When I addressed you from this ancient and honourable chair at the end of my first year of office, I recalled some of the striking variations there have been in the length of tenure of its occupants. In contrasting, for example, the two-year term of Frederic Ouvry (1876–8) with the thirty-four years of Lord Aberdeen (1812–46) and thirty years of Lord Stanhope (1846–76) that immediately preceded it, I showed there was already a precedent for a term shorter than the five-year stretch that has been customary for the last eighty years, and foreshadowed that now in the time of our greatly expanded Society there might be reasonable cause for invoking it. And accordingly, exactly one hundred years after Ouvry decided to decline re-election after holding the President's office for a mere two years, I for my part have decided to mark this particular centenary by not standing for reelection after holding it for three. I am aware that in doing so I have myself created a new precedent, or rather re-created an old one. However, this is but a single and personal decision, and unless and until Council and the Society resolve to shorten the maximum tenure of five years laid down in Statutes, Chapter VI, Section V, there can be no obligation on any who come after me to follow it. The decision has not been reached lightly, and any feeling of relinquishing a burden is offset by very real sentiments of regret, compensated only by the certainty that what is served above all is the best interest of the Society. And this is my opportunity to thank the Society for all the support and friendship extended to me throughout these last three years by the Fellowship at large and especially by members of Council and of the various committees, whose tolerant understanding has been a constant help to me in all our deliberations. In particular I would acknowledge the debt which not only I but all our Fellows owe to my brother officers and, not least, to the Assistant Secretary and Librarian and all our small staff, for their unremitting services in furthering the many-sided activities of this great institution.

We are met today to do honour to the memory of Dame Joan Evans, Gold Medallist and former President of the Society of Antiquaries, President also of the Royal Archaeological Institute and the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society; Honorary Fellow of St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur; a distinguished scholar and author; a very notable collector of jewels and gems; a generous benefactor of many good causes, of many individual students and scholars; to many of us above all a loyal and generous friend.

A survey of progress in Mycenaean archaeology during the century since Schliemann's address to the Society on 22 March 1877 shows that we now have a coherent picture of material culture and historical events in Late Bronze Age Greece between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Having outstripped Schliemann's faith in Homer and Arthur Evans's hypothesis of a Minoan conquest from Crete, Mycenaean archaeology can now be traced back to the Middle Bronze Age before the introduction of the shaft graves, when the Achaeans had already made contact by sea with Egypt and other advanced centres in the East Mediterranean. The volcanic eruption of c. 1500 B.C, which left the mainland unscathed, enabled them to expand their influence and power to Crete and throughout the Aegean so that by the thirteenth century Mycenaean culture was ubiquitous, though political and territorial divisions remained. Finds of Linear B tablets enable us to form a distinct picture of the political, social, and economic life of the period. The close relationships between Helladic and Minoan art and religion have been systematically studied, while the Homeric poems may describe only one episode, the siege of Troy, in a series of attempts by the Achaeans to establish themselves on the coast of Asia Minor during the temporary collapse of Hittite power. By the end of the thirteenth century Mycenaean centres were being abandoned and destroyed, partly because of the breakdown of their trading links in the East Mediterranean with centres overrun by the Land-and-Sea Peoples, and the civilization as a whole had collapsed.

This description of the structure and function of the salt-making site at Peldon, together with comparable evidence from other sites, demonstrates a degree of specialization within Iron Age society with interesting consequences for any view of social structure. The possibility of trade in salt, over and above production for local needs, must also affect our view of the extent to which economic factors could over-ride the basically tribal organization of Britain at this time.

The present phase of the rescue excavations caused by the construction of the Cirencester relief road has ended and this interim report includes details of excavations during 1973–6. Work outside the town on the roads, cemeteries, and a building shows extensive use and a new alignment for the Fosse Way. The Bath Gate has been located and partly examined. Work within the town has added to the understanding of the military occupation, revised the position of some streets and found a new public building south of the basilica. In insula XII a farm has been identified. The north aisle wall of St. John's Hospital has been found, showing it to be a hall with nave and two aisles.

Trajan's engineering works on the Danube as part of his Dacian campaign of A.D. 101–106 are commemorated on monuments and coins as part of imperial propaganda. Trajan's Column shows an unrecognized depiction of canal-building on the Danube, next to a supply-base scene. Coin imagery illustrates the use of the Danube as a line of communication and the enrolment of the great river on the side of the Romans in their conquest of Dacia.

Fragments of an applied brooch found among the tiles of the collapsed roof of the Roman bath building in Lower Thames Street, London, were exhibited to the Society in March 1969, and they again raised the question of the date of this type of brooch. The applied saucer brooch in Anglo-Saxon England has often been discussed in connection with the cast saucer brooch, and as the two types are very similar in appearance, it would be as well at the outset to remind ourselves of their several distinguishing features. The Anglo-Saxon applied brooch consists of a disc or back plate of metal, usually bronze and concave, but sometimes flat; the spring lug and pin catch at the back are often separate pieces of metal fixed through slots in the disc, and the pin is of iron or occasionally bronze. On top of the back plate is fastened, by means of some adhesive material, a disc of thin, gilt, bronze sheet, decorated with a repoussé design. There was sometimes an intervening packing of perishable material no longer traceable. A circular band of bronze is fastened on the edge at an angle to the disc to form a rim. When found, the rim and decorative plate have usually become detached, and have often been lost altogether. It is not surprising, therefore, that an alternative method was adopted to make a more durable construction in one piece; the base plate with spring lug and pin catch, together with the decorative surface and rim, were all cast in one piece, so forming the saucer brooch. This was a development of the applied brooch, but the two types continued in use at the same time, and as one design often occurs on both types, they are usually considered together. As there are very few saucer brooches on the Continent, however, possibly contemporary specimens are mainly excluded from the present review, nor will any attention be paid to the larger applied brooches found almost exclusively in this country, many of which are ornamented with animals in Style I and belong mainly to the sixth century.

Excavations at St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, showed that the site was occupied in the second century by the Roman municipal tile works which was abandoned by the fourth century. The ruined church which now stands on the site shows two successive building phases pre-dating a Norman arcade; excavation established part of the plan of this late Anglo-Saxon church and also uncovered part of the tenth- to thirteenth-century cemetery. Documentary evidence suggests that this was the ‘new minster’ built by Æthelflæd and Æthelred of Mercia. Taking other historical and archaeological evidence into consideration, Gloucester can be argued to have had, in the late ninth to early tenth century, a special significance for the rulers of Mercia.

Specialist reports are offered on the stratified medieval pottery, and on the inscribed bell-mould from the tenth-century church.

Excavations in the church and churchyard at Asheldham revealed a complex series of building phases preceding the existing structure. Domestic occupation of the middle and late Saxon periods was followed by a timber building, interpreted as a church, with associated graves. The early structures were built alongside and aligned on a Roman road, and the cemetery associated with the first (Norman) masonry church encroached on this road, causing its diversion. The excavation of this key site has demonstrated the likely Roman date of an extensive road and field system which survives throughout the Dengie peninsula. A preliminary discussion of the historic landscape and its future potential for study is offered.