The Lake District mountains have long been known as the source of Neolithic artefacts belonging to petrological group VI. The study of their wider distribution has played a central part in investigations of the ‘axe trade’. Unfortunately, it is not clear that all Group VI axes originated in this area and in any case it is now known that there is no direct relationship between different fall-off patterns and the processes that led to their creation. At the same time, it is not possible to compare work at Neolithic flint mines with current knowledge of how non-flint axes were distributed. Recent fieldwork, in the wake of a survey carried out by the National Trust and the Cumbria and Lancashire Archaeological Unit, has tried to investigate the ways in which stoneworking at Great Langdale was organized and the relationship between methods of exploiting the raw materials on site and changes in the distribution of Cumbrian axes across Britain as a whole. This has involved experimental archaeology, technological analysis, environmental investigations and small-scale excavation. This work has resulted in the recognition of two distinct modes of production. These are discussed in relation to the environmental history of the surrounding region.

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.

At least sixteen whole or partial circular lead tanks have been found in Roman Britain, several of them decorated with Christian symbols. Over the past fifty years different uses have been ascribed to these vessels, some secular, some religious. The objective of this paper is two-fold: to examine the motifs used in the decoration of the tanks and to attempt to discover the purpose of the vessels. It is proposed that the tanks are all Christian objects and that they were used in the baptismal ceremony for the footwashing rite, a practice carried out in various parts of the Christian world at least up to the sixth century.

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.

Symbolic perception of the church door in early English exegetical writings and in medieval liturgical practice is illustrated and discussed as the wider context of a proposal that the arched iron strip at the top of the twelfth-century church door at Stillingfleet, North Yorkshire, represents the rainbow of Noah's Flood, perceived as a reminder ofjudgement past and of judgement still to come, and as a symbol of the covenant between God and humanity. The possibility is considered that on other surviving early medieval church-doors too, the rainbow shape, even if primarily functional or dictated by the shape of the door-opening, and notwithstanding the absence of other figural imagery, may have been recognized as an emblem of the covenant, basis of all church-sanctioned contracts, aptly dislayed on the threshold—where various liturgical or other formal actions had their setting—of the sacred spaces of the domus dei.

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 thirteenth-century west portal of Higham Ferrers Church, Northamptonshire, despite its rural setting, has claims to represent international and metropolitan taste in its ornament and general layout. The sculptured portal was originally part of a larger decorative and iconographic scheme, the coherence of which was drastically impaired in the rebuilding of the west porch, tower, and spire in the 1630s. Fragments of what seem likely to have been major sculptural groups were then built into the westface of the tower. Thefigurescenes, framed in medallions, which fill the left and rightportion of the tympanum of the portal are among the best preserved thirteenth-century sculptures in England, but the identification of the individual scenes is fraught with difficulty nor is it easy to judge the level at which the sculptures were intended to communicate. Contemporary illustrated Psalters, designed for personal devotional use, may provide the key, but curious symptoms of seventeenth-century interference also require interpretation.

Although it has generally been maintained that chivalric combat depended solely on strength and endurance, there is ample evidence that skill, dexterity, speed and control were also required. This paper attempts to reconstruct the techniques used in foot combats, tourneying on horseback and jousting (especially tilting)—in England, France, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula—on the basis of narratives and technical treatises, concerning sword and lance play, written between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

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.

Examination of the account books and other papers, now chiefly deposited in the Record Office of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, has enabled a chronology to be prepared of the long-drawn-out construction and decoration of the eighteenth-century west range of Stoneleigh Abbey. The contributions of the four architects principally involved—Francis and William Smith, William Hiorn and Timothy Lightoler—have been assessed, together with those of the more prominent craftsmen. In particular, the process by which the hall (or saloon) achieved its final form in 1763-5 is explored and suggestions made about the authorship of its remarkable stucco decoration.

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.