This paper seeks to explore the contribution to our understanding of the Roman coastal forts between the Wash and the north Kent coast which can be provided by a study of the surviving building materials which can be attributed to them. Although some of our sites have little or no masonry surviving above ground level, we argue that the materials to which we draw attention were derived from their defensive wall circuits which were constructed between the late second and the late third century. While certain of our sites eventually belonged to the Late Roman Saxon Shore of the Notitia Dignitatum, others were not thus designated. All our sites have long histories but, since the materials in question probably derive from the initial, stone-building phase of these forts, it is likely that our conclusions will relate to, and inform our interpretation of, their primary function. Our survey includes the forts at Brancaster, Burgh Castle, Bradwell, Reculver, and Richborough, all of which can be assigned to the Saxon Shore system with reasonable confidence, as well as the fort, rather than defended civil port at Caister-on-Sea. We also consider evidence of materials which we argue were derived from Walton Castle, which has been identified by some as the Portus Adurni of the litus saxonicum listed in the Notitia Dignitatum, and which was lost to the sea by the nineteenth century.

The object of this paper is to examine the introduction of classical reception facilities into Romano-British houses. This will provide new interpretations of the functions of rooms in some Romano-British villas. It will also enable us to make some observations concerning the changing behaviour patterns of the British élite. It is hypothesised that by the late antique period reception facilities and associated social behaviour were as those found anywhere in the Roman Empire.

The central thesis of this paper is that the Romans used land surveys and maps as integral parts of the road design process. This is not the conventional view, and is in direct contradiction to a fundamental assumption made by the acknowledged master of the subject, I.D. Margary. After praising the achievements of the Roman road builders he writes: ‘…it should be remembered that no maps or compasses were available to them.…’ As far as the magnetic compass is concerned, it certainly seems unlikely that it was familiar to the Romans, but the sun-dial offered a reliable, if less convenient, alternative method of finding the north–south direction. However, the supposed absence of maps is more critical, and has led to the putting forward of many exotic theories to explain how the roads were designed and laid out. Despite their ingenuity, these theories are highly impractical, yet still fail to explain how the Roman engineers solved the problems they faced. This paper shows that available knowledge and equipment were quite adequate to allow the Romans to design their roads with the same level of careful planning as they demonstrated in other fields of technical endeavour.

Pollen analysis has long been recognised as of key importance to archaeology for environmental reconstruction, but its application has concentrated on prehistory. This is, perhaps, due to a combination of two factors. First, there has been a greater interest by pollen analysts in questions relating to prehistoric than historic environments. Second, there are fewer suitable sequences available for later periods, especially from peat deposits where the upper layers have often been disturbed or removed by peat cutting. There is, however, an increasing amount of pollen-analytical data relevant to the first millennium A.D., and the purpose of this paper is to collate this information in order to illustrate the nature of the environment of Roman Britain.

A hoard found in Southbroom, Devizes in 1714 contained a group of copper-alloy figurines executed in both classical and local styles and depicting deities belonging to the Graeco-Roman and Gallo-Roman pantheons. The deities in a local style appear to form part of a larger tradition of figurines, predominantly found in the South-West, which are characterised both by a similar artistic style and by the use of Gallo-Roman symbolism and deities, such as the torc, ram-horned snake, carnivorous dog and Sucellus. The unique composition of the hoard in comparison with other hoards of similar date provides insights into the beliefs of Roman Britain.

Fourth-century a.d. chalk tesserae from Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltavorum) yield rich microfossil assemblages that identify a biostratigraphical age of Cretaceous Late Cenomanian to Early Turonian. The nearest chalk outcrops to Leicester lie in Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and north Norfolk, indicating that the material for the tesserae must have been sourced remotely and transported to Ratae. Superimposing the Roman road network onto a map of the relevant Chalk Group distribution provides a guide to possible sources. A process of evaluation identifies Baldock in Hertfordshire and Bridlington in Yorkshire as the most likely sources for the Leicester tesserae.

A significant proportion of Romano-British religious iconography betrays characteristics that do not owe their presence directly to Classical models. Both style and symbolism are, here, indicative of a reference to traditions outside the Mediterranean artistic repertoire. Even so, in such regions as the Cotswolds and in areas of northern Britain, such imagery seemingly emerges fully-fledged in the Roman period, with no apparent antecedents in the indigenous material culture of the British Iron Age phases which immediately preceded the Roman conquest. Some iconography has clear and close parallels with Romano-Gaulish representational traditions, but that does not explain why — equally in Britain and Gaul– an apparently new set of divine images suddenly materialized after the introduction of Roman culture.

