Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 92

Describes and discusses a new sequence of Holocene landscape change discovered through an investigation of sediment sequences, palaeosols, pollen and molluscan data gathered during the Stonehenge Riverside Project.

The treasure of Roman Hacksilber from Traprain Law, a massive hill fort east of Edinburgh, has been interpreted since its publication in 1923 by Alexander Curle as an illustration of the last days of Roman Britain, and as having been broken up by Irish pirates or raiders in or about ad 405. The attribution resulted from an attempt to link historical or semi-historical sources, in particular about the Irish hero Niall of the Nine Hostages and St Patrick, with an archaeological discovery. Modern scholarship, however, has shown that Niall and St Patrick are to be dated to the middle or late fifth century, not to the late fourth and early fifth century, and so it is argued that the argument that the Traprain Law treasure was connected with 'Irish pirates' fails.

The location of Argistillum in the Ravenna Cosmography has been obscure. Uses linguistic and historical analysis to suggest that it was the Roman fort at Caersws, in the cantref (district) of Arwystli, still with a name relatable to Argistillum.

Describes and discusses an extensive mural scheme from the first quarter of the thirteenth century at the church of All Saints, Claverley, Shropshire. The church is argued to have been a Royal Chapel, and the royal and crusading character of the imagery is discussed.

\r\nArchaeological and engineering work that took place in Westminster Hall in 2005'“6 led to the discovery of further remains of the King's High Table, to add to those discovered in 1960. The Purbeck marble table stood at the south end of the hall from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth century and was the focus and symbol of English monarchy, serving particular roles in coronation feasts and in the development of the law courts. Suggests a reconstruction of the original table and its later extensions from the recovered fragments, and reviews the evidence for the construction, usage and destruction of the table in the context of the evolution of the hall and the palace, tracing its history through to its recent rediscovery and exhibition.

Reassesses the transformation of Winchester Cathedral nave in the second half of the fourteenth century from the Romanesque to its present form. Argues for a more complex and earlier development than traditionally accepted, with the rebuilding of the nave itself beginning in the early 1370s rather than in 1394.

The middle decades of the seventeenth century are seen as a period when antiquaries were obsessed with heraldry and genealogy and paid little attention to physical antiquities. Through an exploration of a circle of antiquaries associated in the 1650s with John Aubrey, argues that interest in physical monuments was indeed sustained and developed during this period of transition from Camden's Britannia to Aubrey's Monumenta Britannia. It is suggested that Aubrey's association with the Royal Society, a body that played an important role in preserving and disseminating archaeological evidence, has privileged one particular influence on the early development of archaeological fieldwork at the expense of others explored here. Indeed, it is suggested that this period is marked by a growing interest in physical evidence that was a natural next step for antiquaries who found themselves reaching the boundaries of what literary sources could tell them about the monuments they observed in the landscape.

Examines the complicated circumstances surrounding the very slow production of The Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, the great masterpiece of Charles Alfred Stothard, FSA, and the various reasons why it took twenty-one years to complete.