Two hundred years after William Cunnington and Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s excavations into Bronze Age barrows on Normanton Down, Wiltshire, we offer a fresh appraisal of this renowned cemetery, which lies within sight of Stonehenge. The paper focuses specifically on burial deposits of Early Bronze Age Period 3, seen as representing a dynastic succession that controlled access to Stonehenge for a while and presided over the ceremonies therein. Pre-eminent are the finds from the Bush Barrow grave group, now housed in the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, and still without close parallel. Long-held notions that the skeleton was extended are dispelled; instead, the grave assemblage is reconstructed around the universal crouched inhumation rite of the period, giving rise to important new implications. Special attention is also given to two probable female graves nearby; essentially contemporary, their accompaniments contrast in a number of respects, pointing to very distinct affiliations. Our capacity to reinterpret such burial complexes is a tribute to the records made by the pioneer excavators.

In the spring of 1936 the Expedition cleared a large part of the al Mina site at the mouth of the Orontes and cut trial trenches on the inland tell of Atchana. Having regard to the importance of the results obtained the Trustees of the British Museum made a large grant towards the cost of the Atchana excavation; the Ashmolean Museum continued its support of the previous year, and the generous help given by private supporters in 1936 was again forthcoming; my sincere thanks are due to those who thus made our work possible.

Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) is the most extensively excavated of all Romano-British town-sites but the majority of the finds, now in Reading Museum, remain unpublished. Unfortunately these finds were not related stratigraphically to the site and therefore remained undated; insula and pit provenance is the most that was recorded, and then only occasionally, in the early years of excavation when the supervisors could find time.

The origins of this inquiry lie in my work after the war as a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Officer in Germany when, during a joint inspection of a large eighteenth-century palace under our care, a German colleague, struck perhaps by the realization of the ugly, indeed the insolent, contrast between its battered splendours and the surrounding desolation, said to me almost apologetically: ‘After all, it was built in imitation of Versailles!’

By the end of the Roman period, and largely as the result of late Romano-British activity, somewhat over one-half of the tidal wetlands of the inner Severn Estuary between Gloucester and Awre had been embanked and drained. Little reclamation occurred during the medieval period, but early modern-modern times witnessed substantial further activity, leaving scant active salt marsh today. The Romano-British reclamations are recognized on the basis of archaeological evidence and, where direct evidence of settlement is lacking, by the degree to which the reclaimed areas are depressed below the level of the contemporary active marshes along the tidal river. Despite the similarity in the amount of available wetland on both banks, most of the Romano-British reclamations are to be found on the left bank of the Severn, and most of these carry a settlement directly on the alluvium. This distribution pattern points to significant differences in the organization and use of land between the two banks of the river and, when combined with other evidence, suggests that wetland reclamation on the left bank was mostly a feature of the development of large villa estates, with the alluvial settlements representing substantial, outlying farmsteads. Iron-making based on rich ores imported from the Forest of Dean occurred at all the wetland and near-wetland settlements on the two banks, and locally may have taken place on an industrial scale. At Awre on the right bank, however, an early iron-making tradition seems to have survived to a late Roman date.

The first-fruits of the programme of research organised under the auspices of the Dolaucothi Research Committee are presented here in a survey of the surviving surface remains from the Roman gold mine in South Wales. The mine-workings are comprehensively describedfor the first time with particular reference to the complex aqueduct system that still survives relatively intact above the main workings. In addition to the aqueduct derived from the River Cothi, a second has been tracedfrom the headwaters of the River Annell. The inter-relation of the aqueducts and their derivatives offers, it is suggested, a way to chart the over-all development of the mines. The stage is now setfor a programme of underground survey in the mine area proper and excavation on a large scale in the associated settlement nearby.

Silver has generally been valued second only to gold from at least as early as 2000BC. A material which is highly prized becomes a status symbol and cheaper imitations find a ready market. Craftsmen very early developed methods of applying thin layers of silver onto base metal as an economical use of precious metal, whether for its decorative effect or, particularly in the case of plated coins, to deceive the customer. Unfortunately, silver plating is less commonly preserved than gold plating, and corrosion at the interface between the silver and base metal may destroy the evidence of how the plating was applied. The situation is complicated because many of the white metal surfaces on pieces labelled as ‘silvered’ are in fact produced by tin, or more rarely, by arsenic. Nevertheless, there are still sufficient surviving examples to indicate that silver plating has a long history during which techniques were developed to give better results and to allow more economical use of the precious metal.

