May I take this my first opportunity to thank the Fellowship for their kindness and confidence in electing me President of this ancient and eminent Society, a Society which, after at least two centuries of existence, remains fully involved and influential in all the different disciplines and endeavours that are our concern? I had the privilege of taking office from Dr. A. J. Taylor, a scholar of high repute, particularly in the field of medieval strongholds, to whom all antiquaries, and many others, remain indebted for his achievements in difficult times while Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments. He watched over the affairs of our Society with awareness and devotion, to the end that he left a sodality in good heart, unburdened by anxieties. For this, naturally I am grateful to him, and in such context it is a pleasure to me to record that during Arnold's Presidency, an eminent and respected historian, whom we all know but shall be nameless, remarked that he believed the reputation of this Society never stood higher than it does in this present decade. Let us not be coy about accepting credit given, and I think due! Looking at the Treasurer, I suggest it bears interest!

In 1878 the Society of Antiquaries, acknowledging the need for the protection of prehistoric monuments, delegated the Revd. W. C. Lukis and Sir Henry Dryden to the Netherlands to document the megalithic chamber tombs, or hunebedden, of Drente. In the face of well-meaning but erratic local ‘restoration’, Lukis and Dryden produced plans, descriptions and drawings of forty tombs and pottery from them. Although these remained unpublished, the copies sent to Assen helped to establish the high standard of A. E. van Giffen's Atlas and description of The Hunebeds in the Netherlands (1925, 1927).

The present report covers the fourth and fifth seasons of excavation on the Ilôt de l'Amirauté at Carthage. Evidence from a borehole suggests that the pre-fourth-century B.C. sand previously taken for ‘natural’ may be a 5-m. thick fill above a level containing pottery. The later Punic sequence seems to indicate that the island and circular harbour were not made until the construction of the stone shipsheds in the late third or early second century B.C. The earth and timber ramps of these shipsheds were discovered with barnacles and probable ships’ nails lying on their surface. Much new evidence for the superstructure of the shipsheds was also found and an attempt has been made to reconstruct their appearance. Evidence for the Roman monumental rebuilding of the island in c. A.D. 200 has also been increased to the point where reconstructions can be attempted, and a large body of new information has been obtained for the structural sequence on the island from c. A.D. 200 to 700. Uncertainties remain over the interpretation of its function throughout the Roman period, although the rebuilding c. A.D. 200 might be associated with the creation of the African corn-fleet, the Classis Commodiana, in A.D. 186; and the site was possibly known as forum Karthag(inis) in the late fourth century and ‘the maritime agora’ in the time of Justinian.

Apart from further small-scale work, the present excavations are concluded; some further study of the early environmental sequence in the harbour area will be carried out in the next two years. A fifth and final interim report is planned to cover the excavations since 1976 at the north side of the Circular Harbour.

Recent excavations have added considerably to our knowledge of the lower walled city in the Roman period, both in terms of internal structures (mainly houses) and of the sequence of the defences. Much, however, still remains to be learned about the early development and layout of the lower town, while the exact nature of the defensive system is imperfectly understood. Evidence is gradually accumulating to show that what had been the Roman city was still occupied during the fifth and sixth centuries. Whatever form this occupation took, excavations at Flaxengate have shown beyond dispute that the city was revitalized in the early Anglo-Scandinavian period and that some streets which had previously been assumed to be of Roman origin were part of a planned layout undertaken early in the Viking period. Detailed information has also been retrieved about domestic and commercial buildings in the lower part of the city in the post-Conquest period, and this has complemented the evidence from documentary sources, confirming that the city was extremely prosperous in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

The surviving wooden fabric of the nave at Greensted has no direct analogues in standing buildings either in England or on the Continent; but excavations have shown evidence for the former existence in both places of buildings with walls of upright logs, some set on sills and some fixed directly in the ground without any sill. Excavation at Greensted in 1960 indicated that the original chancel (and therefore probably also the nave) was of the earth-fast type, for which analogues have been found by excavation in Scandinavia.

Of the abbey church of St.-Jean-des-Vignes at Soissons, pulled down at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there remain only the façade and the western towers and spires. The rest of the building can be reconstructed thanks to the survival of ample illustrations. It was a church of basilical form, following the Gothic style of Picardy and Reims. Planned in the shape of a Latin cross, it had a square-ended eastern arm and also a triforium. Its somewhat archaic choir was unvaulted and was probably built about 1200–30, as were the transepts. The nave appears to have been built between 1340 and 1478.