The Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania started its ninth season at Ur on 1st November 1930, and continued in the field until 20th March 1931. The season was a long one and a larger number of workmen than usual was employed, the average for the first three and a half months being 280 and for the remainder of the time 200; the amount of actual excavation done was in consequence greater than in any previous year.

Chastleton Camp, or Chastleton Barrow (pl. LIV, 1 and 2), as it is sometimes called, is situated at the south-east end of the parish, which projects like some huge spur from the north-west edge of the county and from the line of the road which on either side of the base of the spur for a short distance divides Oxfordshire from Gloucestershire on the one hand and from Warwickshire on the other. This road is an age-long trackway running diagonally across England by way of the Jurassic Belt from the Cotswolds to Northamptonshire, and is fringed by many remains of prehistoric man, in addition to the Rollright Stones and the dolmen known as the Whispering Knights. Along it must have moved the invaders of the early Iron Age to their conquest of the Midlands, establishing a line of strongholds of which Chastleton must in its original condition have been a formidable example.

In 1928 by courteous permission of Mr. Badcock, the owner, the Oxford University Archaeological Society, under the supervision of Mr. R. T. Lattey, was able to examine a site in a field bounded on the west by the road leading from Radley village to Abingdon and on the south by a second road leading eastwards towards Radley station. There, on the wall of a disused gravelpit, holes filled with earth had produced evidence of human occupation. Exploration of some of these resulted in the discovery of a series of trenches, the relation of which to one another could not be exactly determined owing to the limited area available for investigation. One piece of trench ran with a somewhat north-easterly trend up to the northern edge of the field, with a recessed pit about 4½ ft. across at one point, while a second longer stretch, after running in a north-westerly direction for a few yards, turned almost at right angles towards the south-west, and some distance farther on, at the point where the excavations had to cease, appeared to be bending southwards.

On 28th November 1929 our Fellow Mr. Lawrence E.Tanner exhibited before the Society a sword, now preserved in the museum in the Undercroft of Westminster Abbey, which through his good offices had recently been cleaned and put in order (pls. lvii and lviii, I ). At the same time he offered with all due caution the suggestion that this might be the sword used at the funeral of Henry V which is mentioned in the Sacrist's Account Roll for 1422–3 as having been delivered to the keeper of the vestry together with ‘the whole armour of a man’.

A Trench for an outfall sewer in Thorpe Hall Avenue, Southchurch, in 1929, followed by excavation in the adjoining marshland in 1930, disclosed a new lacustrine site associated with pottery of Hallstatt and later dates. Complete exposure was not possible then, but results of archaeological interest were obtained, which are summarized briefly here; full details and references are recorded elsewhere.