For the first time in English, we present a summary of the international programme of excavation work carried out between 1990 and 2001 in and around the Iron Age salt-mining complex of the Diirrnberg region, south of Salzburg. First we describe the results of excavation in the prehistoric adits, and of work to locate and survey associated settlements. This is followed by a series of specialist reports embracing floral and faunal remains, palaeodiet and parasitology, leather and woodworking and other crafts. The evidence suggests that a complex inter-relationship existed between the Diirrnberg and other communities in the Alpine foreland. It is assumed that the Diirrnberg was under the control of an elite – perhaps a local dynasty whose wealth is reflected in the graves.

In different parts of the island of Salsette, and in the neighbourhood of that of Bombay, we meet with some most stupendous monuments of human labour and ingenuity; which would be matter of admiration in any part of the world, but must astonish us still more, when we find them in a country remarkable for the indolence of its present inhabitants. These are a set of enormous excavations, all of which are made in solid rocks, and decorated with a variety of figures, most curiously cut from the same substance with the caverns themselves.

It is now nearly two years since I had the honour of communicating to this Society an account of the discovery of flint implements fashioned by the hand of man, in undisturbed beds of gravel, sand, and clay, both on the Continent and in England.

The situation of the Neolithic Causewayed camp at Abingdon, discovered by the Rev. Charles Overy and made famous by the late Mr. E. T. Leeds, is well known and only requires summarizing. It lies on a spur bounded by the valleys of two brooks at the south edge of an expanse of Summertown-Radley terrace gravel, three-quarters of a mile north of the Thames. The two concentric ditches, to which reference is made below, lay between the brooks; a third similar ditch, of which pit A was possibly a section, may have lain to the south. The site was at its highest (about 202 ft. O.D.) at about the centre of arc of the outer ditch, whence there was a gentle southerly slope. The expanses of Summertown-Radley gravel in the Oxford region have been found rich in prehistoric finds, that between Radley and Abingdon being no exception.

At the end of April of last year the Rev. Charles Overy drew my attention to the presence of broken animal bones, flints, and sherds of pottery in a gravel-pit on the south side of the road from Abingdon to Radley, about a mile out of Abingdon (fig. 1).

The pit lies on the very boundary of the parish of Abingdon in a field at about 200 ft. O.D., just over half a mile north of the Thames and some 30 ft. above the river. On its eastern and southern sides it is bounded by the wide trenches which in the days of the splendour of Abingdon Abbey formed part of the Abbey's fish-ponds ; on the north is the road, and on the east the ground drops to a little brook.

It is well known that Anglo-Saxon England witnessed dramatic changes in landscape organization, economy and social structure but this paper aims to demonstrate how a more nuanced appreciation of these transformations can be gained by weaving together different (and superficially incompatible) strands of information. Here zooarchaeological data relating to the distribution and consumption of venison are combined with evidence from studies of weapons, landscape, Old English texts and anthropology. It is argued that, between the fifth and eleventh centuries, Anglo-Saxon society moved from being a culture centred on redistribution, in which the concept of cutting up and sharing permeated every facet of life, to one of closure and privatization, as the elite attempted to distance themselves from the lower classes.

Before describing this excavation a few introductory remarks must be made on the circumstances which brought it about.

As early as 1924 Mr. O. G. S. Crawford was convinced from a study of the 6-inch maps that long barrows existed on the Lincolnshire Wolds, but the matter was not tested in the field until the writer began a general revision of the archaeological information on the Lincolnshire sheets in 1929. After a careful examination of the Wold area it became apparent that Mr. Crawford's belief was amply justified, and that an important group of long barrows existed between the Humber and the Wash. An account was given of these in the Archaeological Journal for 1932, and details of further discoveries were given in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Altogether eleven certain examples are known, two more have been destroyed, and there are two doubtful cases (fig. 1)

Early in 1931 the District Police at Kyrenia sent to the Cyprus Museum a number of Red Polished vases collected on the site of Vounous, 1½ miles approximately east of the villages of Bellapais and Kazaphani. Soon afterwards I was able to proceed to the site and saw that extensive looting was being carried out. On my return to Nicosia I pointed out to the authorities of the Museum the necessity of saving the site which appeared to be promising. Although the funds available were very small I was authorized by the Museum Committee to start excavation on their behalf on a small scale. The first few tombs proved to be important, a fact which rendered the necessity of excavating the site systematically more urgent. Through donations collected by Mr. R. Gunnis, then A.D.C. to the Governor and Member of the Museum Committee, and myself our operations lasted for about three weeks. During this period tombs 1-20 were cleared. News was, however, coming regularly that the villagers had resumed looting, and in June of the same year I was able to spend about a fortnight excavating another 11 tombs and thus reached the figure of 31. The following year, thanks to a generous donation made by Mr. J. C. Gaffiero, of Nicosia, I was able to spend, in May, a third season and clear another group of 17 tombs, thus reaching the total figure of 48 tombs.

