At Our Anniversary Meeting, or birthday party, this venerable Society celebrates St George's Day on the nearest convenient date for the 239th time since its royal charter was granted by Letters Patent in November 1751. We meet, after the formal but not unimportant business has been disposed of, to do three things: to witness and applaud the presentation of medals in recognition of valuable services to archaeology; to pass in quick review some of the outstanding features of the Society's year just past; and to allow the President to make observations on some more general matter that he thinks deserves the attention of the Fellowship. First, then, to our medallists.

Two new finds (see Exhibits at Ballots, p. 461) of Middle Bronze Age weapons help document a tradition of ceremonial weapons in Britain and neighbouring parts of the Continent. Two distinct though small groups are represented, one—the Caistor St Edmunds-Melle series—being named for the first time. It is suggested that both series emerged during the Acton Park stage (1500–1350 BC), the Plougrescant-Ommerschans type having been elaborated from the already deviant Kimberley-type dirks, whilst the Caistor St Edmunds-Melle series were merely modifications of standard dirk and rapier types. Reasons for the emergence of explicit ceremonial forms are seen to lie in changing ritual needs and these are presented against a longer history of the ceremonial and ritual uses of metalwork. The ceremonial types under detailed consideration ceased during the Taunton stage (1350–1200), a late example of the phenomenon being represented by an exaggerated spearhead.

The occasion that brings us together this morning might have been observed no less fittingly in Oxford or at Winchester. But Nowell Myres was above all—all through his long life—an antiquary: and St James's is the parish church ofthe Antiquaries, of the ‘Old Lady of Burlington House’, whom so many of us revere and serve, as Nowell did with such conspicuous distinction through a Fellowship that lasted all but sixty years. So it is good for us to be here.

Two important new metalwork groups were exhibited at a Society of Antiquaries ballot (4 May 1989, Needham 1989a). They contain both bronze and gold metalwork including some types that are rare, or as yet unique. Consideration of these finds, along with other associations of Penard to Wilburton date (1200–900 BC), leads to the conclusion that the Wallington complex is best subsumed within Penard (1200–1000 BC) and has minimal overlap with Wilburton. It is acknowledged that Wilburton material shows contrasting regional distributions, but this is seen as resulting from the nature of production and social organization during the tenth century BC. Some discussion is given to the character of hoards in the important period of change from Penard to Wilburton.

Maiden Castle, situated 3km south-west of the centre of Dorchester, Dorset, is probably the best known Iron Age hillfort in Britain. Excavations by Sir Mortimer Wheeler were published by the Society of Antiquaries in 1943, and although he may have considered this report as incomplete his vivid interpretations caught the public imagination so that the results have found their way into archaeological texts and children's history books alike. The vast number of well preserved monuments close to Maiden Castle are also well known and have been carefully catalogued (RCHM 1970; Woodward 1991). However, the many excavations undertaken by the Trust for Wessex Archaeology in the area since 1984 have revealed an unprecedented variety of sites which allows a comprehensive picture of prehistoric land use to be created, placing Maiden Castle in a uniquely researched archaeological context (fig. 1).

In August 1984 Mr James Rickett, using a metal detector adjacent to a public footpath in a wood near Dinnington, South Yorkshire, found a bronze torc. Recognizing it as an important find he promptly took it into Sheffield City Museum, Weston Park. Subsequently the landowners, Mr and Mrs J. H. Morrell, generously donated the torc to the Museum (Accession no. SHEFM:1984.515). Later a careful survey was made of the wood by staff of Sheffield City Museums and the South Yorkshire Archaeology Unit.

By the end of the Roman period, and largely as the result of late Romano-British activity, somewhat over one-half of the tidal wetlands of the inner Severn Estuary between Gloucester and Awre had been embanked and drained. Little reclamation occurred during the medieval period, but early modern-modern times witnessed substantial further activity, leaving scant active salt marsh today. The Romano-British reclamations are recognized on the basis of archaeological evidence and, where direct evidence of settlement is lacking, by the degree to which the reclaimed areas are depressed below the level of the contemporary active marshes along the tidal river. Despite the similarity in the amount of available wetland on both banks, most of the Romano-British reclamations are to be found on the left bank of the Severn, and most of these carry a settlement directly on the alluvium. This distribution pattern points to significant differences in the organization and use of land between the two banks of the river and, when combined with other evidence, suggests that wetland reclamation on the left bank was mostly a feature of the development of large villa estates, with the alluvial settlements representing substantial, outlying farmsteads. Iron-making based on rich ores imported from the Forest of Dean occurred at all the wetland and near-wetland settlements on the two banks, and locally may have taken place on an industrial scale. At Awre on the right bank, however, an early iron-making tradition seems to have survived to a late Roman date.

Many of the ash chests collected by Henry Blundell for Ince Blundell Hall (Lancashire) came from the Mattei collection. By comparing the engravings in Monumenta Mattheiana (1778) with those published in 1803 by Blundell we can see what restorations and other changes were carried out between these dates. However, in one respect these changes are not as radical as it might seem, since apparent changes to the inscriptions are in fact merely the result of mistakes made in the production of the Monumenta Mattheiana engravings.

