I stand before you this afternoon as the thirty-second lineal successor to Peter Le Neve, herald, genealogist, and antiquary, chosen in 1707 to be the first President of the ‘new creation’ and reputedly a former President, as far back as 1689, when he would still have been on the right side of 30, of the last of the forerunner societies whose intermittent existence links our present body with the circle of Stow and Lambarde, Cotton and Camden. If filial piety to an alma mater is not out of place on such an occasion, may I say that one of the special pleasures you have given me, a Londoner born and bred, by electing me as your thirty-third President, is the thought that there is one thing which Peter Le Neve and I and no other two Presidents have in common: we were nursed upon the self-same hill, though admittedly the nursing of the 1670s and the 1920s took place on opposite sides of the Walbrook. I find another source of pleasure, and indeed of pride, in reflecting that the occupant of this chair in the days when I made my first three visits to these rooms in 1932 was also my predecessor as Chief Inspector; and if it is to the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments, Pitt Rivers, that we look back as the father of modern field archaeology, it is the second, Sir Charles Peers, successively Secretary, Director, and President of the Antiquaries from 1908 to 1934, who deserves to be remembered as the initiator of Britain's approach to the conservation of standing monuments, an approach which brought renown to his branch of the public service and set the standards which are still its guide today.

The most copious and important finds from the famous Iron Age cemetery at Hallstatt were excavated by J. G. Ramsauer between 1846 and 1863. Doubts have been expressed about the validity of grave associations accepted on his authority. This paper discusses some of the evidence that is available for assessing Ramsauer's methods of excavation and recordings and for establishing valid grave associations. Key documents are a series of manuscript accounts of the excavations, the ‘Protokolle’ (one of which was presented to the Library of the Society of Antiquaries), and a later working catalogue which survives in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna.

In the second season of excavation by a British team participating in the UNESCO Save Carthage project it was found that the topography of the island in the circular harbour underwent a radical change in the fourth century B.C., after which there appear to have been first timber and then stone ship-sheds and other installations associated with the Punic naval harbour. The Roman quaysides were found both on the island and on the mainland and much new information obtained, partly from underwater survey, about the bridge or causeway which linked the island with the mainland. A reconstruction was attempted of the presumed Roman pharos. Apart from modern features, the latest stage in the archaeological sequence on the island was a series of burials in stone cists at the centre and another, of apparently uncoffined inhumations, at the north edge, both groups dating not earlier than the sixth century A.D. On the Circular Harbour, North Side an 18 m.-wide strip was cleared across the insula between kardines XV and XVI and north of the quay wall, but excavation of the stratigraphical sequence is still in its early stages. At the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Salammbo, immediately north of the city wall a sequence of a building, probably of the sixth–early seventh century A.D., followed by a period of burials, followed by another building, may span the change from the Byzantine to the Arab occupation of Carthage. South of the city wall there are signs of a metalled berm and defensive ditch, which could belong to the time of Belisarius, the presumed ditch being at least partly filled in before the construction of a building aligned on the so-called Gracchan centuriation.

This article re-examines Helbaek's (1952) conclusion that wheat was the main crop in southern England during the Neolithic and Iron Age, but that barley was the main cultigen in the Bronze Age. It is shown that the grain impressions from Windmill Hill, which form most of our data on Neolithic crop agriculture, represent a mixture of two crop economies which were practised in ecologically dissimilar regions. The suggestion is made that both wheat and barley were staple crops in different areas of southern England from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. There is no evidence that the importance of either cultigen changed over this period.

A group of antler cheekpieces are described and illustrated which provide a small but significant contribution to the evidence of horsemanship in the later Bronze Age in the British Isles. Although independent dating evidence is meagre, they form a coherent stylistic and functional type which has parallels in the late Urnfield period in Central Europe. An attempt is made to reconstruct other elements of the bridle, and they are compared with a number of bronze cheekpieces which show some affinity.

The results of five seasons of excavation (1971–5) are summarized. A continuous strip 30–40 m. wide extending across the centre of the fort from one side to the other was completely excavated revealing pits, gullies, circular stake-built houses, rectangular buildings, and 2-, 4-, and 6-post structures, belonging to the period from the sixth to the end of the second century B.C. The types of structures are discussed. A sequence of development, based largely upon the stratification preserved behind the ramparts, is presented: in the sixth–fifth century the hill was occupied by small four-post ‘granaries’ possibly enclosed by a palisade. The first hill-fort rampart was built in the fifth century protecting houses, an area of storage pits, and a zone of 4-and 6-post buildings laid out in rows along streets. The rampart was heightened in the third century, after which pits continued to be dug and rows of circular houses were built. About 100 B.C. rectangular buildings, possibly of a religious nature, were erected, after which the site was virtually abandoned. Social and economic matters are considered. The excavation will continue.

The late A. W. G. Lowther had for long collected information on Romano-British ‘chimney-pots’ and in his final years concluded that this was the true function of his Group B, except where a closed base indicated use as ornamental roof-finials. New discoveries have enlarged his originally small Group A, wheel-made pottery vessels with side-openings, which may possibly have had a ritual function. His notes are now presented in a published form, with comments on dating, distribution, and continental parallels; the opportunity has also been taken of adding a short excursus on Romano-British stone finials.

In the first modern excavation of an Arras Culture cemetery 189 burials have been excavated so far and most had been at the centre of barrows with square-plan ditches. Two distinctive burial rites produced mutually exclusive ranges of grave-goods. There are at least 800 square barrows in the immediate vicinity arranged in large cemeteries, in smaller groups, and as isolated examples, and aerial photography has revealed a wealth of settlements as well.

Examination of the Rolleston papers and local field-work have permitted identification of the site of the Sancton II cemetery and ascription of objects in the Ashmolean Museum to individual burials described by Rolleston. It can now be seen that, during the sixth century A.D., a small, predominantly inhumation cemetery close to the village was in use concurrently with the large cremation cemetery, which had begun on the top of the wold in the early fifth century and which was possibly used by surrounding communities, and that the Christian church was eventually built on the same site as the inhumation cemetery.

Two problems in the design of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic are (1) that the elements of the design are placed the wrong way round if the mosaic was planned to be seen like a carpet; and (2) whether the bust of Christ is an original design or whether it is based on a formal set of rules. There is evidence to suggest (1) that the design of the mosaic as a whole may have been conceived as the decoration of a ceiling, and (2) that rules to which the bust of Christ conforms were still in use in the eighteenth century in Byzantine church-painting, and that there is a genuine continuity between the two points in time.

Total excavation of the nave, crossing, and transepts of Hadstock church in 1974, together with a detailed examination of parts of the upstanding fabric, revealed that this well-known Anglo-Saxon building is not a single-period structure, as has long been assumed. Three periods of Anglo-Saxon work are now known, the earliest of which probably belongs to the pre-Danish era: it comprised a large, five-cell cruciform church which, it is suggested, may be part of the seventh-century monastery founded by St. Botolph, at Icanho. Rebuilding on a monumental scale took place in the early eleventh century and the possibility is discussed that this was Canute's minster, dedicated in 1020. The church was extensively repaired in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, following the collapse of the central tower. Subsequently the decline in the size and importance of Hadstock as a village saved the church from further extensive alteration.