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Welcome

This month, we lead off with a bang: Anthony Emery gives us a privileged look behind closed doors inside the great houses of medieval England, where we see a still-breathtaking display of medieval wealth and power. The pace never slows, as we move from evidence of a new prehistoric henge through to glimpses of the Romans at table; finally, we meet London’s last Roman and discover hints of secret rituals in the Yorkshire Dales. News keeps us up-to-date, and anything missed out there, you will find in Chris Catling’s Diary. Editor-in-Chief Andrew Selkirk then looks at how the Society of Antiquaries made history, and asks the question: are farmers destroying archaeology? We are also very pleased to announce the preliminary session schedule for Archaeology 2008 (do you have your tickets yet?) and share more of our top-notch speakers. Let us know what you think!

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some of the specialist reports that languish unloved and unread at the back of excavation reports to provide some fascinating new ideas. Chris Catling reports on her major new book.

35 LONDON’S LAST ROMAN? Rescue excavations at St Martin-in-the Fields church in Trafalgar Square have uncovered some evidence of the relatively quiet time in London’s history between the end of Roman Londinium and the beginning of Anglo-Saxon Lundenwic. The major discovery of a stone sarcophagus containing a man who was quite possibly London’s last Roman is helping to transform perceptions of this transitional time in London’s history.

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40 LIME KILNS Anyone familiar with Britain's limestone or chalk landscapes may well have pondered the stone-built field kilns that pepper upland pastures. Lime-kilns seem rather humble and workaday as archaeological monuments go, but David Johnson has discovered them to be a window into a 17th century world that combined modern land improvement with ancient superstition.

Mike Emery and his team at Poulton Henge

REGULARS 4 NEWS Winners of the Awards for the Presentation of Archaeological Heritage; A Viking ship at Meols?; Vandals target the Rollright Stones again; The Theatre revealed; www.Badarchaeology.net; World Archaeological Congress exhibition.

10 SHERDS: CHRIS CA TLING’S DIARY Mea culpa; Misseldraughts; Bait and switch; Battersea basilica; Lost lines; English Heritage on piles; Victorian double-glazing; Power to the people

26 BOOKS The Making of the English Landscape; Historic Landscape Analysis; Unravelling the Landscape; Archaeological Surveying and Mapping; Air Photo Interpretation for Archaeologists; Revealing the Buried Past.

30 OPINION Community Archaeology - against the odds.

43 LAST WORD Editor-in-Chief Andrew Selkirk discusses the Making History exhibition, reports on the Congress of Independent Archaeologists and the love/hate relationship between farming and archaeology.

48 LETTERS Pigsties explained; It's worth it; Tomb or womb?; Well done!; Worth a try; A brief history of British Rock Art; Divine intervention; Harumph!

50 ODD SOCS Re-enactment Societies.

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