In the past century there have been a number of proposed reconstructions of the First Church built in Venice to house the relics of Saint Mark, the Apostle. The proposal which follows differs from its predecessors in identifying the survival of the very large bulk of the original church. It holds that the ancient structure stands encapsulated within the surviving fabric (fig. 1) and thereby rediscovers, largely extant, the greatest Byzantine church of the Middle Ages, completed some time between 832 and 836 for Doge Giovanni Participacio (fig. 2). That church was generally held to have been destroyed by fire in 976, but rebuilt on similar lines by 978 only to have been taken down and rebuilt in its present form between 1063 and 1071 under Doge Domenico Contarini, the work continuing under Doge Vitale Falier. In the following account the Participaci church is described as the First and the Contarini-Falier church the Second. The intermediate reconstruction (976–8) is herein taken to have been a repair rather than a rebuilding. Finding that this first building still exists hidden within the second this paper suggests social reasons for its supposed loss.

A reliquary casket known from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century records as that of St Winifrid had been lost by the mid-nineteenth century from the church at Gwytherin in Clwyd. A drawing attributed to Edward Lluyd, published here for the first time, suggests that it was most probably of eighth- or early ninth-century date and was influenced by Anglo-Saxon (JG-C) or Irish (LB) models, if not an actual import into North Wales.

In the Beauchamp Chapel of St Mary's, Warwick, lies the body of Lord Denbigh, son of Robert, Earl of Leicester, and of his wife, Lettice Knollys (pl. XXXVIIa). The tomb, unlike those of his parents, his uncle, Ambrose Dudley, or the original denizen of the chapel, Richard Beauchamp, warrants little mention in guides and histories, and yet the child who was buried there was for the course of his short life one of the greatest heirs in England, and his tomb embodies the contradictions and ambiguities of the English Renaissance attitude to children.

After a short, general review of medieval shrine types, a particular category is defined and examined: ‘tomb-shrines’: which were a form of shrine-base with round, window-like openings, constructed over the pre-existing grave of a saint. The archaeological and documentary evidence (including evidence from drawings and painted glass) for tomb-shrines is examined, and the few extant structures are described and discussed. In the light of these findings an important fragment of thirteenth-century Purbeck work from Winchester Cathedral is reassessed: it is argued that it derived from the tomb-of St Swithun. This stood on the site of the saint's original grave until the Reformation, and was a focus of veneration that was as important as the main reliquary behind the high altar within the cathedral itself.

In the story of the survival and revival of glass-painting in post-Reformation England, York and Oxford play a significant part. York was especially important because it supported three important artists who helped to maintain the city as a major glass-painting centre, namely Bernard Dinninckhoff (fl. 1585-c. 1620), Henry Gyles (1645–1709), and William Peckitt (1731–95). Oxford's part lay in its patronage of glass-painters. Various colleges patronized foreign and native artists, in particular Abraham and Bernard van Linge, Henry Gyles, William Price and William Peckitt.

The undocumented memorial (pl. XIIa) to Richard Paget (d. 1636) and his two children in St Mary's, Skirpenbeck, some 12 miles east-north-east of York, has hitherto received little or no attention from scholars, other than a brief mention by Nikolaus Pevsner and a flawed description and conjectural attribution by K. A. Esdaile. Yet its form and its remarkable inscriptions, combined with a puzzling incongruity ofexecution, present the art historian with a number of intriguing problems. Among these are questions relating to its design and construction, the date of its erection, and the style and possible authorship of its ingenious commemorative verses. Detailed consideration is given to such matters in another paper by the writer, however, a brief résumé of them may be helpful before discussion of the wider questions raised here: the iconography of the monument and its relationships both with others of the period and with contemporary opinions.

As the intensive study of the medieval rolls of arms continues it is becoming ever more clear that, even in the thirteenth century, the general rolls were drawing material from existing collections—often in blocks of entries. One of the features of many of the general rolls, both in England and on the continent, is a section devoted to the arms of emperors and kings; sometimes with a selection of oriental and African potentates (Appendix I). Such series were also used in decoration; as in the windows formerly in the great hall of the Bishop's Palace at Lincoln, in wood carvings at St Mary's, Barton on Humber, and the early fifteenth-century painted ceiling in St Alban's Abbey. These appear, in most of the rolls, as self-contained units, and vary in number and content. There was, therefore, no single source from which the compilers drew their material. In the present study the author proposes to examine some of the problems and to introduce two newly discovered English medieval rolls of arms relevant to the subject.

The marble monument of Tobias Rustat in Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge, has never been attributed to a designer or sculptor on documentary evidence. From a review of Rustat's career and connections, it can be concluded that Grinling Gibbons and his studio were responsible for it, with parts carved by Arnold Quellin and possibly John Nost.

Ashmole MS 1121 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, contains details of six Stall Plates which it would appear were removed from St George's Chapel following Degradation from the Order of the Garter. Of these, three are those of Companions whose names do not appear in the generally accepted lists of those who were formally degraded.

Silver has generally been valued second only to gold from at least as early as 2000BC. A material which is highly prized becomes a status symbol and cheaper imitations find a ready market. Craftsmen very early developed methods of applying thin layers of silver onto base metal as an economical use of precious metal, whether for its decorative effect or, particularly in the case of plated coins, to deceive the customer. Unfortunately, silver plating is less commonly preserved than gold plating, and corrosion at the interface between the silver and base metal may destroy the evidence of how the plating was applied. The situation is complicated because many of the white metal surfaces on pieces labelled as ‘silvered’ are in fact produced by tin, or more rarely, by arsenic. Nevertheless, there are still sufficient surviving examples to indicate that silver plating has a long history during which techniques were developed to give better results and to allow more economical use of the precious metal.