The report which we have the honour of submitting to the Society, on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Silchester Excavation Fund, of the discoveries made during the past year, is also the record of the systematic excavation of the site for the sixth successive season.

This paper focuses on a distinctive region of granite ridges and forests in the parish of Hogdal, well north of the World Heritage rock art area in Bohuslän. In the later second millennium BC, a wide lake, left by the receding sea, provided the setting here for an arc of rock-carving sites along its shoreline. A second group of sites lies near the entrance to a major fjord to the south. The two areas contain Bronze Age imagery remarkable for its variety of scale, subject and artistry. The paper describes recording and analysis work undertaken in 2006 and 2007, offers commentaries on changing environments, chronology, site conditions and preservation, and provides a discussion of Bronze Age imagery and society.

So much has already been published about the ancient trade with Britain for tin, and the accounts given by Diodorus Siculus and Cæsar have so often been discussed, that it would appear as if no further evidence were obtainable. It has seemed also as if there were unfortunate contradictions between the classical authorities, which made their statements untrustworthy, or at any rate too vague and too little exact to be of value.

Early as the Romans were known to have visited the southern and southwestern shores of England, it is remarkable that so little should be left to testify to it. Historians inform us that on the banks of the waters that flow into the Plymouth Sound there was once a Roman station, but no record or evidence remains that can establish the precise locality of the ancient Tamara. Attempts have not been wanting to fix it somewhat near the present village of Tamerton, but it appears to me that there is little to support this idea beyond advantageous topographical considerations. The remains, however, of an old Roman road are still in existence on the property of the Rev. Collins Trelawny, which appear to suggest that the line by which those old travellers passed from station to station westward to the tin districts of Cornwall lay much nearer to Plymouth.

This paper presents a new assessment of the hoard of five gold finger rings and ten silver groats found together near the River Thame, in Oxfordshire, in 1940. It proposes a refined date of manufacture for the exquisite reliquary ring and reports newly identified elements of its design, suggesting that it held a second relic. A holistic understanding of the landscape, topography, contemporary institutions, places and events is used to interpret the hoarded material. It is advocated that the hoarded rings and coins were probably the property of Notley Abbey, not Thame Abbey as has been thought, and that they were rescued from Thomas Cromwell’s Commissioners in 1538 for burial at a place of cultural significance. The paper also draws attention to some of the problems of interpreting and dating hoards and it emphasises the continuity of hoarding practice from prehistory into the later- and post-medieval periods.

During the history of Art, from the earliest times to the present day, certain pigments have remained common to the artist's palette, and while some have dropped out of use, others have been added. Although a great deal of information on the subject has been collected from the examination of old records, and, in addition, by the occasional analysis of the actual pigments used, the whole subject seems to me to be deserving of a more exact inquiry than it has as yet received.

The South Gate could not be excavated in 1904 at the time when Houses Nos. X-XIII were laid bare, owing to the existence of a fine walnut tree which it was then impossible to remove. Permission to cut down the tree was, however, kindly given by the trustees of the late Mr. John Lysaght, in 1905, and the uncovering of the South Gate was therefore the first piece of work undertaken in that year.

The invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Norman armies in 1169–70 is not normally regarded as an event of any importance in the history of English art. Such an attitude is understandable, for Irish works in the Middle Ages rarely made any substantial contribution to artistic developments elsewhere. But the military activities of 1169–70 did have important results from an English point of view, since they greatly extended the ‘geography’ of English art and architecture. Following the Anglo-Norman conquest, Irish churches increasingly looked to England for ideas, and native styles were gradually supplanted by imported techniques. Very few of the standard histories of English architecture or sculpture devote much attention to this process, and a page or two describing the occasional Irish cathedral is normally deemed sufficient. Yet this does little justice to the Anglo-Norman achievement in Ireland, where, in just over a century, an immense amount of building was carried out. Most of this was English in style and ought to be considered within the context of English developments. Indeed, in some cases Irish evidence can considerably extend an understanding of specifically English problems: no study of West Country architecture, for example, would be complete without a parallel study of contemporary Irish work.

You are well aware that the great Hall at Westminster has been for some time past undergoing a complete repair and restoration under the direction of my brother, Sir Robert Smirke. A work of this nature, requiring at every step the closest observation and the most scrupulous care, is necessarily slow, and its progress was for a while suspended by the late destructive fire, from which this Hall was with difficulty preserved. In the execution of these repairs favourable opportunities present themselves of ascertaining the previous state of the building, and of verifying the changes which it is supposed to have undergone. To these interesting objects of inquiry neither my brother nor I have been indifferent, and it is at his suggestion that I have undertaken, as each part of the work is successively brought under examination, to note down and to submit to the Society of Antiquaries whatever may be thought worthy of being recorded in its Transactions.

The examination of the prehistoric hill-fort known as Hollingbury was undertaken during March and April, 1931, by the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Club, with the permission of the Brighton Corporation and with the sanction of Mr. B. H. Maclaren, Superintendent of Parks and Gardens. We also have to express our great gratitude to those Societies and individuals whose generous contributions made the undertaking possible, and to others who rendered valuable help by their own labour.

