This year the Anniversary is not celebrated on St George's Day because of the difficulties of the date of Easter and other public holidays, but this is not as late as the Anniversary Address has sometimes been delivered – as one discovers by consulting the dates in the Proceedings of the Society. In those historic volumes, the changing fortunes of the Society, as well as the preoccupations of the Presidents, are vividly – often sonorously – recorded. It strikes me, though, that in reviewing the year past, it is often not prudent to envisage the year ahead in similarly explicit terms. In the year of 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, our President Sir Charles Hercules Read began his Anniversary Address with noteworthy complacency: ‘I am happy in meeting you again … to record a prosperous year. Although it has not been marked by any outstanding events, we have pursued our even course usefully, I think, and may regard our present position with a fair amount of satisfaction’ (Proceedings, XXVI, 165).

Topographical and geophysical surveys carried out in August 2002 at three monuments in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire are reported: Bedd Arthur, Gors Fawr and Meini Gwyr. Previously unrecorded features were revealed at all three sites, most spectacularly at Meini Gwyr which, from the evidence of geophysical survey, appears to be a multi-phase monument that includes a double pit-circle, hengi-form monument and embanked enclosure with an internal stone circle. Comparisons are made with plans prepared by Flinders Petrie in 1926, published here for the first time. A viewshed analysis of the surveyed sites and others of similar kind in the area allows an appreciation of landscape setting and intervisibility. It is suggested that the stone circles are sited in relation to upland stone sources. All the monuments considered here are compared with contemporary structures recorded elsewhere in the British Isles. It is concluded that while the stone circles and oval setting fit comfortably within a distribution pattern that extends across most of the British Isles, the later phases of Meini Gwyr at least belong to a more localized tradition of monument building focused on the Irish Sea region.

This paper examines the significance of seventeen later Bronze Age wells found during construction at Swalecliffe, in north-east Kent. The unusual depth of the features made for exceptional preservation of wooden structural elements, including steps and revetments, demonstrating rare evidence for woodworking and woodmanship. Extensive biological remains facilitated environmental reconstruction, and a lengthy dendrochronological sequence corroborates the internationally important Flag Fen chronology. Dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates demonstrate around 500 years of seemingly continuous use and replacement of wells. Votive deposits and apparatus used for water collection provide glimpses of small-scale ritual and domestic activities. The highly unusual concentration of wells is compared to contemporary sites regionally and elsewhere.

For the first time in English, we present a summary of the international programme of excavation work carried out between 1990 and 2001 in and around the Iron Age salt-mining complex of the Diirrnberg region, south of Salzburg. First we describe the results of excavation in the prehistoric adits, and of work to locate and survey associated settlements. This is followed by a series of specialist reports embracing floral and faunal remains, palaeodiet and parasitology, leather and woodworking and other crafts. The evidence suggests that a complex inter-relationship existed between the Diirrnberg and other communities in the Alpine foreland. It is assumed that the Diirrnberg was under the control of an elite – perhaps a local dynasty whose wealth is reflected in the graves.

This insula, which lay on the western margin of the earlier Iron Age city, was uncovered during post-war reconstruction work carried out in Beirut during 1994–6. Laid out in the Hellenistic period, the insula was filled out with a series of small courtyard houses after the Roman annexation. A public portico was added along a main street in the second quarter of the second century, before a period of relative inactivity. The district was revived and rebuilt in the middle of the fourth century and was home to a series of handsome town houses in the fifth century, before being devastated by earthquake in AD 551. The site was then left derelict until the early nineteenth century. This interim report sets these findings within their broader historical and archaeological context, as well as summarizing the results of recent work on the site's ceramics and stratigraphy.

Excavations undertaken at Quarrington, near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, revealed part of an Early and Middle Saxon settlement with associated fields or enclosures. Several timber buildings were identified, both round and rectangular, and there was evidence of ferrous and non-ferrous metalworking at the site. Finds included a large and regionally significant pottery assemblage, showing that Quarrington had an extensive trading network and obtained pottery from Lincolnshire and Leicestershire in the Early Saxon period. Pottery from the Northamptonshire area dominated the assemblage in the Middle Saxon period, with a smaller component from Lincolnshire and a limited quantity from Ipswich. Spatial variations in the Saxon ceramic assemblage suggest that the focus of settlement shifted towards the west or north west in the Middle Saxon period.

Few rural sites of Early and Middle Saxon date have produced sufficient faunal material to permit an analysis of changes during the fifth to eighth centuries until now; the large bone assemblage from Quarrington indicates changes in diet and the husbandry of domestic animals through time, with sheep becoming more important as pig diminished. Alterations to the slaughter profiles of cattle and sheep were also evident and may indicate changes from subsistence to surplus production. An apparently isolated Neolithic cremation and a post-medieval stone building were also revealed.

The discovery of a small group of sculpted fragments at Congresbury in Somerset seven years ago set in motion a period of research, reflection and analysis that has given rise to this paper. It opens with an account of the circumstances of their discovery and a description of their appearance. Then follows a proposed date and provenance. It is suggested that the quality of the sculptures and the evident scale of the monument to which they once belonged indicate a structure and a site of high status, possibly the shrine of the Welsh missionary saint Cyngar, whose cult enjoyed some popularity in the high and late Middle Ages. A review of the history of the site and evidence from its placename and from archaeological investigations corroborate this thesis.

The style of the sculptures when compared with dated manuscript illuminations and with sculptural fragments surviving from Anglo-Saxon Wessex is in line with a late tenth- to mid-eleventh-century dating. The historical circumstances of Congresbury at this time further suggest that this date may be narrowed down to the period between 1033 and 1060. The original structure of the shrine to which the fragments may have belonged is considered in the light of contemporary documentary evidence and research carried out on the remains of comparable shrine structures.

