Respectful as I must be, and am, of the traditional forms for the transaction of our Society's business, I feel nevertheless that some change is desirable in the order of events at our Anniversary meeting. It does not seem to me fitting that the presentation of medals in recognition of services of high value to scholarship should come at the end of our proceedings, as a kind of appendix to them. These awards should stand as the foremost event of the evening. Of course, in these rooms tradition must be invoked to justify innovation. To say: nec omnia apud priores meliora; that times change, and not always for the worse, is a risky thing in this company.But our practice in earlier years, in the 1930s, was altered more than once; so the tradition can be said to be one of change. Accordingly, before we go on to anything else, I invite those present to prepare to mark with their congratulations and applause the award of the Frend medal and of the Society's gold medal.

A small chalk figurine from Withemsea, North Humberside, is identified as the finest example of a distinctive group found only in the territory of the Parisi. Between forty and fifty figurines are now known and many represent a warrior, usually carrying a sword on his back. Most of the figurines come from Iron Age or Roman sites, and all the swords are shown in scabbards suspended about their midpoint—a fashion known in northern Britain in the Iron Age. The warrior represented is presumably a god, mythical figure or ancestor, and the figurines may well have had a ritual or magical function.

The archaeology of Dyfed in the first millennia B.C. and A.D. is largely that of defended enclosures. The distribution of these is described. This suggests the existence of three zones of defended enclosures, reflecting differences in environment and socio-economic systems, particularly differences in the relative productivity of different areas. The results of recent excavations are described and discussed in terms of chronology, economy, function and status. The excavations at Llawhaden—which have included the total excavation of three small enclosures—provide a key sequence, covering the whole period in question, with which other excavations can be compared. Throughout much of the period differences in the development of settlements can be related to the environmental and socio-economic differences between zones. In terms of function and status, it can be suggested that the majority of totally excavated defended enclosures were high status sites.

The Thetford Treasure of late Roman gold jewellery and silver utensils was published in 1983 by Catherinejohns and Timothy Potter, who believe it to be connected with the cult of Faunus, an ancient Latian god hitherto unattested in Roman Britain. There do appear to be iconographical links between the jewellery and several of the inscriptions, yet a number of inscriptions would, in another fourthcentury context, have been considered Christian. Johns and Potter have rejected such identification. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine these particular inscriptions and also to investigate the possible use for the silver implements in the Treasure. Such examination suggests a Christian element. An attempt is made to explain the presence of this component in an otherwise pagan hoard against the background of religious instability in the second half of the fourth century.

The first three seasons of excavation at Nicopolis ad Istrum have established that the castellum, a strongly defended enclosure of 5.7 ha., represents the site of the late Roman city of the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. In addition to a well-preserved early Roman gate and road, excavations have uncovered a fourth-century building, a sixth-century Christian basilica, workshops and a late Roman gate. Finds include reused architectural material from the Roman city, early and late Roman pottery, glass, seeds and bone, three inscriptions and a wide range of small finds in bone, iron, bronze and gold.

A silver-gilt ornament of Insular origin from a Viking age burial in Norway is here identified for the first time as the pin-head of a ring brooch of pseudo-penannular form. The decoration and typology of the pin-head are discussed in relation to Insular metalwork, and its iconography is considered in the context of Early Christian art. The pin-head and an associated ringed pin are dated to the eighth or ninth century.

This paper examines the history of one of the most important schemes of eighteenth-century painted glass in England: the east window of Ely Cathedral by the Dublin-born James Pearson. Although it was never completed, remains of this window have been preserved in the cathedral and in the bishop's palace. The Ely work remains Pearson's earliest recorded and most substantial commission, and a reassessment is made of its significance in his long career as a glass-painter. Changes in the proposed iconography are studied in the light of contemporary attitudes to imagery and the place of the painted glass scheme is analysed in the complex and controversial restoration history of Ely Cathedral. The paper demonstrates that eighteenth-century painted glass played an important role in the adaptation of cathedrals to contemporary liturgical requirements: at Ely, it largely determined the placing and layout of the new choir.

The Museum of English Rural Life at Reading University was for some years interested in a hut on Bucklebury Common, Berkshire, which was occupied as a workshop by the Lailey family who used it for the manufacture of wooden bowls which found a ready market. When the last of these craftsmen bowlturners died without male heirs in 1958 and the workshop was likely to be demolished, the Museum took steps both to secure one of the primitive pole-lathes used by the Laileys in their craft, which is now displayed in the Museum, and also to make a photographic and measured record of the hut itself and its contents. From this record, which the Museum has kindly allowed us to use in preparing this article, it is evident that the hut itself had been a structure of considerable architectural interest. Part of it had a deeply sunken floor which had carried the pole-lathes, and was similar in size and shape to an Anglo- Saxon Grubenhaus of the pagan period. Although the walls and roof were clearly of later date, they could well have taken the place of much earlier predecessors. The purpose of this article is thus to draw attention to the continued use into the present century not only of the bowltumer's primitive craft at Bucklebury but of its housing in a hut which probably began as an Anglo-Saxon Grubenhaus. As such its structure and furnishing may throw light on features that have sometimes puzzled students of excavated Anglo-Saxon Grubenhäuser elsewhere.