On 1st July 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace laid before the Linnean Society their independent but closely approximate theories of biological evolution. Next year the centenary of that event—I suppose the greatest intellectual event of the nineteenth century—will be celebrated in a variety of ways and places. The steadfast gaze of the Prince Consort, from beneath his gilded tabernacle in Kensington Gardens, will encompass an international throng of celebrants at the doors of his great rotunda across the road; and we may imagine his puzzled but inquiring spirit hovering a trifle uneasily over the commemoration of an event which marked, if not darkened, his declining years. I trust that we ourselves shall, at the proper time, respectfully recall a moment which was to mean only less to the humanistic than to the biological sciences.

The excavations at Verulamium inaugurated by the Research Committee of this Society were continued a second season from 9th July to 31st August 1956. They were far more extended than had been planned, for shortly before the start news was received that work on the new road was expected to begin early in 1957, much earlier than had been anticipated. It became necessary, therefore, to double the scale of operations in order that no major site should remain unexplored. Accordingly up to thirty-one paid labourers were employed and the maximum number of helpers at any one time was eighty-five. The sum of £2,520 was expended, of which the Ministry of Works subscribed £800. On a site so extended and so divided by hedges and modern traffic, the direction of the dig would have been impossible without skilled assistance; twelve site supervisors were thus in all employed.

In 1948 the ruined Arab town, sixty-five miles north of Mombasa, known as Gedi was declared a National Park, and an archaeologist was appointed as Warden of the Royal Gedi National Park and the Coastal Historical Sites of Kenya. In the ensuing eight years dangerous trees were cut down, crumbling walls were consolidated, and the fallen rubble round the principal buildings was removed. Gedi is now presented to the world as a place of interest and public resort. Excavations were carried out to discover when it was built, and by whom, and the way of life of its inhabitants. Excavations were also undertaken at a number of other sites to recover the history of the coast of Kenya (pl. XII). From these excavations it has been proved that from the thirteenth century there were extensive Arab or Arab-African settlements all down the coast of Kenya. The extent to which the East African coastal culture of the later middle ages can be regarded as truly ‘Arab’ is still undecided. I am beginning to think that there is a tendency to overstress, or to assume, a state of ‘arabism’ in provincial towns, such as Gedi and Ungwana, which never existed. These towns from their foundation would have comprised a mixed population which had come from the older settlements in Somalia. This mixed population would have contributed Hamitic, Bantu, Persian, Indian, and perhaps Indonesian elements to the predominantly Arab culture of East Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to present five large prehistoric bronze vessels, from Wales, Ireland, and the north and south of England, found at various dates from the early nineteenth century to 1932, but published as yet imperfectly or not at all, and to consider, with reference to their affinities abroad, their significance for these islands’ Late Bronze and earliest Iron Ages. The starting-point for any such study must in general be the article in Archaeologia, vol. lxxx, by the late E. T. Leeds. In the twenty-seven years since he wrote, new finds and new work have indeed supplemented and somewhat varied his conclusions, but they leave us still deeply in his debt.

This mail shirt, which is now in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh and was in the Meyrick and Noel Paton collections, dates from the fourteenth century. A little is known about its more recent history. Apparently it was bought by a Jewish dealer from an ancient family at Sinigaglia, near Bologna, ‘in whose possession it had been beyond any of their records’. It has been published before but because it is in such a good state of preservation, because mail shirts of the fourteenth century are rare, and because something is known about its history, it is important that it should be republished.

Thirty-two fragments of this rare variety of Roman provincial pottery are illustrated in this paper. In England they are distributed from Southampton and Cirencester to York, London, and Colchester. On the Continent a cup was found at Rottweil (no. 14), and Déchelette recorded numerous examples found in France, in particular at Lezoux in Central Gaul.

The Roman defences of Cirencester are described by Buckman and Newmarch in Remains of Roman Art in Corinium (1850), 9 ff. and map, by Church in A Guide to Corinium Museum (1905), 9 ff., and by Haverfield in Archaeologia, lxix (1920), 161 ff., who quote earlier authorities.

This kiln was first discovered in 1931 when Messrs. Hughes erected the Bedford Garage on the site of the former Blue-Coat School (St. John's Hospital) in the upper part of the city. The architect, the late Mr. Harbottle Read, was interested in the structure and arranged that it should be preserved in a pit, 4 ft. 6 in. square, beneath the new concrete floor and covered by heavy iron covers. In this way it survived the bombing of Exeter in 1942 when the garage and much else in the area was destroyed. In 1955 when Messrs. Hughes's rebuilding was due to start, the city surveyor, Mr. J. Brierley, invited me to make a record of the kiln before it was finally removed.

All existing accounts of these windows are based on the notes by Mr. C. Winston printed in 1853 with the other communications made to the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland at Bristol in 1851. Most compilers have extracted their material from Leversage and Taylor's Illustrated History of Bristol Cathedral, the pertinent parts of which, including the colour-plates and heraldic descriptions, were composed by Mr. Leversage between 1851 and 1854 on the basis of Mr. Winston's paper.