The final season of excavations at South Cadbury Castle in July–September 1970 produced evidence for a Neolithic ditch. Five phases of remodelling were detected in the Pre-Roman gateway, and two in the Early Post-Roman gate. An important group of bronze brooches was associated with a massacre at the Roman Conquest. In the interior, both circular and rectangular buildings of the Iron Age were uncovered, as well as a building ancillary to the Early Post-Roman hall. Finds included an ΑΝΤΕΘ stater.

My immediate duty in addressing you for the first time from this Presidential Chair at your Anniversary Meeting must be to express my gratitude for the signal honour you have done me in placing me in it. When I was elected a Fellow something over forty years ago it certainly never crossed my mind that I might one day find myself in this exalted seat, and I am as conscious now of my inadequacy to serve as your President as I was then of my unworthiness to receive the distinction of your Fellowship. I am all the more deeply sensible of your continuing confidence in my capacity to maintain the traditions of our Society: it has been a source of great and increasing happiness to me personally as I have become with the passing of the years more and more concerned in the intimate management of our affairs here in Burlington House.

The first part of this paper is a discussion of the basic pattern of land use on the South Downs from the Middle Bronze Age to the early Pre-Roman Iron Age. In the second part, the impact upon this pattern of a group of Bronze and Iron Age stock enclosures is considered, and it is argued that these developed directly into a number of small hill forts. A contemporary group of larger, early Iron Age, hill forts is also defined, and it appears that these too grew up upon an economic basis of stock raising. The social and cultural implications of these developments are discussed, and tentative contrasts are drawn with the nature of later hill forts in the region.

Excavations in 1969 within a 35-acre enclosure at Marden on the north bank of the River Avon in the Vale of Pewsey confirmed its association with the Grooved Ware ceramic style and its superficial resemblances to the Durrington Walls enclosure ten miles downstream. A survey of the enclosure produced an unusual plan bounded by a bank with an internal ditch and on the south side by the River Avon itself, whilst the position of the Hatfield Barrow was established by geophysical means. Within the north-entrance causeway a small circular timber structure was recorded in a comparable position to the much larger building at Durrington Walls.

The Iron Age hill-fort at Danebury has been subjected to two seasons of excavation concentrating on the defences and the east entrance. The main defences show three phases of construction: (a) a timber-faced rampart of the 4th century B.C. (b) remodelling to a glacis-style rampart in 3rd to 2nd centuries, (c) the re-digging of the ditch in a fiat-bottomed form possibly just before the Roman Conquest. The east gate underwent seven major periods of rebuilding, each showing sub-phases. A development from a simple gate to one defended by massive outworks has been demonstrated.

The ‘middle earthwork’ on the south side of the fort, and the ‘outer earthwork’ which surrounds it are dated to the 3rd to 2nd century and the 1st century respectively. They were probably stock enclosures. The sample excavation of the interior of the fort showed that occupation was dense. Among the cultural material discovered was a hoard of currency bars.

The representation of Dacian strong-points on Trajan's Column is compared with the structural evidence obtained by Rumanian archaeologists from recent excavations. There seems to be clear evidence for a specific ‘twin-fort’ plan, no doubt the result of enlargement to contain a larger garrison and bigger supplies caused by Trajan's advance into Dacia.

The excavation of ten Trajanic kilns, all of the up-draught type, was carried out in the spring of 1968 on a site now part of the Derby Racecourse Playing Fields (SK 36133775) which are situated some 700 yards east of Little Chester along the Roman road running to the Trent at Sawley. The kilns ranged in size from 18 to 51 inches in diameter (0.46 m. to 1.30 m.) and were disposed as follows: a group of six kilns, a group of three kilns, and a single kiln. A great variety of pottery was recovered with jars, flanged bowls, and carinated vessels predominating. Two unusual products from this site were lead glazed ware and an early form of Derbyshire ware.

A bronze spout in the form of an ox-head, of high artistic quality, was found on the surface of a ploughed field at Kirmington, Lincolnshire. By analogy, it probably fitted a strainer-bowl, and should date to c. 50 B.C. to A.D. 50.

Two Greek inscriptions, originally discovered and published in the eighteenth century but subsequently ‘lost’, appeared at Sotheby's during 1970 in sales of inscriptions from the collections of the Earl of Lonsdale at Lowther Castle, The first, a list of magistrates and officials of the municipium of Rhegium, was found at Reggio Calabria in 1727, and the second, a metrical inscription from a fountain, was brought from Lesbos to England in 1748. Both have been acquired for the British Museum.

Documentary, topographical, and archaeological evidence suggests that the rectilinear street plan of modern Winchester was laid out as a planned system not later than the mid tenth century and probably before c. 904. Among the places listed in the Burghal Hidage there are seven which show clear evidence of rectilinear planning which is not of Roman origin. Four are on the sites of Roman towns—Winchester, Chichester, Exeter, and Bath—and three on non-Roman sites—Wareham, Wallingford, and Cricklade. These plans are seen as the result of a deliberate policy of urban formation in response to the military situation during Alfred's reign (871–99). These places are not so much fortresses as fortified towns in which the rectilinear street plan is a deliberate expression of the organization and apportionment of the land for permanent settlement. Rectilinear street systems appear to be characteristic of the larger places founded or re-organized by Edward the Elder or Athelstan, but rectilinear planning does not thereafter appear until the plantation of new towns in the Norman and later period.

Cylindrical objects lying on their sides appear in a number of paintings and stucco reliefs in Roman Italy, and can be divided into three groups: those which serve as seats for actors in figure-scenes, those which appear amid groups of inanimate objects, and those which are provided with attachments resembling the handles of garden-rollers. (A full catalogue of known examples is given, not only in paintings and stuccoes, but also in other media.) Previous writers have tended to seek an all-embracing explanation, however fantastic, for these cylinders; but it is better to consider the groups separately. The first group are probably discarded column-drums, and the other two are probably rollers employed for preparing palaestra-surfaces (though, in origin, they too may be column-drums). The roller, unlike the simple column-drum, seems to have enjoyed only a temporary vogue as an artistic motif, and to have been confined to minor decorative work in the cities of Campania.

A note on some twelfth- and fourteenth-century stained glass in York Minster, all reused, suggests that the early glass dates to 1175–1200 and was in the Norman choir, and that it was removed before the present choir was started in 1361. The fourteenth-century glass, often dated to c. 1380, can be dated to 1330-9 by stylistic parallels in York Minster, local churches, and at Rouen, and by comparisons with manuscripts and monumental brasses. It is further suggested that this glass was inserted into the Norman choir c. 1335, perhaps as part of a campaign to focus greater attention on St. William, and the old glass relegated to the nave clerestorey and, slightly later, to the vestibule.

The iron knife with silver inlay found in Southwark in 1930 is reconsidered in the light of more recent publication of weapons with silver inlay from the East Baltic area. The technical and stylistic parallels suggest an origin in that area and a date within the period 1100–1300.