The Joint Expedition of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania has now completed its second season's work in Mesopotamia. This time I had with me Mr. C. J. Gadd, of the British Museum, for work upon the inscriptions; Mr. F. G. Newton (who came from Egypt to join us in January) for the architectural side; and Mr. G. M. FitzGerald for general archaeological work: to all three I am indebted for a companionship as pleasant as their help was invaluable. From Carchemish I brought two of my old native foremen, Hamoudi and Abd es Salaam, and the son of the former; owing to their presence we were able to undertake two sites at once, and while the bulk of the men were employed on clearing the Ziggurat at Ur, under the supervision of Messrs. Gadd and FitzGerald, I could devote most of my time to the excavation of Tell el Obeid, where Hamoudi was in charge of sixty local Arabs camped in tents on the ruins. The two excavations, being quite distinct in character and geographically, will be dealt with in two reports: the present account treats of Tell el Obeid, the more ancient site.

Park Brow is a ridge of the South Downs, running roughly north and south. The southern end of the hill, upon which three early inhabited sites have been found, abuts on the valley from which rises the higher hill crowned by Cissbury camp. On Park Brow there is clear evidence of the presence of man in ancient days. Very many lynchets or steep banks are found, a sunken trackway runs along the southern crest of the hill, adjoining which, where it passes the Early Iron Age site, is seen an embanked pit; while over the greater part of this area, as well as in the adjoining valleys, fragments of ancient pottery, rough flint scrapers, and other implements, together with many flint flakes, can be picked up.

The Shrine of St. Swithun was, next to that of St. Thomas of Canterbury, perhaps the most famous and important in the south of England. Indeed, many of the pilgrims going to Canterbury broke their journey at Winchester in order to pay their vows at this shrine, and to rest their weary limbs for a day or two in the Guest House of St. Swithun's monastery.

Our Fellow Mr. E. T. Leeds, in his account of the Asthall barrow in Oxfordshire (Antiquaries Journal, iv, 122), records the occurrence of a vase of wheelmade ware decorated with an angular pattern impressed with a roller stamp. This is dated by the associated bronzes, which are of seventh-century type.

The following notes consist of brief accounts of, and comments upon, some examples of English alabaster work, most of which have been exhibited before the Society at different times and are at present (1924) on loan at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.

Mr. A. Wright, in a letter to our Secretary of 8th November 1923, called attention to a number of medieval tiles found in the church of Llangattock-nigh-Usk, a few miles from Abergavenny. With one exception they belong to the well-known Great Malvern series, made there and at Droitwich about the middle of the fifteenth century, as we know from the discovery of kilns at those places in 1833 and 1837 respectively, still containing some of the tiles. The Malvern tiles have been described in the past by two Fellows of this Society: Mr. Albert Way in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1844, pt. ii pp. 25–31 (reprinted in Nott's Malvern Priory Church), and Canon A. S. Porter in the Antiquary, vol. xxi (1890), pp. 71, in, 155. But a good deal remains to be said about them, and it may be worth while to take this opportunity of adding some notes about the types which occur at Llangattock.

The task of card-indexing the enormous number of seals scattered over the various groups and classes of documents in the Public Record Office, originally undertaken by Sir William St. John Hope, but interrupted by his death and by the war, was resumed in 1922 by Mr. R. C. Fowler. It was then decided to create a small special section within the Repairing Department, to deal with questions of packing, repairing, moulding and casting. When this work came to be started, it was discovered that the various processes had been hitherto regarded in this country rather as trade secrets; and although some works on the subject have been published abroad, though also various archivists have been most generous in placing their experience at my disposal, I found that some matters which interested us were still unexplained and that in practice we had to make almost every step the subject of more or less elaborate experiment. As we are now passing out of this experimental stage, and as many Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries and other persons in this country are possessors of seals and may be presumed to have some interest in the technical and mechanical processes involved in their preservation, it has seemed worth while to record the result of our modest inquiries in this place.