PREFACE. THE FOURTH VOLUME OF THE NEW SERIES OF THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH ARCHEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION for the year 1898, contains twenty-two of the principal Papers which were laid before the Congress at Conway in the summer of 1897, or during the evening meetings of the Session 1897-8 in London, as well as a record of the Proceedings of the Congress and the evening meetings. The Volume has, as usual, been enriched with many plates and smaller illustrations, many of them contributed by the liberality of the authors of the Papers to which they belong, and by this means the Association has been able to give a more pictorial appearance to the present volume than would otherwise have been possible. It will be found that the contents are, as is generally the case, very wide and miscellaneous; and in the accounts of the discoveries of urn-burials at Todmorden, of two more Roman pavements at Leicester, of an ancient encampment at Uphall, and, above all, of the remarkable crannog or pile-dwelling on the Clyde, it will be seen that this year is more noticeable archæologically than many of its immediate predecessors have been. The year has, however, been saddened for us by the loss of six of the old friends and supporters of the Association, who in their time worked nobly to build and maintain the edifice which it is the privilege of those who have been spared to uphold and raise higher. In Mr. JAS. HEYWOOD the Association has lost a sympathetic friend; in the Rev. S. M. MAYHEW an antiquary and collector of rare discernment; in Mr. J. J. ADAMS, an artist and sculptor of merit; in the Rev. J. CAVEBROWNE, a zealous and painstaking archæologist, whose contributions were always valuable, and who showed, in the course of a long life, what a country clergyman can do to foster a taste for antiquity in others by possessing an appreciative and scholarly love of it himself; in Sir H. W. PEEK, an antiquary of literary and scientific tastes; and in the EARL of WINCHELSEA a President, during two years, of unfailing courtesy. Each and all of these did good work in promoting the cause of antiquarian research; and it only remains for those to whom they have handed on the torch of knowledge, to see to it that they in their turn shali pass it on to their successors with its divine flame. burning brighter than ever, unextinguished and inextinguishable. 31 December, 1898. H. J. DUKINFIELD ASTLEY. |