I beg to enclose you three Drawings, shewing the situation and appearance of those primitive and colossal remains, existing on the island of Goza, called the “Giant's Tower” by the natives. I am only able to send you the mere Views, because the measurements I took, and the remarks I made upon the spot, were given to my late friend Colonel Otto Beyer, the then resident Governor. To this gentleman we owe the clearing out of these antiquities, and it was his intention to have submitted to the public a very detailed account of his Operations, but sudden death frustrated the measure.

When Constantine the Great transferred the seat of his empire from Rome to Byzantium he not only preserved that empire from destruction, but he established it at a centre from whence it derived new life and energy. Menaced by the barbarians from the north and the Persians from the east, the empire was in constant danger of overthrow. Now it is often of the greatest importance rather to anticipate an attack than to await its onslaught, rather to be ready for your enemy near his gates than to await his arrival at yours. Constantine therefore removed his base of operations nearer to the source of danger and established himself at the very gate of his enemies. At New Rome new conditions of life had to be faced; new methods of building, suitable to the climate, the skilled labour, and to the materials available, had to be devised. But in the very solution of these difficulties lay the germs of salvation. By his bold and sagacious action a new life and vigour was infused into his people, a new force which not only preserved the empire for over eleven hundred years, but maintained a progressive civilization during what was probably one of the darkest periods in the history of the world. But it was in the selection of the particular site that the emperor showed the greatest prescience. At Byzantium he commanded the great line of communication between east and west through Asia Minor and Thrace, and also controlled the maritime passage between the Euxine and the Propontis, the Straits of Bosporus. He secured at once the most potentially wealthy and the most strongly situated position in Eastern Europe.

Tsountas, as a result of his own excavations in the prehistoric cemeteries of Mycenae, came to the conclusion that the geographical distribution of the tombs in well-defined groups was not accidental, but designed. He found that the tombs were arranged in groups of eight, ten, or more lying close together in definite localities clearly separated from one another. This division of the cemeteries which lie near the Acropolis of Mycenae to the north, north-west, west, and south-west at the foot of the mountain of Hagios Elias, and in the sides of the various ridges that run south-westwards from it, he interpreted as meaning that the inhabitants of Mycenae lived in small villages or townships on these hills, and buried their dead in cemeteries hewn out of the sides of the ridges whereon they dwelt. The Acropolis was little more than a fortified palace protecting with its cyclopean walls the royal house, the great officers of state, chamberlains, captains of the guard, and the necessary servants or slaves, together of course with enough trusty guards to defend the walls in case of danger. The inhabitants of the separate villages were the ordinary civilian population, and Tsountas suggests that they lived in clans or groups of families, and that they continued in the tomb the clanship they had maintained in life. With the knowledge at present available these conclusions of Tsountas are eminently reasonable, and nothing found in the course of our excavations in the prehistoric tombs of Mycenae leads us to disagree with him on these points, for, as has been seen above and as will be explained below, the tombs we excavated have every appearance of being family sepulchres used by the same families over a considerable period of years.

The Royal Archaeological Institute held its summer meeting in 1946 in Lincoln and members were able to inspect excavations undertaken by the Lincoln Archaeological Research Committee, formed in the previous year. Volume 103 of the Archaeological Journal was published in 1947 and was largely devoted to the archaeology of Lincoln and Lincolnshire. A notable feature was the late Sir Ian Richmond's paper, ‘The Roman City of Lincoln’, in which he synthesized the widely scattered evidence into one coherent picture, followed by an equally valuable general study, ‘The Four Coloniae of Roman Britain’. His account of Roman Lincoln included a section on the four gates of the original colonia on the hill-top above the Witham (fig. 1), in which he included reconstructed plans of those on the north and south. It would have been remarkable if all his conjectures had proved accurate; he was already aware, well before his death, of the extent to which excavation had corrected his suggestions and was able to make a brief mention of this in print.

In June 1921, during the cutting of a new road in the village of Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, various articles were brought to light indicating an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. The excavation took place on a site at the back of the High Street, on the north side, in a gravel plateau about 100 yds. from the present bank of the river Avon, 150 yds. from the Roman Rycknild Street, and 200 yds. from the old ford, which lies to the east of the church. The site is on the extreme western border of Warwickshire, within a mile of the Worcestershire boundary.

