborate rendering of the scene of the death of Lycurgus, mythical king of the Edoni, at the hands of the Dionysiac rout (pis. LIXLXIV; figs. 1-2). It is not known exactly when the vase was acquired by the Rothschilds, but when it was first mentioned in print in 1845 it was in M. Dubois's hands in Paris and it is thought to have been purchased by the present owner's great-grandfather shortly afterwards (although Michaelis, writing in 1872, did not know its whereabouts). In 1862 it was lent to the South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum for a special exhibition. When Kisa was writing his great book on ancient glass in the early years of the present century it was in its Rothschild home and, as Kisa says, was unfortunately not available to him for study. Few, if any, archaeologists can have seen it from that time onwards until the present Lord Rothschild brought it to light again in 1950 and consulted us about its history and affinities. By his kind suggestion we are now enabled to write the present account of the vase, its technique and its artistic import, based on much careful personal study of the piece, and on the excellent series of photographs (pls. LIX-LXIV) which were made for Lord Rothschild by Mr. Edward Leigh of Cambridge. It is indeed surprising that such a fine monument of antiquity has had to wait for more than a century since it was first mentioned in print before it has been possible to give it the full and detailed publication warranted by its importance both as a tour de force of ancient glass-working and as an example of artistic endeavour.

A recent beautiful publication by Mr. Mynors of the MSS. in the Cathedral Library at Durham has raised an important point in the history of English illuminated MSS. Up to now there has been a tendency to regard the Norman Conquest as constituting a complete break with the past accompanied by the introduction of a new style of illumination. There is, of course, no doubt that in many spheres of life the Norman occupation of England did do away with many characteristics of Anglo-Saxon England. But this is not the whole story. A change in one department of life does not mean a revolution in another. In the realm of literature, for instance, Professor Chambers has shown that the Conquest did not interrupt the writing and development of vernacular prose. Mr. Mynors's book produces ample evidence to confirm a suspicion long held by some, but not uttered, that much of the ornament used by illuminators of English MSS. during the first fifty years after the Conquest is directly descended from motives in use in England long before the Norman invasion. To Mr. Mynors's evidence from Durham, examples of illuminated MSS. from Canterbury may be added in order to show that the famous outline drawing style of the English MSS. of the tenth and eleventh centuries had healthy descendants in the early years of the twelfth century. The best place to see this continuity is in the illuminated initials of these MSS. In order to do so it is necessary to examine the development of initial ornament in England during the tenth and eleventh centuries.

This report describes the excavation of an Iron Age and Roman farming settlement at Bottom Pond Farm, Owslebury, near Winchester (Grid Reference SU 525246). Traces of Neolithic, Early Bronze Age, and earlier Iron Age occupation were found, but the main period of occupation starts in the Belgic period with both settlement material and a small cemetery containing a warrior inhumation and Belgic cremations inside rectangular enclosures. The site continues with ditched enclosures, chalk quarries, cesspits, ovens, and burials until the end of the fourth century A.D.

After the death of Sir Edmund Antrobus of Amesbury Abbey, certain properties, including Stonehenge, were in 1915 sold by his representatives. Fortunately for all students of archaeology, Stonehenge was purchased by Sir Cecil Chubb of Bemerton, who generously presented it, together with some thirty acres of adjoining land, to the nation. The acquisition of this additional land has made it possible to set back an unsightly fence and divert a cart-track some distance from the monument. It was at once recognized by H.M. Office of Works that the monument required immediate attention, and it was therefore decided, by the advice of the Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments and the Ancient Monuments Board for England, that a careful examination of it should be made, and work for its preservation taken in hand. It was decided that the stones which were in a dangerous state should receive attention first, and then that those which had fallen in recent times should be re-erected, care being taken that all appearances of restoration should be avoided. By the courtesy of the Office of Works, the Society of Antiquaries was given every facility for carrying out a scheme of archaeological research on the site during the progress of the work, and the writer was appointed the representative of the Society. Preparations were begun in September 1919, but were much retarded owing to difficulties of transport and the delay in erecting two huts and the assembling of the large equipment necessary. It was not until the end of the year that work was actually begun.

