SIEVING FOR SOIL MARKS

Summary. Recent work has suggested that greater attention might be paid to the archaeological potential of the modern ploughsoil. In particular, it seems likely that soil marks in chalkland areas can be remarkably resilient. This paper describes an attempt to recover and analyse soil marks on a gravel site through sieving of the modern ploughsoil. Such an approach may shed considerable light on the original form of earthwork monuments otherwise obliterated by modern agriculture, but does not entail any disturbance of stratified deposits.     

Recently Discovered Lords' Lists and their Uses, 1833–42*

This note deals with previously unpublished lists which identify the party affiliations, whig, Liberal, and Conservative, of members of the house of lords from 1833 to 1842. They were prepared by the chief whips (or in one case the party leader) of their respective parties, and can thus be considered authoritative. Such information is invaluable in properly understanding the political history of the house of lords, and therefore of the nation.     

The Rhetorical Premiership: A New Perspective on Prime Ministerial Power Since 1945

The long‐standing debate about the power of the British prime minister has focused excessively on formal instruments of control exercised within Whitehall. By contrast, not enough attention has been paid to the ways in which prime ministers use rhetoric, formally and informally, to maintain themselves in power and to achieve their policy aims. The term ‘rhetorical premiership’ is used here to denote the collection of methods by which prime ministers since 1945 have used public speech to augment their formal powers. Set‐piece oratory remained consistently important throughout the period, in spite of new technology and the rise of the sound‐bite. However, parliamentary rhetoric underwent some important changes, and prime ministers spoke outside the Commons with increased frequency. Historians of the premiership should draw instruction from those scholars who have studied the rhetoric of US presidents, although caution must be exercised when drawing comparisons. Future study of the rhetorical premiership should involve close textual analysis of prime ministerial speeches, but this should not be at the expense of archival sources, from which important insights into the speech‐making process can be gleaned.     

BONES, BODIES, and DIS-EASE

Summary: This paper considers the present state of cemetery studies in the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire. Different aspects of the study are identified and a combination of these is put forward as the requirement for a perfect cemetery report, against which some recent publications are judged. the greatest failure is found to be the provision and assimilation of a bone report, whether anthropological or palaeo-pathological. the potential of complete cemetery reports is stressed.