The Lake District mountains have long been known as the source of Neolithic artefacts belonging to petrological group VI. The study of their wider distribution has played a central part in investigations of the ‘axe trade’. Unfortunately, it is not clear that all Group VI axes originated in this area and in any case it is now known that there is no direct relationship between different fall-off patterns and the processes that led to their creation. At the same time, it is not possible to compare work at Neolithic flint mines with current knowledge of how non-flint axes were distributed. Recent fieldwork, in the wake of a survey carried out by the National Trust and the Cumbria and Lancashire Archaeological Unit, has tried to investigate the ways in which stoneworking at Great Langdale was organized and the relationship between methods of exploiting the raw materials on site and changes in the distribution of Cumbrian axes across Britain as a whole. This has involved experimental archaeology, technological analysis, environmental investigations and small-scale excavation. This work has resulted in the recognition of two distinct modes of production. These are discussed in relation to the environmental history of the surrounding region.

At least sixteen whole or partial circular lead tanks have been found in Roman Britain, several of them decorated with Christian symbols. Over the past fifty years different uses have been ascribed to these vessels, some secular, some religious. The objective of this paper is two-fold: to examine the motifs used in the decoration of the tanks and to attempt to discover the purpose of the vessels. It is proposed that the tanks are all Christian objects and that they were used in the baptismal ceremony for the footwashing rite, a practice carried out in various parts of the Christian world at least up to the sixth century.

Symbolic perception of the church door in early English exegetical writings and in medieval liturgical practice is illustrated and discussed as the wider context of a proposal that the arched iron strip at the top of the twelfth-century church door at Stillingfleet, North Yorkshire, represents the rainbow of Noah's Flood, perceived as a reminder ofjudgement past and of judgement still to come, and as a symbol of the covenant between God and humanity. The possibility is considered that on other surviving early medieval church-doors too, the rainbow shape, even if primarily functional or dictated by the shape of the door-opening, and notwithstanding the absence of other figural imagery, may have been recognized as an emblem of the covenant, basis of all church-sanctioned contracts, aptly dislayed on the threshold—where various liturgical or other formal actions had their setting—of the sacred spaces of the domus dei.

The thirteenth-century west portal of Higham Ferrers Church, Northamptonshire, despite its rural setting, has claims to represent international and metropolitan taste in its ornament and general layout. The sculptured portal was originally part of a larger decorative and iconographic scheme, the coherence of which was drastically impaired in the rebuilding of the west porch, tower, and spire in the 1630s. Fragments of what seem likely to have been major sculptural groups were then built into the westface of the tower. Thefigurescenes, framed in medallions, which fill the left and rightportion of the tympanum of the portal are among the best preserved thirteenth-century sculptures in England, but the identification of the individual scenes is fraught with difficulty nor is it easy to judge the level at which the sculptures were intended to communicate. Contemporary illustrated Psalters, designed for personal devotional use, may provide the key, but curious symptoms of seventeenth-century interference also require interpretation.

Although it has generally been maintained that chivalric combat depended solely on strength and endurance, there is ample evidence that skill, dexterity, speed and control were also required. This paper attempts to reconstruct the techniques used in foot combats, tourneying on horseback and jousting (especially tilting)—in England, France, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula—on the basis of narratives and technical treatises, concerning sword and lance play, written between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Examination of the account books and other papers, now chiefly deposited in the Record Office of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, has enabled a chronology to be prepared of the long-drawn-out construction and decoration of the eighteenth-century west range of Stoneleigh Abbey. The contributions of the four architects principally involved—Francis and William Smith, William Hiorn and Timothy Lightoler—have been assessed, together with those of the more prominent craftsmen. In particular, the process by which the hall (or saloon) achieved its final form in 1763-5 is explored and suggestions made about the authorship of its remarkable stucco decoration.