The well-known paper on the Funeral Effigies of The Kings and Queens of England by Sir William St. John Hope (Archaeologia, lx, 1907) is a splendid documentary and factual source of information about the effigies themselves. Comparatively little, however, is known about their homes throughout the ages, though it is on record that after the funeral of Elizabeth of York in 1503 her ‘pikture’ was ‘had to a secret place by St. Edward's shrine’. Henry Keepe, writing in 1682, shows that they were then in the upper part of the Islip Chapel, and this is corroborated by J. T. Smith's amusing account of a conversation between Nollekens the sculptor and an abbey verger named Catling in 1786.

It gives me very sincere pleasure to be able to offer you undeniable confirmation of the justice of my views respecting the Runic Obelisk at Ruthwell. I would not, indeed, have you suppose that I ever entertained the slightest doubt of having seized the general sense of the inscription; but, taking into consideration the fragmentary state of the legend itself, as well as the abrasion of many characters, which justified, indeed rendered necessary, a somewhat bold method of proceeding, I could not venture to hope that I had entirely escaped errors, which are in some degree inseparable from conjectural criticism. From the peculiar form of the Runic characters, which consist principally of straight lines and angles, they are especially liable to confusion when the slightest portion is abraded by age: and this is the case with the Ruthwell inscription in a very great degree. The task of restoring readings so injured by lapse of time, though not a hopeless, might fairly be considered a difficult one; and in this conviction, I was prepared to admit the probability that better versions than my own might at some time be substantiated. Circumstances have, however, now placed within my reach a complete, though modern, copy of the whole inscription, parts of which it cost me so much serious labour to decypher: and it is highly satisfactory to discover that in almost all the details of interpretation, I was proceeding upon sound and safe grounds. This naturally affords a gratification of a far higher character than the mere selfish pleasure derived from any personal feeling: and it is in the hope that some of your readers may be induced to bestow attention upon a system whose results are so strongly confirmed by further experience, that I again bring the subject before your notice.

The roof of the so called ‘Pilgrims’ Hall’, Winchester, now dated to c. 1308, has long been recognized as one of the earliest surviving examples of hammerbeam construction. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that the complete medieval structure, of which the Pilgrims’ Hall forms rather less than half, has not previously been investigated in detail. In its original form it was a six bay building covered by a single roof, which, though of one constructional phase, employed a variety of principal truss types (fig. 1). The three bays at the north end of the complex have masonry walls: they comprise the actual Pilgrims’ Hall, whose most impressive feature is its pair of hammerbeam trusses (pl. XLa). The other three bays had timber framed walls, and were subdivided into a second, two bay hall with a central base cruck truss, and a single bay at the south end of the building. In this paper the term ‘Pilgrims’ Hall’ is used to denote only the three bay hammerbeam hall, while the entire original structure is referred to as the ‘Pilgrims’ range’.

The roof and timber framing of the complex must surely rank with those few structures that, in the words of the late R. T. Mason, ‘stand out for their contribution to overall knowledge’. The outstanding significance of the Pilgrims' range in the study of early medieval carpentry is that it included four major ‘aisle-derivative’ roof truss types in a single building: a true aisled truss, a base cruck truss, two hammerbeam trusses, and at least one raised aisle truss. The existence of continuous longitudinal members (arcade plates, cornice plates and a central purlin) and the uniform upper roof structure throughout the length of the range show that the entire roof was erected in a single campaign.

The traditions concerning the antiquities of this country are surprisingly vague, and little to be depended on. There are indeed many remains which bear the stamp of the remotest times; such as the burial-places of which I am going to speak and the circles of stones which are still remaining on the mainland; but all that can be gathered is, that they were formerly held in veneration, but for what reason is not to be by their accounts investigated.

I have herewith sent you the drawings of the Prior's Chapel at Ely, which I mentioned to you when I had last the pleasure of seeing you. These drawings are accompanied with an explanation and a few remarks on the style of building, which I have to request you will do me the honour to present to the Society in my name, at the first convenient opportunity. The history of this Chapel you will find comprised in a few sentences, as indeed must be the case of all which are private, and have no religious establishment. The merit therefore of the whole, if it have any, will consist in the drawings, and in those I fear only, considering them as accurate delineations from the original. The few observations subjoined, you will be at liberty to present or not, according to your own opinion of them; and I beg you will not be scrupulous in rejecting them, if you think they approach too near to those which have already been made on the subject. The Chapel you will find is now a dwelling-house, and not much visited by strangers. During my stay at Ely, I was introduced to its present possessor, and had many opportunities of seeing it.

