The four flint implements described and illustrated in this article have been found at the following places in the county of Suffolk, viz. Southwold, Charsfield, Hoxne, and Nacton. The Southwold specimen (figs, 1, 1A, and 1B) was found lying at the foot of a low cliff bordering the beach at this place by Mrs. Edgar Turner of Walberswick, who has been so good as to lend the implement to the Ipswich Museum. The specimen exhibits the unchanged black colour of the original flint, carries very little ‘gloss’, and is unabraded and unworn. Unfortunately the implement has had, at some time, a piece broken from it and replaced, but the drawings show clearly where this fracturing occurred.

During the late autumn of 1919 I did some digging in a gravel-pit where, during the war, I had found fragments of pottery. One workman was employed and the necessary funds were subscribed by residents in the Newbury district. The pit is in the parish of Thatcham, on the south side of the Bath road, exactly midway between Thatcham and Newbury, in the angle between the Bath road and the ‘lower way’ to Thatcham. The gravel for which it is worked is that of the lowest terrace, about twenty feet above the Kennet; the terrace here forms a bluff on the north side of the valley. The field in which the gravel-pit lies is called Prince Field on the Thatcham Award Map of 1817. The pottery was most abundant in the east and south faces of the pit, where old trenches and remains of fire were also found. It was possible to distinguish between the gravel filling of these old trenches and the much compacter undisturbed gravel; and the work consisted in clearing out the filling, which yielded a large quantity of potsherds.

Adjoining the northern boundary of the parish of Eastbourne and extending to the foot of the downs on the west, there is an area of arable land until recently forming part of the Motcombe Farm, part of the property of the Duke of Devonshire. The district was formerly called Northwick, and later Green Street: it was crossed by an ancient way called ‘Green Street Drove’, running east and west. The land has recently been acquired by the Corporation of Eastbourne for the purpose of their housing scheme and for allotments.

In his account of the leaf-shaped bronze swords of the Hallstatt period, the late M. Déchelette wrote: ‘Doubtless one might ask whether this weapon might not have been brought to the British Isles by the first Celtic invaders, but that is purely conjectural (une conjecture fragile), for it is difficult among the British finds the same period to detect any really characteristic analogies’ (vol. ii, pt. 2, p. 724). The same paragraph points out that bronze swords of identically the same type have been found in regions as widely separated from each other as Scandinavia, Bohemia, and Ireland, to which one might add Finland and Southern France. The conclusion is irresistible that these swords were derived from a common centre of dispersal, and that they were not evolved independently in each region. Had the evolution taken place locally there might have been similarity, but not identity of type. I propose to bring forward evidence in support of the hypothesis that, towards the close of the Bronze Age, the British Isles were invaded by the first wave of Celtic-speaking peoples, bringing with them leaf-shaped bronze swords, many other entirely new types of bronze objects, and at least two types of pottery new to these islands and evolved somewhere on the Continent. I suggest that these invaders may have been Goidels, arriving about 800–700 B.C. Possibly the new types under review may not all be strictly contemporary; and there may have been more than one wave of invasion. But there can, I think, be no doubt that an invasion on a large scale took place at about this time.

In 1910 Mr. G. Wyman Abbott read to this Society a paper in which he gave some account of his discoveries of early British remains at Fengate, Peterborough (see Archaeologia, lxii, 352 ff.). Since that date he has been assiduous in collecting from the same locality such further material as has been brought to light in the process of gravel-digging. This new material already serves to indicate that the site was occupied continuously from Late Neolithic down to Late Celtic times, and, if only for that reason, is of the highest importance, since it is but seldom that a site with signs of habitation covering so long a period comes to light in this country.

In medieval Catalonia, or perhaps in the neighbouring province of Valencia, the manufacture of certain objects made of wood covered with thin sheets of brass bearing designs in relief seems to have formed a flourishing industry. The brass sheets employed, which covered practically the whole visible exterior surface and gave the appearance of articles of solid metal, were embossed by means of moulds into which the thin sheets were forced, so that their outer surfaces reproduced the designs of the mould. The process used is one which seems to have been in more or less general employment in medieval Europe; and many examples of it, frequently carried out in the precious metals, are to be found upon book-covers and caskets, and upon crosses, reliquaries, and other articles for ecclesiastical use. Long before the objects which I am about to describe were made, Rhenish, French, Italian, and Spanish craftsmen were using the process. Writing probably about the first half of the eleventh century, the monk Theophilus describes the process, especially in its application to silver and to copper gilt. He says that the stamps should be made of iron ‘thick as the size of a finger, wide as three or four fingers, in length one (foot)’, on which stamps, ‘in resemblance of seals,’, the designs are sculptured, not too deeply, ‘but moderately and carefully’. The metal to be used should be thinner than for ordinary relief-work. A sheet (in the case of silver), after having been cleansed with finely pulverized charcoal and polished with scraped chalk, is to be laid between the stamp (which rests face upward on an anvil) and a thick sheet of lead, and the lastmentioned is to be beaten strongly with a hammer. A sheet longer than a stamp can be moved so as to expose a fresh portion when one or more portions have been stamped.

