An iron sword of anthropoid-hilted type (pl. XXIV, 1, 3) was found in 1944 at Shouldham in West Norfolk, some five miles east of the margin of the Fens, and since 1949 has been on loan to Norwich Castle Museum. It is here published by kind permission of the owner, Mr W. R. O. Woodward. The sword was discovered while gravel was being dug in an arable field about 200 feet south-east of the site of the medieval church of St. Margaret, which fell into ruins after the Reformation. The sword was found at a depth of 1 foot 6 inches lying across the chest of an extended human skeleton inside the boundary of the medieval churchyard, as graves of that period were found adjacent though they had not disturbed this pre-Christian inhumation. There is no indication either on the ground or on air-photographs that a barrow had formerly existed, and the burial is probably to be regarded as an isolated interment.

The overall length of the sword, to the end of the branching arms, is now 21⅜ in. (54 cm.), but this has been slightly diminished by corrosion. The straight-edged blade is 16⅜ in. (44 cm.) long and the hilt measures 3¼ in. (8 cm.). At both ends of the hilt curving arms of round cross-section branch outwards to end in knobs, now of unequal size owing to differential rusting. The surface of the grip bears traces of transverse ribbing, perhaps imitating that found in bronze on other examples of the type.

Among the objects exhibited between December 3rd, 1954, and January 23rd, 1955, at the exhibition in the Hotel Libert at Alençon, organized by the Archaeological Society of the Orne, to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Empire, was an Italian helmet of bronze, that formed part of the Napoleonic relics of Count Le Marois. I owe it to M. Le Marois that I am able to publish this interesting object.

There is a tradition that the object was found on the field of the battle of Cannae in the presence of General Bonaparte, who gave it to his aide-de-camp Le Marois. However, we know that Bonaparte never visited the celebrated field of battle. Also the catalogue of the Alençon exhibition lends no countenance to this tradition and gives the following information: ‘this helmet was found in excavations made in Italy in the presence of General Bonaparte’. An Italian origin is certain and, leaving aside the warlike provenance of Cannae, it may be accepted that the piece was found in the course of excavations, very probably in a grave. If it is not absolutely improbable that Bonaparte was present at the discovery, this is only a mere hypothesis; the helmet could quite as well have been offered to him on another occasion.

In the summer and autumn of 1910 Postinspektor Schild found a small cemetery of the Middle La Tène Period (Reinecke, Phase C) on his property at Munich—Obermenzing, Upper Bavaria. Eight graves were discovered by him; one, if not two of them were cremation burials. A number of the graves yielded no goods or were at best but meagrely furnished and had either previously been disturbed or had belonged to poor people. Later, in 1913 and in 1914, G. von Merhart (on what must have been one of his earliest excavations) continued work there with the aid of Schild. Nine more graves were discovered, two being cremation, the others inhumation burials. It is of interest that the three richest burials all housed cremations. Apart from two graves found by Merhart, this cemetery is as yet unpublished, though references to it have appeared in various periodicals.

The material from the site is in the possession of the Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Staatssammlung, Munich, and I am more than indebted to its director, Doktor O. Kunkel, for his kindness in allowing me to publish the grave from this cemetery which forms the theme of this paper. My thanks are also due to two other friends, Doktor W. Krämer and Doktor H. Müller-Karpe for help on a number of points and for placing the respective records of the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege and of the Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Staatssammlung at my disposal.

The Belgae have, in the last generation, played an increasingly important part in the archaeology of Britain in the pre-Roman Iron Age. In general the term has been confined to the two groups of invaders, who practised cremation and whose cemeteries have been traced over a wide area in the south-east and south of England. Beyond this area Belgic influence, in various forms, has been postulated in a number of districts. The Belgic origin of the invaders who practised cremation is not in doubt and it would be superfluous at this stage to argue the case once more. The nature of the Belgic influences traced beyond the area of the cremation cemeteries is more debatable, but the present essay is not intended to enter into that question. It is concerned with an earlier period and earlier invasions, which also have a right to be termed Belgic. The ultimate origin of the Continental Belgae will not be discussed, nor do the invasions considered necessarily cover all those settlements to which the term Belgic should be applied. As will be seen the traditional Irish accounts appear to demand a Belgic settlement in Britain at a date earlier than the oldest groups now identified. This is a question that can hardly be discussed to full advantage until a far wider conspectus of archaeological material is available both on the Continent and in these islands. In the meantime the question of a Belgic invasion of Britain in the Late Bronze Age is one that must remain open.

When the Saxons from the mainland of Europe sailed up the Thames around the middle of the 5th century A.D. to lay the foundation-stone for the Anglo-Saxon Empire, they brought with them a signum sacre which has been handed down to us as the decoration of an urn from the burial-ground at Lackford in Suffolk. This consists of the figure of a horse, against which at the rear is a swastika (fig, 1, 1). Already at that time this sign had clearly a long history—a similar combination, closely related in style, is known to us from the first half of the last millennium B.C.; at that time it represented the Northern idea of the movement or journey of the ‘divine’ sun (fig. 1, 2), which idea has been brought down to us in plastic form from more than five hundred years earlier in the sun-chariot from Trundholm on Zealand.

Prehistorians have unreservedly extended the Early Iron Age in territories north of the Roman Empire to include, in addition to a pre-Roman Iron Age, a Roman Iron Age during which the native barbarism evolved without a break though not unaffected by the Empire. That a Late Iron Age continued in Scotland, as in Scandinavia, during post-Roman times has been less readily realized. Professor Childe nominally ended his Prehistory of Scotland with the 4th century A.D. and spoke of an unbridged chasm thereafter, four or five centuries long, to which few and undecisive relics were attributable. The extent of archaeological perplexity 30 years ago was such that J. G. Callander maintained that Skara Brae represented the same Iron Age culture as the brochs and earth-houses. Following the studies of brochs and wheel-houses by Lindsay Scott and Lethbridge, which agreed that they formed a single culture datable to the first three centuries A.D., the latter wrote recently that the culture of the Western Isles between the 3rd century and the 9th ‘is completely unknown and I think unsought’.