A recent article (Lawler, 1980) mentioned a common misunderstanding in archaeological circles which this note attempts to correct: ‘The (Runnymede) piles selected will be subjected to destructive testing (i.e. dendrochronology) to gain information concerning growth patterns, habitat and tree-felling patterns…’ In fact, dendrochronology is not a destructive dating method in the sense of radiocarbon analysis, where the wood sample is burnt up and completely lost. Instead, the section removed for tree-ring analysis remains undamaged and can easily be restored to the beam or pile for conservation without any detriment to the timber's display potential.

Radiocarbon dating is probably the greatest contribution that has been made to archaeology by the physical sciences, and we owe its existence to the genius of Willard Frank Libby, who died in Los Angeles at the age of 71 years on 8 September 1980. His death is a loss both to archaeology and, because of the breadth of his scientific interests and achievements, to science at large.

The stirrup helped a more heavily armoured rider to mount a bigger horse; it is considered to have permitted the shock encounter with couched lance and, by offering lateral support, to have encouraged the development of the sabre; it provided a top-heavy armoured warrior with more stability in the saddle, and it gave archers the possibility to rise and turn in the saddle, as well as furnishing them with a firmer base from which to shoot.

My original title deliberately contained several layers of ambiguity. First, my paper is official and ‘on the record’. Secondly, it refers incidentally to RCHM'S ‘track record’ and makes a few observations about the Commission's achievements and failures. Thirdly, and most importantly, it discusses the nature and future of that part of the national record of England's cultural heritage for which the Commission has the prime responsibility. That responsibility, implicit in the original 1908 Royal Warrant, and made explicit in its revised Warrant of 1963, involves the acquisition, storage and dissemination of information about the country's historic monuments and constructions in the widest sense of the phrase. The development of such a national record was envisaged by those who, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, agitated for the setting up of a Commission-type body. The record was to be the basis on which such a body could carry out its most pressing function, that is to assess the nation's monumental heritage in order to advise on what is worthy of preservation. A whole history could be written on how and why things turned out differently, but what I want to do here is to adumbrate the new framework for the changing emphases in the role of the Commission in the later twentieth century.

In his account of the changes made to the figure of the Cerne Giant by successive cleanings and restorations during the period 1764–1980, Leslie Grinsell refers to the curious lack of documentary references to the Giant before the middle of the eighteenth century, and also makes it clear that, because of the alterations to the figure, dating on stylistic evidence must necessarily be very tentative (Grinsell, 1980). It is the purpose of this article to review some of the major sources of information relating to Cerne Abbas and to consider this remarkable absence of any mention of the Giant. The complete silence of all the documentary sources is of course totally negative evidence and cannot of itself disprove the existence of the Giant; there is no reason why he should have been mentioned in many of the documents since he lay on no boundary and provided no incom e for landowners or their tenants. But the total absence of any reference in all the numerous documents of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries must raise a doubt as to whether the figure was there at all; at least it seems likely that the grass had been allowed to grow over him during the later Middle Ages and that he was not re-cut until after the mid-seventeenth century, and a re-cut figure might bear only a vague resemblance to the original, particularly if this had been covered by grass for many years.