The Roman walls and bastions discovered in 1889 and subsequent years under the Norman or medieval earthworks of Cardiff Castle have been described by the late Mr. John Ward, F.S.A., in Archaeologia and Archaeologia Cambrensis. It may be recalled that the remains indicate a quadrangular enclosure some 8½ acres in extent, with central gateways in the north and south sides and with semi-octagonal bastions along the walls. The fort thus corresponds closely in size and general character (though not in detail) with that at Porchester, and clearly represents a westerly branch of the coastal defence system instituted, or at least extended, in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I. It stands in the middle of the Monmouthshire-Glamorganshire lowlands where, alone in Wales, Roman civil life developed on a scale sufficiently extensive to require special protection from Irish or Teutonic raiders.

When I presented my Report last year, work was about to begin upon some stones on the north-east of the outer circle of Stonehenge. These formed a group of four monoliths, numbered from west to east, 29, 30, 1, and 2. They carried lintels, survivors of the series which once capped the stones of the outer circle. Nos. 1 and 2 had moved out of position, leaning badly outwards, and had drawn with them the three lintels from their seatings to the danger of these and themselves. They would have fallen long ago had they not been supported by props which were beginning to decay, so it was necessary to attend to them at once.

Interesting archaeological remains of the Roman period, including two coffins, were discovered in digging for the foundations of Messrs. J. S. Fry & Sons' new factory and garden city at Keynsham Hams, Somerset, on 1st May 1922. Having heard of the discovery from Mr. J. E. Pritchard, F.S.A., I made arrangements to visit the site on 4th May. Mr. A. Bulleid, F.S.A., joined me during the afternoon and took some photographs. The position is three-quarters of a mile east of the Cemetery and Mortuary Chapel on the Bristol Road, where cut stone, tesserae, tiles, and pottery of the Roman period, indicating occupation, have recently been found.

So many discoveries have been made in the gravels of this region during the last few years, following upon a number which have been noted previously, that it seems advisable to treat them as forming a single body of evidence, which goes far to trace the evolution of the valley in Pleistocene and subsequent times.

The history of this specimen is unknown. I found it among some old documents. It consists of a disc of parchment 1⅜ in. in diameter, having the Arabic numerals 1 to 4 inclusive on either side, the 4 being of early looped form. This disc is pivoted between two semicircular leaves of a folded piece of parchment which cover three figures on either side of the disc, but leave the fourth exposed. These semicircular pieces of parchment have on one side the symbols of the sun, moon, and stars (fig. 1), and on the other side the sun only with the words ‘Rota versatil(is)’ in a cursive hand of the fifteenth century (fig. 2); the last two letters (is) are represented by a general sign of contraction. There is also a loop at the back through which a strip of parchment about ½ in. wide and 11½ in. long is threaded. The whole forms such a bookmarker as a skilful penman might make out of a few scraps of parchment in his leisure hours as an aid to his work.

I think I may safely say that there is no place-name in English topography which has given rise to more discussion and controversy than Coldharbour. In the course of a somewhat close and detailed examination of the ordnance survey maps which I had to make while preparing the papers I recently read to the Society on the circumstances and surroundings of Pre-Roman Silchester, I was struck with the frequent occurrence of Coldharbour in that area until I felt convinced that it had some distinct relationship to the subject-matter of my inquiry.

During the month of September 1920 excavations were carried out by the Museum Curator at Rabat, in the vicinity of the Roman Villa Museum.

Sir Martin Conway's paper on portable reliquaries, tracing the origin of the familiar gabled type, includes a list of the Irish specimens; to this list it is possible to add another, which has twice been mentioned, but I believe neither described nor illustrated. Its existence is not generally known, for it was not alluded to by either Coffey or Romilly Allen in their works on Celtic Art. This reliquary was formerly deposited with the Royal Irish Academy by its owner, Mr. William Monsell, of Tervoe, co. Limerick, afterwards Lord Emly. It is described in one of the old Museum Registers as ‘A Shrine for holding relics 4¼ inches long, 3¾ high, and 1¾ broad. In shape of a house with roof sloping from both sides and ends. One side is deficient, but supplied with cork. Formed of wood with brass-ornamented ridge-pole, and brass bending at angles. One side and the adjoining slope of the roof is ornamented ingeniously with inlaying and enamel, the side having two, and the roof one circular ornament divided into compartments, which are subdivided by divisions radiating from their centres.’ The shrine was returned to Mr. Monsell in 1872. A plaster cast of it is, however, in the collection, from which the illustration is made. The colours in which the cast is painted show that the metal plates are bronze, not brass. The reliquary opens by means of hinges placed at the back, the upper part being a true lid. The ridge-pole terminates in animals' heads. The bronze plates covering the front of the shrine are ornamented with a species of fret pattern; they are inset with three roundels arranged like those on the Lough Erne and Copenhagen shrines. The empty centres of the roundels may have contained half-beads of amber (pl. IX, fig. 1).

This little bronze (height 4 in.) was recently found in Rome, possibly in the neighbourhood of the Tombs of the Apostles, where excavations have been going on. It obviously represents St. Peter and St. Paul standing side by side with the monogram, in its early form, behind in the space between their heads.