Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 90

Discusses the siting of Middle and Late Bronze Age hoards in south Hampshire, Sussex and parts of Surrey and Kent. Presents the results of fieldwork at the findspots of a hundred metalwork deposits and discusses the most informative ways of studying them on the ground.

The life of Gildas by an eleventh-century Breton monk mentions his education at 'Iren'. Though often taken to mean 'Ireland', argues that this is more probably a corruption of 'Cerin', the Old Welsh name of 'Corinium' or Cirencester. If so, it is suggested that this implies the survival in sixth-century Britain of traditional Roman schools.\r\n

The seventh-century vernacular laws from the kingdoms of Kent and Wessex specify fines or compensation payments using units of account that have given us familiar terms in the numismatics of this period: scillingas (shillings), sceattas and pæningas (pennies). In light of the use of cognate words in Gothic and Old High German, and the comparative values given in the Old English law-codes themselves and in the fifth-century Theodosian Code, it is suggested that these represent a regular and durable bimetallic system correlating values in gold and silver. This proposition is examined further against the evidence of weighing-sets from sixth- and early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon graves, and it is argued that the results give greater and more precise meaning to the use of gold and silver in Early Anglo-Saxon artefacts, such as the great gold buckle from Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

Suggest that three chequered garments depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry may have been intended to represent fur tunics. Au/PP-B

Seeks to reassess the iconography and the physical condition of a fourteenth-century carved and painted casket in order to review its geographic origins and to consider its function. It is concluded that the casket is Netherlandish rather than English or French as had originally been described.

Using a range of medieval and antiquarian sources, this article aims to provide a comprehensive account of the Sparham panels' physical and historical context, iconography and meaning. The strong possibility that they functioned as a 'surrogate sepulchral monument' is discussed at the end of the paper.

ses original documentary evidence held in the archives of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society in Devizes to reassess the work of William Cunnington, FSA, carried out on behalf of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and the contribution of his two principal excavators, Stephen and John Parker, of Heytesbury, in Wiltshire. Argues that the Parkers should be considered as archaeologists in their own right, rather than simply as labourers. Au/PP-B