John Soane famously said that the works in his collection were arranged “as studies for my own mind”, but he never explained what he meant by that phrase. This lecture attempts to illuminate Soane’s collection and his strategy for it through a display midway between a cabinet of curiosities and the post-Enlightenment museum.

The lecture will discuss the award-winning excavations undertaken by Oxford Archaeology on a large Roman villa at Priors Hall, Corby, exploring some of the most significant archaeological remains encountered from Roman Britain in recent years. With components including manufacturing spaces, mausoleum and elements of the villa proper, the lecture will evaluate the evidence for the site’s human dynamics and social and economic networks in its regional landscape.

Clinical scale targeted excavations by the National Trust aimed to date the Cerne Giant by OSL. The research provided an unexpected Saxon date, land-use history and ominous ‘disappearance’ of the Giant for six centuries, provide the platform for reconsideration and new discussion and debate … including some stunning discoveries.

Recent claims of Caesar’s landing on Thanet are best countered by Caesar’s Commentaries. These illustrate that the Delfs, an earthwork re-utilised in medieval times as an aqueduct for Sandwich is his described sea defence. A lost inlet behind Calais may be the long-sought Portus Itius (?Guines rather than Boulogne).

Hear about the Urban borehole surveys and revised chronology which has major implications for our understanding of early urbanism in central Italy.

Sir John Summerson’s famous book Architecture in Britain 1530-1830, first published in 1953, remained the prime textbook well into the 21st century. Steven Brindle, author of a major new survey, Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530-1830, discusses his predecessor’s great book, alternative ways of considering the subject, and the thinking which underlies his new and very different study.

The monumental cross slab at Forres, Moray, at 6.5m high, displays the most graphic visual record of a Viking military onslaught in Britain. Recent carbon dating places its erection in the later ninth century, and new drawings indicate Viking funeral practice. The Bible, old Welsh and Irish literature provide a narrative to the heroic and grisly feats depicted.

Recent claims of Caesar’s landing on Thanet are best countered by Caesar’s Commentaries. These illustrate that the Delfs, an earthwork re-utilised in medieval times as an aqueduct for Sandwich is his described sea defence. A lost inlet behind Calais may be the long-sought Portus Itius (?Guines rather than Boulogne).

Learn about the beginnings of the Phonogrammarchiv and its early phonographic field research.

This lecture presents the headline results of an innovative research project on the archaeology of warhorses, and horses generally, in England between the Saxon and Tudor periods. It will consider the physical remains of horses (bones and teeth, including small samples taken for scientific analyses), equestrian material culture (apparel such as harness pendants, and horse armour), horse breeding landscapes (studs and stables), as well as iconographic and documentary evidence, to present a new and more rounded understanding of the warhorse and unpick its complex, fascinating and ever-evolving interrelationship with medieval society through the centuries.