The origins of the coach in England have never been clearly documented, but the very complete records of the royal wardrobe in the reign of Queen Elizabeth reveal her part in their introduction, and the extent of her lavish expenditure on the creation and repair of coaches from 1564 until her death four hundred years ago. Detailed descriptions of eleven new coaches, and the repairs to a number of gifts from her courtiers, record the astonishing richness and quality of these machines. This suggests that the furnishings, decoration and trappings of both horse and carriage were both an extension of the queen's costume, and also a significant part of the public persona of the monarch.

The recent discovery of probate material relating to John Holmes (d 1629), a provincial Jacobean cathedral organist and composer, provides three valuable references to the use of musical instruments at Salisbury Cathedral before the Civil War. These prove that the Choristers' House, where Holmes lived, contained in 1629 a consort of viols, with other (unspecified) instruments, four virginals and an organ. This evidence, though fragmentary and circumstantial, may be read in the context of what is known about the practice of instrumental music in other English cathedrals. The references can then be used to support three generally accepted theses: first, that viols were used for teaching purposes (and possibly also in a flourishing adult musical circle centred on Salisbury Cathedral, for which there is strong circumstantial evidence), rather than in liturgical contexts; second, that sackbutts and cornetts most probably doubled the voices in the choir; and third, that the organ remained the principal instrument of choral accompaniment even in the first decade of the Restoration period. Holmes had previously served as organist and master of the choristers at Winchester Cathedral, where there is also circumstantial evidence of viol-teaching activity since 1618, where wind instruments were employed (probably liturgically) in the sixteenth century, and where Holmes may have composed at least one piece of instrumental consort music, most probably for teaching purposes.

This paper is concerned with the graphic means deployed since the Renaissance to restore the appearance of ancient Roman architecture, and specifically with the use of various forms of perspective. Disdained by architectural theorists from Leon Battista Alberti onwards because of its supposed subjectivity, the perspective nonetheless became a valuable tool in the second half of the eighteenth century for studying Roman architecture and urban form in pristine condition. It remained so until, with the consolidation of a more scientific approach to the discipline of archaeology in the last third of the twentieth century, it was reduced to schematic form and supplemented by isometric and axonometric projectional restorations, notably in English-language histories. The discipline of architectural history has not, however, been well served by this development, and an argument is made here for the retention of perspectival restoration and for the furtherance of the recent development of restorations modelled with the aid of computers.

This note discusses several recent English finds of early medieval ornamental metalwork shown at the Society of Antiquaries on 16 May 2002: most notably, a Romanesque mount with open-work foliate decoration having clear parallels with Norman and Anglo-Norman ornament of c 1100–25. Four ninth-century Anglo-Saxon strapends are also described and illustrated, two of which have decorative features with links to contemporary larger-scale works but rarer within the corpus of strap-ends; the other two being unusual examples of East Anglian niello and silver-wire inlay.

It has been suggested that the nave of St Davids Cathedral was planned for aisle and high vaults but that the vaults were not built. Evidence is here presented that the vaults were indeed constructed. The high vault would have been of tufa, according to a well-established tradition in the West Country. The narrow springers of the aisle vaults are allied to near-contemporary vaults at Dore Abbey and Llanthony Priory.

The rebus played a distinctive role in medieval seal design as well as on monuments, in architectural ornament, and on the glazing quarries or other subsidiary details of windows. Seals are the largest group and they provide a valuable source of dated material, because they can usually be identified with the user. In this they can be joined to a lesser extent by examples found on monumental brasses or, more rarely, on tombs. Accordingly the present study has been based on a survey of published English medieval seals, with comparanda from the examples found on monumental brasses and tombs.

This paper is a study of a fragment of folklore that became assimilated into serious academic discussion; it investigates the story that John Lord Hussey, who was executed in Lincoln following the Lincolnshire Rising of 1536, was dragged to his execution through a window. If it were true, this would be an early example of the iconography of ‘defenestration’ which, by the seventeenth century, connoted the martyrdom of adherents of the Old Religion by Protestant extremists. On examination, however, the persistent story of Lord Hussey's defenestration would seem to be a post hoc fabrication. It is argued here that the story may have been invented in the early eighteenth century, at a period when there was, once again, strife between High and Low Church, and when accounts of previous religious controversies were being recruited by antiquarians as weapons in their contemporary disputes. It is further suggested that the power of the image was still strong in the nineteenth century and it might have played a role in the preservation of a window in Lincoln Castle, even though it had no documented association with Hussey and is too small to climb through.

Since the Treasure Act (1996) came into force in England and Wales, museums have been able to acquire whole new categories of artefacts. One such category consists of sixteenth-century silver and silver-gilt dress-hooks, which have until now been poorly represented in public collections. In volume 82 of the Antiquaries Journal, Gaimster, Hayward, Mitchell and Parker presented a classification of these ornamental hooks and, through analysis of contemporary inventories and documents, suggested how they were used. In this note, the authors publish three further finds, two recently acquired by the British Museum for its type series, and a further hook, one of only two so far recorded to feature a maker's mark.

This small portrait miniature emerged in the sale, by an anonymous vendor, of part of the contents of a country house near Stamford, in Lincolnshire, on 16 February 2002. The image is painted in watercolour on a pale carnation ground with a support of either card or vellum and is in good condition with only one marginal abrasion. To the right of the miniature, against the pale blue background and parallel to the boy's left shoulder, is the monogram of ‘G’ above ‘I’. The frame is an oval seventeenth-century silver locket with a flat back measuring 33mm × 28mm. The convex glass is held in place by a gold band, and attached to the back is a gold loop secured by a thin flat plate, which is possibly a later addition.