Antiq J 72

Reports on a recent campaign of limited-scale excavation on the defended promontory at the north east side of the island that has long been a subject of archaeological investigations. The earthwork was sectioned and found to be of two phases (possibly Neo/EBA and IA, respectively). Trial trenching in several places in the interior revealed a wide distribution of Neo/EBA and IA occupation on the north-east-facing slope. A reports on the pottery is followed by `The lithic artefacts' by I P Brooks (38--45) and `The charred plant remains' by Gillian Campbell (45--9).

A reassessment of the date of a woman's body found in 1747. Basing their conclusion largely on the style of her shoes, antiquaries at the time concluded that she had probably drowned in the medieval period. However, in the light of recent advances in footwear studies, an examination of early drawings and of the surviving left shoe shows that it is of a type fashioned from one piece of hide that was common in northern Europe during the later Roman period. The dating of the body has significance for other bog bodies. There is also a general discussion of the shoe type.

Discusses one of the great monuments of Anglo-Saxon art, which was vandalised by Presbyterian iconoclasts in 1642. Previously unpublished antiquarian records of the cross are discussed by Brendan Cassidy (102--7) in `The cross and the drawings'. David Howlett (107--16) then describes `The inscriptions', as detailed in the drawings.

A description of the garments, which date from 1603 and are the earliest surviving examples of robes of the Order. Details of the construction of both items are given.

Catherine Johns</xb> (179--80) describes `A Late Roman silver toothpick with the Christian monogram', found at Ancaster (Lincolnshire). Jerome Bertram (180--3) then discusses `The Weston brass at Rugeley, Staffordshire'; the brass is shown to be a forgery made some sixty years after the death of its subject (John Weston, d 1566), and it exemplifies the practice of faking ancestral lineage that was widespread in the seventeenth century. Jean Wilson (183) briefly describes `The memorial to Sir Thomas Bodley in Merton College Chapel' -- one of the best-known works by Nicholas Stone. Doris Jones-Baker (183--7) reports on recently discovered `Graffiti of runic inscriptions and associated drawings of two human heads, St Gabriel's chapel in the crypt, Canterbury Cathedral'; probably dating before AD~1163, the runic inscriptions are the second set to be identified on the fabric of a cathedral and add to the few inscriptions known from south of the Thames. Susan M Youngs (188--91) concludes with a technological study of `A medieval Irish enamel' from the medieval Celtic collection of the British Museum.