My immediate duty in addressing you for the first time from this Presidential Chair at your Anniversary Meeting must be to express my gratitude for the signal honour you have done me in placing me in it. When I was elected a Fellow something over forty years ago it certainly never crossed my mind that I might one day find myself in this exalted seat, and I am as conscious now of my inadequacy to serve as your President as I was then of my unworthiness to receive the distinction of your Fellowship. I am all the more deeply sensible of your continuing confidence in my capacity to maintain the traditions of our Society: it has been a source of great and increasing happiness to me personally as I have become with the passing of the years more and more concerned in the intimate management of our affairs here in Burlington House.

Excavations in 1969 within a 35-acre enclosure at Marden on the north bank of the River Avon in the Vale of Pewsey confirmed its association with the Grooved Ware ceramic style and its superficial resemblances to the Durrington Walls enclosure ten miles downstream. A survey of the enclosure produced an unusual plan bounded by a bank with an internal ditch and on the south side by the River Avon itself, whilst the position of the Hatfield Barrow was established by geophysical means. Within the north-entrance causeway a small circular timber structure was recorded in a comparable position to the much larger building at Durrington Walls.

The Iron Age hill-fort at Danebury has been subjected to two seasons of excavation concentrating on the defences and the east entrance. The main defences show three phases of construction: (a) a timber-faced rampart of the 4th century B.C. (b) remodelling to a glacis-style rampart in 3rd to 2nd centuries, (c) the re-digging of the ditch in a fiat-bottomed form possibly just before the Roman Conquest. The east gate underwent seven major periods of rebuilding, each showing sub-phases. A development from a simple gate to one defended by massive outworks has been demonstrated.

The ‘middle earthwork’ on the south side of the fort, and the ‘outer earthwork’ which surrounds it are dated to the 3rd to 2nd century and the 1st century respectively. They were probably stock enclosures. The sample excavation of the interior of the fort showed that occupation was dense. Among the cultural material discovered was a hoard of currency bars.

A bronze spout in the form of an ox-head, of high artistic quality, was found on the surface of a ploughed field at Kirmington, Lincolnshire. By analogy, it probably fitted a strainer-bowl, and should date to c. 50 B.C. to A.D. 50.

Two Greek inscriptions, originally discovered and published in the eighteenth century but subsequently ‘lost’, appeared at Sotheby's during 1970 in sales of inscriptions from the collections of the Earl of Lonsdale at Lowther Castle, The first, a list of magistrates and officials of the municipium of Rhegium, was found at Reggio Calabria in 1727, and the second, a metrical inscription from a fountain, was brought from Lesbos to England in 1748. Both have been acquired for the British Museum.

Cylindrical objects lying on their sides appear in a number of paintings and stucco reliefs in Roman Italy, and can be divided into three groups: those which serve as seats for actors in figure-scenes, those which appear amid groups of inanimate objects, and those which are provided with attachments resembling the handles of garden-rollers. (A full catalogue of known examples is given, not only in paintings and stuccoes, but also in other media.) Previous writers have tended to seek an all-embracing explanation, however fantastic, for these cylinders; but it is better to consider the groups separately. The first group are probably discarded column-drums, and the other two are probably rollers employed for preparing palaestra-surfaces (though, in origin, they too may be column-drums). The roller, unlike the simple column-drum, seems to have enjoyed only a temporary vogue as an artistic motif, and to have been confined to minor decorative work in the cities of Campania.

The iron knife with silver inlay found in Southwark in 1930 is reconsidered in the light of more recent publication of weapons with silver inlay from the East Baltic area. The technical and stylistic parallels suggest an origin in that area and a date within the period 1100–1300.

A small portrait of a young man, flower in hand, in the collection of the Society, inscribed on the frame: LE ROY DE DENEMARQUE is here identified as Christian II (1481–1559, King of Denmark 1513–23) as a young prince. The painting may be a contemporary or rather later copy of an original painted about 1505–6. The author points out the affinity between this painting and two other portraits in the collection, here identified as Englebert II, Count of Nassau (1451–1504), and Philip of Cleves, Seigneur de Ravenstein (1456–1528).

According to the notes of the donor, the Reverend Thomas Kerrich, these three pictures belonged to a series of portraits at Oxnead. The connection between the Paston family and the Burgundian Court is explained. The portrait of Christian II may be a copy of an original, probably sent to Margaret of Austria, whose niece Isabella of Habsburg, brought up by her at Malines, married Christian in 1514. If the copy had been sent to England on the occasion of the wedding in 1514, the wording of the inscription would be correct.