The number of instances in which it is possible in this country to assign, even tentatively, particular groups of medieval works of art to particular craftsmen is not so great that the addition of another such group can be without interest, or even without importance. Certain evidence exists which may justify the addition, to the list of recognized craft-centres, of a group of woodcarvers working originally at Ripon and dwelling there, but executing work widely distributed, and also imitated, over Northern England. That evidence must first be examined in order to establish the use of such a title as ‘The Ripon School’.

I Have the honour of presenting the accompanying articles to your Society, and which I presume may be interesting. The whole have been collected in the extensive district of Peten, the most northern portion of Central America, in which I have lately resided some months as Governor. The description of this district will form a portion of a Work on Central America, which I have lately prepared for publication.

By examining those arrow-heads which are known to have been found in strict association with typical objects and by ignoring those from the material of barrows or from the surface of ploughed fields, it should be possible to classify the series and to establish the successive changes in an article of common use during the later Stone and Bronze Ages of Britain. Only brief references to continental work on the subject will be necessary to enable comparisons to be made, to trace possible lines of communication, and to reach some measure of agreement as to chronology.

The progress made by the antient Egyptians in Arts and Sciences, beyond other nations their contemporaries, has been much insisted on by various writers, and by some chiefly with a view to depreciate the characters of Moses and the Israelites. But a very ingenious writer, the late Robert Wood, esq; in a posthumous work of his, lately published [a], has given his opinion, and some reasons for it, that “the high “compliments which have been so long paid to the knowledge “and wisdom of the antient Egyptians have not been so well “founded as is generally imagined.”

In March 1918, after the end of my third year of service with the Intelligence of G.H.Q. Staff in Mesopotamia, I was ordered through the War Office to explore archaeologically the region south and south-east of Nasiriyah on the Euphrates on behalf of the British Museum. This district, which lies south of the broad Euphrates marshes, includes several ancient mounds, of which three are of great interest, Abu Shahrain (the ancient Eridu), Muqaiyar (Ur of the Chaldees), and Tell el-Lahm. Previous excavations had been made in this district by J. E. Taylor in the middle of the last century, and described by him, but now that these ancient lands had come within our jurisdiction, the British Museum wished to set further exploration afoot with the possible view of larger undertakings.

The origins of the Anglo-Saxon shield are to be found in the Roman Iron Age on the Continent. The Early Saxon shield has the same basic form as the shields in Danish and North German bog deposits: a flat circular board of small to medium size, made up of several planks set side by side, and fitted with an iron boss and grip [46, 47]. None of these features had to be borrowed from Roman shields, which in the first three centuries AD were mostly rectangular or oval and included convex and laminated boards, whilst the Late Roman circular shield may actually be of Germanic origin. The types of Early Saxon iron boss and grip were also rooted in Roman Iron Age types, and the main constructions of wooden handles (particularly ones using a lap-joint) were already used on third-/fourth-century shields in Jutland.

Since the eighteenth century the Society has acquired many heraldic manuscripts, mainly English; but there are also several continental books, mostly from the Franks Bequest. Among the foreign books the most important is MS 54 which was bequeathed to the Society by Charles Lyttelton, Bishop of Carlisle when he died in office, as President in 1768. In the old catalogue of the Society's manuscripts the Latin half of the title page was quoted but it omitted to mention that the text was partly written in Cyrillic script. The Minutes, recording the important bequest of Lyttelton's books and manuscripts, described it adequately as: ‘A Book containing the Shield (sic) of Arms of all the Princes of Illyria, finely illumind. Vellum Qto.’ While Illyria does not occur on modern maps of Europe, the classical name for the province on the eastern shores of the Adriatic comprising the later territories of Bosnia, Croatia, Dalmatia and Hercegovina was revived in the sixteenth century by the local humanists and conveniently describes the scope of the collection.