The earthwork at Garden Hill, Hartjield, East Sussex, until then unrecognised, was identified in 1968 by Mr C. F. Tebbutt, who found early Romano-British material in a trial excavation. Five seasons of excavation (1972–76) by the Garden Hill Excavation Group have established the broad outline of the site's history. A scatter of worked flints indicates slight occupation in the Neolithic/Bronze Age period. Attributed to the late pre-Roman Iron Age are a round house and part of what may be another. A hill-fort, with stonerevetted and palisaded defences, was built, possibly against the Roman invasion, but soon fell into disuse and was followed by Romano-British occupation. This included a rectangular timber building, roasting- and smeltingfurnaces and a forging-hearth of the first century; a rectangular building with two verandahs, using timber uprights set on padstones and in post-holes, and a four-post structure on the same alignment, both probably first-century; a timber building set on a stone platform and attached stone bath-building, of the second century; and undated post-hole and timber-slot systems (not fully excavated) representing fences and other timber structures. It is possible that Garden Hill was the base from which local iron-smelting sites were operated in the first and second centuries.

The contrasting fortunes of Christianity in Britain and on the Continent in the late fourth and fifth centuries are one of the truisms of history. Why did Roman Britain fail to follow the example of other provinces in the West and preserve a powerful and episcopally-led Christian Church, so that despite the destruction wrought by the barbarian invasions the continuity between Roman province and Germanic kingdom could be maintained? Why, alone among the western provinces, did Catholic Christianity have to be replanted in an almost wholly pagan environment whence all records of previous Christianisation appear to have perished?

The two writers have been involved for a number of years with research on the Romano-British settlement at Lower Wanborough. Recent field-work, and aerial photographs taken of some remarkable cropmarks, have shown that the site was not an irregular linear growth along the main highway, but had developed a system of insulae in which was a substantial Mansio.

The gravestone of a centurion of the Twentieth Legion, M. Favonius Facilis, which was found in the Roman cemetery at Colchester to the south-west of the colonia in 1868 is of particular interest for the history of Romano-British art, since it is one of the earliest sculptures known in the province. It is carved of Bath oolite and bears in a round-arched niche a full-length figure of Facilis (PL. IX), who is bare-headed but is otherwise dressed in the complete uniform of a centurion and carries a uitis in his right hand. Below the niche is the inscription, which reads: M(arcus) Fauoni(us) M(arci) f(ilius) Pol(lia tribu) Faci/lisc(enturio) leg(ionis) xx. Verecund/us et Nouicius lib(erti) posu/erunt. h(ic) s(itus) e(st).

Since 1961, excavations conducted at the ancient Carian city of Aphrodisias, in southwestern Turkey, have yielded an amazingly rich and varied harvest of archaeological information of singular importance to the prehistory and history of the site as well as those of western Anatolia. The quantity and quality of monuments of the Imperial period, when Aphrodisias reached the apogee of its prosperity, are particularly striking and provide us with significant, fresh data for the history of Graeco-Roman art and architecture. Above all, the unprecedented amount of sculptural finds confirms beyond any reasonable doubt the originality and multiple activities of Aphrodisias sculptors.

In recent years good relations between the Norfolk Archaeological Unit, the Norfolk Museums Service and the general public have resulted in a great increase in reported, provenanced, archaeological finds. A formidable quantity of Roman coins, in particular, has regularly been submitted for recording and study. Although this information is systematically entered onto the county Sites and Monuments Record, the authors considered a synthesis of the numismatic data to be a potentially valuable project, which could provide evidence for the nature of occupation in different parts of the county at specific times. This survey is the result of an attempt to interpret the proliferating quantity of numismatic data becoming available from the county as a whole.

Cartimandua first appears in the historical record in a.d. 51, in which year she handed Caratacus to the Romans. She was already ruler of the Brigantes: how long she had ruled is not known, but it is quite possible that she was in power even before Claudius' invasion in a.d. 43. The Brigantes seem to have been a federation: how close-knit this federation was and how far and firmly Cartimandua's authority extended over it must be matters of some doubt. Her history after a.d. 51 has often been narrated by some of the greatest students of Roman Britain: it comes as something of a surprise, therefore, to discover that this latter part of her career also raises major difficulties. For knowledge of this portion of her career, we depend almost entirely on two passages of Tacitus: Ann. xii 40 and Hist. iii 45, written first of course. The central difficulty is simple enough: how are these two passages to be related?

In 1971 an Editorial in Britannia drew attention to a group of places in Roman Britain whose names imply fortification but where no pre-Romandefences are known and the town walls, if any, must have been built too late to provide an explanation. The most obvious example is Durobrivae (Water Newton). The identification here is not in doubt – it is established both by the Antonine Itinerary and epigraphically – nor is the meaning of the name: the first element, Duro-, means a place with walls and gates and the second element, -brivae (or -brivas), means ‘bridge’. But the town walls here can hardly have been added before the end of the second century and intensive examination of the area, on the ground and from the air, has produced no evidence of an important pre-Roman settlement, let alone a walled one, nor of a pre-Roman trackway such as might have required a bridge. There was, however, an early Roman fort here, and a Roman bridge over the river Nene, and the conclusion seems inescapable that the name, though Celtic, describes the Roman fort.

There has been a considerable amount of discussion of the apparent lack in London of later Roman evidence of all kinds compared with earlier Roman evidence, and there is general agreement that this probably represents a substantial decline in the urban population. If this interpretation is true, it has fundamental implications for the understanding of the economic and political status of the Roman city and of all structures, public, domestic, commercial, and industrial; and it would not be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important research topics associated with the archaeology of Londinium.