Two recent discoveries have added greatly to our knowledge of Iron Age shields in Britain. First, the Chertsey Shield, unique in the Celtic world in being made entirely of bronze. Second, a collection of miniature shields of a shape hitherto unknown. Bindings from full-size shields of this shape had been found previously, but were not correctly identified until the miniatures provided the clue. Now it seems that these distinctive hide-shaped shields were one of the most common forms used by British warriors. At least thirty-eight examples—including twenty-three miniatures—have now been added to the corpus of Iron Age shields from Britain.

This paper publishes some Roman bone carvings in the Fitzwilliam Museum collected by Sir Henry Wellcome and given by the Wellcome Trustees in 1982–3. All seem to be from or associated with a range of elaborate couches produced in Italy in Republican and Early Imperial times and found in burials there and in the provinces. They have come to the Fitzwilliam largely because of that museum's earlier initiative in restoring such a couch, described by the author in Archaeologia 106 (1979), 1–32.

The Saxons used beorh for prehistoric barrows and hlæw for their own barrows, but pleased themselves which term to use for prehistoric barrows containing intrusive Saxon burials (e.g. Rough Barrow, Cheselbourne 8b, Dorset; Cwicelmes Low, Ardley, Oxon.; the better known Cwichelmes Low (East Hendred, Oxon. ex Berkshire) is mentioned not in a charier but in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Long barrow Swell IV, Glos., contained Saxon intrusive burials.

There are more than twenty rough barrows but only one rough low (in Chetwode-Hillesden, Buckinghamshire, S 544), implying that the Saxons normally kept their own barrows tidy but did not bother much about those of earlier date.

They sometimes distinguished between long and round barrows (e.g. Long Barrow, Swell IV, Glos.; ‘the barrow which lies between the two long barrows’, Wonston, Hants. They never distinguished between round barrows of bowl, bell, disc and saucer types.

Scrutiny of the charters has led to the discovery of a few barrows previously unknown to the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division, e.g. Buckland Newton I, Dorset; Cheselbourne 17, Dorset; Tetbury Upton 3, Glos.

As the charters were written more than a thousand years ago they recorded many barrows long before they had been reduced to their present sorry state by ploughing and other agencies.

This article provides a critical survey of English manuscript art (in its broadest sense) of the period c. 1030– c. 1080, paying particular attention to decorative features and general design. Consideration is first given to the circumstances, distribution, context and main types of decorated book production. The corpus of relevant extant material is then analysed in terms of its continuities with, its development of, and its departures from, the traditions of the previous generations. Finally, one representative aspect of the influence of Anglo-Saxon manuscript art in this period on the work of Continental scriptoria is explored.

That the present San Marco (fig. 1) either incorporates substantial remains of earlier structures or has had its design constrained by structures no longer extant can hardly be doubted. This much is obvious even from the ground plan, especially at the ends of the north and south transepts. Further anomalies apparent in the building itself also suggest that it is not all of a piece. Setting aside obvious later changes that have not affected the basic form, they include the existence of pointed arcades alongside semicircular ones and the curious way in which the barrel vaults to the north and south of the eastern dome oversail the side chapels.

The products of a tilery working in the Welsh marches in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with a probable production centre at Hereford, can be identified at a number of sites through petrological analysis. The accuracy of the heraldic tiles allows careful analysis from which dates, and possible commissions may be identified.

The tilery began the production of accurate heraldic designs c. 1260. These were augmented by Chertsey-Halesown copies around the turn of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. The production of heraldic tiles was stepped up in the 1320s, as a result of the filling of at least one large order, for the chapel of St Peter at Ludlow Castle, in 1328. A further commission was made between 1328 and 1339, for the church at Bredon. Probably as early as the 1330s the Malvern Chase industry was beginning, and this industry had acquired stamps from the Hereford tilers by the middle of the century.

An inscribed marble (figs, 1, 2), until now in the Byzantine collection of the Archaeological Museum at Istanbul, recorded two English knights, Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, who died in Galata outside Constantinople in 1391.

Qaṣr Burqu⃓ is one of the most remote of the Jordanian so-called ‘desert castles’ (quṣūr) of the early Islamic period: it lies some 200km east of⃓Ammān (figs. 1–4). However, it is neither a castle, nor is it in the desert, rather it represents a variety of building types and lies in the dry steppe (areas receiving less than 100mm of rainfall per annum) of the bādiyat al-šām (literally, the steppe lands of Damascus). Furthermore, most of the architectural elements are not necessarily attributable to the early Islamic period, namely the Umayyad Caliphate of the seventh and eighth centuries, despite a ‘building’ inscription (E4: see below, pp. 206–7) of Walīd b. ‘Abd’l-Malik (Caliph AD 705–15), dated AD 700 (H. 81). Rather, the various architectural entities at the site, and their use, span the time from about the third-fourth (probably a little later) to the eighth centuries AD. This time range and the Qaṣr's remote location are significant in relation to the political and economic history of the Near East, particularly in regard of nomad-state relations across the verdant-steppic interface. The time range of the various constructions includes the period following the dissolution of the limes arabicus which had been extensively refurbished and augmented under Diocletian and later under Justinian in the third and sixth centuries AD. Many of the more remote erstwhile fortlets, forts and legionary fortresses were colonized by villagers and nomads, as well as monks and pious hermits. Between the fourth and sixth centuries (particularly in the sixth century under the Ghassānids), purpose-built monasteries and ‘residences’ for hermits were established throughout greater Syria, some of them far out in the steppe. The military station at Nemāras about 80km to the north-east of Qaṣr Burqu⃓, for example, may have become one of several centres, functioning as a παƍεμβολή νομάδον of the Lakhmids in the region, under the leadership of Imru'l-Qays who was called ‘king of the Arabs’ and who was buried there in AD 328. Places like Qaṣr Burqu⃓ and Deir al-Kinn, on the other hand, may have been founded or re-established as monasteries.