The history of Belgic Britain has usually been reconstructed around the names of the few known kings or chieftains. Apart from two inscriptions and some casual references in classical authors, our only information about them comes from the coinage which bears their names. The pioneer work on this subject was done by Sir John Evans in the last century, and his book is still the chief authority, but many of his conclusions now require modification. This is largely due to the researches of Dr. G. C. Brooke, who shortly before his death suggested a new dating for the earlier and uninscribed coins, but died before he had had time to apply the results fully to the inscribed series.

One evening towards the end of August 1964, Mr. G. H. Bell walked across to the excavations north of Winchester Cathedral and told the writer that some pots had been found during the digging of a new sewer trench opposite his house in Grange Road, Winchester. The site of the discovery was visited the same evening and the pots, which later proved to have come from Grave I, at once showed that the find was of Roman date. Immediate inspection revealed one pit, later numbered Grave II, in the east side of the sewer trench. The following day a talk with Mr. Butcher of King's Worthy, who had been driving the mechanical digger excavating the trench, revealed the full story of the discovery.

In Antiq. Journ. xxx (1950), pp. 47–51, the late C.J.P. Cave, F.S.A., contributed a paper on the orientation of churches. He referred to Wordsworth's poem on Rydal chapel, written in 1823, and to the note prefixed to it. In this note Wordsworth says: ‘Our churches invariably perhaps, stand east and west, but why is by few persons exactly known; nor, that the degree of deviation from due east often noticed in the ancient ones was determined, in each particular case, by the point in the horizon at which the sun rose upon the day of the saint to whom the church was dedicated.’ The poem that follows describes a vigil on the site the night before, and in the morning the solemn fixing of the church's position by observing the rising sun.

Silver in comparison with gold is of rare occurrence in nature in the metallic state. It is not found in the sands and gravels of rivers, but has to be sought for in mountain regions, where it is embedded in mineral veins. In these veins, too, it rarely occurs at the surface, like copper in the Lake Superior district of America, or in the outcrops of veins, as there, where it may once have been present as metal, it has usually been converted into chloride, by the traces of chlorine as sodium chloride invariably present in rain. Its occurrence is hence limited to the deeper deposits, where the ores are but little altered, and even there it is almost always in the form of delicate filaments or thin leaves, and very rarely massive, so that, without being first melted, it could not be fashioned into the simplest objects. An exception to its occurrence in these forms is found in the Kongsberg mines in Norway, where large masses, ranging in weight from 68 lb. to 1,537 lb. avoir., have been taken from the underground workings. For the above reasons silver has played no part in the culture of early man, and indeed it has never been found, as we shall see later, in association with his remains until subsequent to the time when he had first become acquainted with copper or bronze.

Bleasdale Circle was discovered in 1898 by Messrs. Thomas Kelsall and Shadrach Jackson and excavated by them in the period 1898–1900, their work being reported upon by Professor Sir William Boyd Dawkins in the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society of 1900. Upon the conclusion of these excavations the site was planted with conifers and rhododendrons, and the posts of the inner ring (pl. XLVI) were raised to the surface of the ground adjacent to their original holes (pl. XLIII, 1). In 1925, when the site was scheduled as an Ancient Monument, these oak posts had almost completely rotted and the site had become covered with dense undergrowth. Since it was suspected that the published plans were not strictly accurate, and as it was known that the whole of the site had not been excavated, it was decided to combine re-excavation with an attempt at preservation of what was left of the circle. A ‘Bleasdale Preservation Committee’ was formed, and with funds raised by public subscription the work of re-excavation was carried out under the direction of the author in the Easters of 1933–5, by kind permission of the owner, Mr. W. J. Sharp, the tenant, Mr. Edward Kelsall (son of the original discoverer), and H.M. Office of Works.