This paper reports on the excavation of a small, but high-status, later seventh-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Ely. Of fifteen graves, two were particularly well furnished, one of which was buried with a gold and silver necklace that included a cross pendant, as well as two complete glass palm cups and a composite comb, placed within a wooden padlocked casket. The paper reports on the skeletal and artefactual material (including isotopic analysis of the burials), and seeks to set the site in its wider social and historical context, arguing that this cemetery may well have been associated with the first monastery in Ely, founded by Etheldreda in ad 673.

Plantation Farm, Shippea Hill, is situated in the south-east corner of the Fenland, some seven miles ENE. of Ely. The vast Fenland plain, formed essentially by the filling-up of a corrugated basin of Jurassic and boulder clays with post-glacial peats, silts, and clays, provides a field for the study of post-glacial changes of environment in relation to man without equal in Britain. As reported in a recent number of the Antiquaries Journal, a Research Committee has been formed at Cambridge under the presidency of Dr. Seward, F.R.S., to organize research in this work and to secure adequate co-operation of specialists in the different sciences. Notwithstanding great advances in the technical equipment of research, remarkably little has been added to our knowledge in this field since the publication of Skertchley's Geology of the Fenland in 1877. We have had, therefore, to begin at the beginning, and this report, which establishes the stratigraphical context of the Early Bronze Age in the deposits of the south-eastern fens, represents one of the first-fruits of our activities. Sir Charles Hiam very kindly allowed us to work on his land, and the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund generously made the excavations and borings possible. We may also take the opportunity here of thanking Mr. Charles Leaf for his part in the initial discovery of the site.

The treatise called Pictor in Carmine is notable as containing the largest known collection of types and antitypes intended to be used by artists. I have often called attention to it, and for many years have been on the look-out for its occurrence in manuscripts, in the hope that I might ultimately be able to produce an edition of the whole text. Whether that may yet see the light I do not know; it is a work of considerable bulk, and perhaps hardly merits a great expenditure of time and print, but comparatively few pages will suffice to give a conspectus of the contents and character of the book.

Four seasons of excavation and structural study in St. Peter's Church have revealed a complex sequence, beginning with domestic occupation of the Pagan Saxon period, followed by a Middle Saxon settlement enclosure with adjacent cemetery of Christian character. In the later tenth century a three-celled turriform church was built in the cemetery, after the exhumation of graves covering its intended site. Related features in the cemetery include the foundation of a large free-standing cross, a group of wells and an oven, probably for baking bread, all grouped to the east of the chancel. Some of the pre-Conquest graves yielded evidence of probable barkwood coffins built with clenches and roves, while some twenty further graves contained rectangular timber coffins in varying states of preservation. Several were in near-perfect condition and have yielded exceptionally good evidence for techniques and tools employed by Anglo-Saxon carpenters.

The extant Saxon and medieval fabric of the church has been recorded in considerable detail, providing an insight into building and scaffolding methods, particularly of the tenth century. Excavation has revealed the complex development of the medieval church and its internal layout; and 1,326 graves, spanning a millennium, have been investigated.

Where we are able to combine external sources of the ‘medieval’ period with local African ones – oral and linguistic, ethnographic and archaeological – we can begin to discern the place of Africa, or of parts of it, in world history. At the same time, we begin to gain chronological perceptions for regions where otherwise we are apt to fall back on synchronic notions of ‘traditional’ cultures and societies living as if in a permanent ethnographic present. The occasional allusion bearing a calendar date of universal applicability presses questions of correlation over broad distances, in a way that radiocarbon measurements (which we should hesitate to call ‘dates’) cannot do. Notwithstanding the importance of the latter technique for the study of the African Iron Age, the individual results are inherently imprecise (whether ‘calibrated’ or not) and, being run on specific samples, bear frequently an uncertain relationship to the historical event or episode in question.