This second interim report on a multi-period settlement palimpsest being rescued from annihilation by quarrying for gravel demonstrates that crop-marks are site indicators, not site plans. A sample area even as large as 650 × 500 feet square, containing Belgic, Romano-British, and early Saxon settlement features and parts of two cemeteries cannot be understood out of context. Extensive plans emphasize that successive landscapes share a preference for strategic siting on this gravel terrace at the head of the Thames estuary. The validity of presupposing a wholesale transfer of continental settlement types from the known ‘invasion’ of the Migration period is questioned. The archaeological evidence for the two main house types at Mucking—round and sunken—is described.

In the course of my Anniversary Address last year I welcomed the appointment of Professor Donald Strong as our new Secretary. We were all looking forward with confidence to his succession, for he had, as I then put it, exactly the qualities and the experience to fill the post with distinction. His sudden death in Turkey on 21 September last extinguished these hopes before he had the time to make the happy impact on the Society's affairs which we were all expecting. His loss has been universally mourned both professionally and personally by his very extensive circle of colleagues and friends, but it will be felt nowhere more acutely than in this room, where so much in the conduct of our business has always depended on the occupant of the Secretary's chair. We have been very fortunate in persuading Dr. Ian Longworth, Keeper of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities in the British Museum, to take this vacant seat, and we look forward to the reinforcement which his presence there will provide both generally and in handling those concerns of prehistoric archaeology which are his main field of professional interest.

The first year's campaign of rescue excavations by York Archaeological Trust is described. A sewer and part of a substantial building, perhaps the baths, were located within the Roman legionary fortress, and the sequence of defensive ditches on the south-west front was examined. Extra-mural settlement near the fortress was also examined in two places. Four small trenches in the heart of Anglo-Scandinavian York revealed 10 m of deposits including a post-Roman sequence giving a stratified series of timber buildings with C14 dates, ceramics, and artefacts. Well-preserved biological materials revealed in detail the palaeoecology of the buildings and immediate area. The development of riverside properties in Skeldergate was investigated: the land between Skeldergate and the Ouse proved to have been a late medieval reclamation. Part of the medieval suburb of Newbiggin was examined outside Monk Bar. The Hospital of St. Mary in the Horsefair was found at Union Terrace, where a twelfth- or early thirteenth-century building was traced through various phases of alteration and addition for use as a Carmelite church, as a hospital, and finally as a school which survived until the seventeenth century.

The work of 1971–3 has produced a variety of important results. The Roman defences and defended area sequences set out in the first report have been confirmed with modifications of detail. New evidence has been found for the nature and extent of the Roman city outside the defended area: there are now the first hints of Roman planning in the St. Catherine Street—Hare Lane area and in Lower Northgate Street there was at least one monumental building and a street-side colonnade. Sub-Roman occupation has been recorded at 13–17 Berkeley Street. New evidence has been obtained for the possible first phase of Gloucester castle and the development of the medieval defences. The excavated evidence for the medieval occupation at 13–17 Berkeley Street has been combined with, and partly reinterpreted in the light of documentary evidence. At 82–4 Northgate Street the standing remains of a sixteenth-century and later building were recorded and its site excavated and related to documentary evidence. In the light of new discoveries, accounts are also given of St. Bartholemew's Hospital, the river Severn, and its two main medieval bridges within the city bounds.

This paper summarizes the typology and petrology of the products of three amphora kilns in the Province of Cadiz, Spain, which were supplying the Baetican fish industry. Petrological study demonstrates that the products were reaching Britain, during the first and perhaps the second centuries A.D. They may well have been distributed throughout the western Empire and beyond, but the difficulty of attributing amphorae to these kilns without proper consideration of fabric is emphasized.

A study of Roman domestic altars from sites in the Hadrianic frontier region suggests that flourishing stone-masons' workshops based at Chester-le-Street and Lanchester were in production in the third century A.D. Although some of the masons may have been time-expired soldiers, the workshops catered mainly for the civilian market. The altars show an enterprising approach to design, and skill in the application of decorative patterns and motifs. The workshops are examples of successful small-scale economic enterprise in the Romano-British period.

Mid nineteenth-century sketches of paintings then in the vaults of the Trinity Chapel ambulatory of Canterbury Cathedral are published for the first time. They provide an opportunity to discuss the iconographic programme and style of the lost paintings. Kings of England and local saints were among those represented in commemoration of the translation of the relics of Becket to the Trinity Chapel in July 1220. The date of 1220 which seems to be given in an inscription is confirmed by comparison with a Canterbury Psalter of before 1220, and sculptures at Wells.

The Monkton brooch was found in 1971 when mechanical trench digging disturbed a large Anglo-Saxon cemetery north of Monkton village on Thanet, east Kent. It is a large composite disc brooch made of electrum, silver, and gilded bronze, set with garnets, blue glass, and shell Consideration of its design, construction, and very pale, silver-debased, gold suggests that it was made no earlier than c. A.D. 640–50 and is amongst the latest of Kentish composite brooches.

In the fourteenth century coats of arms become increasingly complex, thus rendering more difficult the task of expressing concisely and clearly the relationships between the elements in a blazon. The author of the Ashmolean Roll (compiled c. 1334) is a professional herald. Faithful to traditional conventions, he is nevertheless innovative in his effort to respond to the need for greater clarity by expansion and adaptation of the linguistic structures of his trade. The well-known Parliamentary Roll is shown to be less reliable than the unpublished Ashmolean Roll as an indicator of trends in early fourteenth-century blazon.

This article draws attention to the presence in south-west London of what might be regarded as a monument by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It is not from Bernini's hand and it is not quite a replica, but is an adaptation of the master's Raggi monument in Rome, and in a large degree preserves the High Baroque spirit of the original work. Although many examples of Bernini's influence can be found in the commemorative art of Britain in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, no other monument represents so faithfully the original Bernini design.

The Hewer monument is not signed and, as yet, no documentary evidence can be produced to throw light on the means of inspiration for the English sculptor; it is, however, most likely to have been associated with John Jackson's purchases in Rome for the library of his uncle, Samuel Pepys.