A preliminary excavation of this barrow was made in 1936 and an account of the work then undertaken, together with a detailed topographical description of the site, was published in this Journal for April 1937 (vol. xvii, p. 122). The admittedly tentative conclusions which could then be advanced regarding its date and its relationship to the characteristic Neolithic longbarrows were largely based on extrinsic evidence, and positive indications obtained during the excavation itself were not as definite as could be wished. In 1937 Sir Edmund Davis suggested that in view of the significant geographical situation of the barrow further investigation was desirable, and he very generously again agreed to be entirely responsible for the cost. Altogether the work occupied some eight weeks, and during the college vacation I had the valued assistance of Dr. S. Graham Brade-Birks, Head of the Department of Geology at the South-Eastern Agricultural College, Wye. Mr. H. B. Bescoby, Head of the Department of Surveying at Wye, and two of his students, Messrs. D. Vickers and H. Castel, very kindly prepared a contour plan of the barrow, upon which the general plan (pl. XLIX) is based. My best thanks are also due to Dr. A. J. E. Cave, Dr. J. Wilfrid Jackson, Mr. A. S. Kennard, Mr. B. H. St. J. O'Neil, and Mr. Stuart Piggott for their contributions to this report, and again to Mr. H. Read Gillett, Sir Edmund Davis's agent, for many kindnesses.

The sole object I had in view when I first sat down to write, I was to give you an account of a very singular and curious monument of antiquity at New Grange, in the county of Meath, in Ireland; and I meant to have confined this account to a mere description of particulars. But when I came to consider these particulars under reference to the general customs of times more remote than the highest antiquity this monument can be supposed to boast; that consideration opened a field for disquisitions of a much more general and extensive scope.

The first three seasons of a joint Anglo-Catalan research project in north-eastern Spain have concentrated on the Roman villa of Vilauba. It has been shown that the site was occupied for some nine centuries, but the most important discoveries have been the elucidation of substantial phases of occupation from the fifth to seventh centuries A.D., which included in the latest phase a large press building for olive oil. These findings have pointed to the problems of the transition from the Roman to the early medieval period, which have also been met in the field survey of the surrounding region. The medieval settlement pattern had emerged by the ninth or tenth centuries, but its relationship with the Roman pattern remains to be clearly established. Important discoveries have also been made about considerable geomorphological changes in the area, which can be dated to the post-Roman period. A range of techniques have been used in the survey, including recording of standing buildings, geophysical survey and surface collection, which, added to the environmental and pottery studies from the excavation, are shedding important light on the Roman and early medieval rural development of this part of Spain and on the western Mediterranean more generally.

The nave roof of the Norman church of St. Mary, Kempley, Gloucestershire, is hidden above a seventeenth-century ceiling. Recent study has shown the roof structure to be substantially original. The roof is described and its date considered against various dating schemes for the building. A preferred date of c. 1120 is proposed.

The following report forms a record of the excavations on the site of the Roman city at Silchester during the past year (1893), and includes an account of various explorations made in the previous year, which, for certain reasons, have not yet been described.

The work began last May, and was carried on until the month of October, but under considerable disadvantages from the great heat of the summer and want of rain, which hardened the soil to a degree that much interfered with the detection of foundations and rubbish pits. In spite of this hindrance a considerable acreage was examined.

In pursuance of its policy of making small exploratory excavations in as many as possible of the prehistoric sites near Brighton, the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Club examined the earthworks on Thundersbarrow Hill during the spring of 1932. This was very largely made possible by generous contributions from numerous individuals as well as from the Sussex Archaeological Society, in addition to which valuable assistance was rendered by Mr. G. P. Burstow, Mr. B. C. Hamilton, Mr. G. Holleyman, Mr. J. D. M. Stuart, and Miss T. Hawkins, in digging, surveying, and washing pottery. Thanks are also due to the land-owner, Mr. F. S. C. Bridger of Hove, and to the tenant, Captain Torr of Little Buckingham, Shoreham, for permission to carry out the work.

Great Yarmouth has been fortunate in its historians and archaeologists. There, can, for instance, be few towns in England boasting so useful a record of its past as Henry Manship's History of Great Yarmouth, edited by Charles John Palmer, F.S.A., in 1854. Manship's father, another Henry, was elected into the Corporation in 1550, and appears to have taken an active part in affairs connected with the Haven in 1560. The younger Henry was educated at the Free Grammar School, and, whilst still a schoolboy, laboured with his own hands at the fortifications. He was Town Clerk from 1579 to 1585, and continued to be a member of the Corporation until 1604. Thereafter, although sometimes at loggerheads with some of his contemporaries, he busied himself upon his history of the town, compiled from records, most of which have since been lost. The history was finished in 1619, and the Corporation voted Manship a gratuity of £50. He died in poverty in 1625.

This paper presents the results of a detailed analysis of surviving paintwork on the chancel arch, the carved animal heads and the figurative panel in the west porch at the Anglo-Saxon church of St Mary, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, UK. The context of the polychromy in relation to the ninth-century fabric of the church is assessed. The detailed results of the technical analysis are presented. The original scheme of painted decoration is described, including the newly discovered plant scroll painted on the arch. The results of the examination are evaluated, setting the polychrome decoration of the ninth-century church into its contemporary context in England and on the Continent, with special regard to both the technical and the artistic aspects.

The results of excavations carried out in 1972 and 1974 and the records of builders' and service trenches over nine years, combined with reports of past discoveries, make up a body of evidence for Kingsholm's use first as a pre-Flavian military site (or sites) of more than one phase covering c. 50 acres, then as a late or sub-Roman cemetery and later as the site of the late Saxon and later aula regis. The archaeological evidence for the palace is supported by an account of the documentary evidence for its history and topography. Specialist studies are offered of the classification and iconography of the decorated bronze cheekpiece of pre-Flavian cavalry helmet and of a furnished inhumation probably of the early fifth century A.D.