It has long been accepted that the Roman soldier was as likely to be engaged in craft or building activities as he was in specifically military ones such as fighting or drill practice. Vegetius listed the specialists that could be expected in a legion. They included builders of various types, people who could make vehicles, armourers, and weaponsmiths. The soldiers in auxiliary units also needed similar skills as the lists dating to the beginning of the second century at Vindolanda make clear. These gave details of the numbers of men engaged in different activities, and noted builders, shoemakers, and men working at some type of kiln or furnace. The archaeological evidence shows that the range of craftsmen was a large one. Potting industries were set up when the local potters did not provide the suite of vessels the soldiers required. Metalsmiths turned their hands to enamelled vessels as well as utilitarian items with a more obviously military function such as harness-fittings and studs. This paper will explore another possible facet of military craftsmanship, that of the manufacture and working of glass which is suggested by the recovery of glass-melting pots and partially reacted glass batch material at 16–22 Coppergate, York.

Recent work has advanced our understanding of human crania found in London's upper Walbrook valley, where skull deposition appears to have peaked during the occupation of the Cripplegate fort, itself probably built soon after London's Hadrianic fire. Although this fire is usually considered to have been accidental, parallels can be drawn with London's Boudican destruction. This article explores the possibility that these three strands of Hadrianic evidence — fire, fort and skulls — find common explanation in events associated with a British war of this period. This might support the identification of some Walbrook skulls as trophy heads, disposed as noxii in wet places in the urban pomerium.

The idea that the town of Venta Icenorum (Caistor-by-Norwich) was laid out in the early Flavian period, as part of the Roman reaction to the Boudican revolt, has become canonical in literature on Roman Britain. Drawing on the results of recent excavations, this paper re-evaluates the evidence relating to the establishment of the street grid and questions the idea that the town reflects a coherent act of urban planning. It concludes by arguing that previous interpretations of the site within a ‘Boudican’ paradigm are fundamentally flawed.

Geophysical survey prior to the upgrading to motorway status of the A1 in the vicinity of Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, identified a new Roman castra site with double defensive ditches, a series of outwork defences, and strong indications of extramural activity on both the north and south banks of the river Ure. Excavation permitted the examination of a corridor over 0.5 km long through the extramural settlement. Dating evidence suggested a period of occupation ranging between a.d. 71 and at least the first, and possibly the second, half of the 80s.

Reliance on CIL vii 1201 and 1202 has made it customary to quote the year A.D. 49 as a firm date by which Roman lead production had already been fully established on the Mendips. But of these two items one is highly doubtful, while the second on fresh scrutiny proves to involve a misreading of the inscriptions that it carries: neither can justify the confidence that has been placed in it for precise dating, as the following comments seek to show.

The Antonine Itinerary has long been used by scholars as the principal source of place-names for Roman Britain. Most of the names it contains have been satisfactorily attributed to known archaeological sites with the aid of epigraphic evidence or the inter-settlement distances recorded in the itinera, or by the survival of the name in a recognisable form. It has generally been recognised that distances between any two given places are not always found to be consistent between the various itinera, and they frequently only approximate to the actual distance on the ground. Consequently, the Antonine Itinerary has never been used as a precision document, until Professor A. L. F. Rivet performed a valuable and long-needed service when he undertook the first detailed examination of the British section. Two side-issues of particular interest emerged from his study. First, that it is possible to recognise and correct at least some of the post-Roman scribal errors, greatly improving the accuracy and hence the usefulness of the Itinerary as a whole. Secondly, it was shown that there is an unexplained, but consistent shortfall (or ‘minus error’) in the majority of the distances quoted between any two adjacent places, and that in many instances the total for the iter falls seriously short of the total mileage for the journey in question, Since it is impossible to believe that the Roman mile was of differing length in different provinces, it must be concluded that measurements between towns, forts and even small settlements, were not taken from centre to centre, but from some point beyond the main area of occupation. Furthermore, the Itinerary shortfalls seem to vary in proportion to the size of town being approached.

In Britannia, volume viii (1977), Professor E. A. Thompson published a long account of British political history in the early fifth century. Arguing carefully and ingeniously, he derived from the literary sources an attractive and detailed narrative of the last years of Roman Britain. The source material, however, is full of difficulties; and it is the purpose of the present paper to draw attention to these difficulties and to show that the evidence cannot serve as a foundation for the elaborate superstructure which Thompson wishes to erect upon it.

The standard view of the great temple at Camulodunum is that it served an early provincial cult which paid outright divine worship to the reigning emperor Claudius. ‘The British cult … was a personal cult of the Emperor Claudius, to whom it accorded divinity during his lifetime with an emphasis which went well beyond previous Roman practice.’ So entrenched has this belief become that discussion has centred almost entirely upon how such an anomalous situation is to be explained. Had Claudius' officials exceeded their orders in a fit of over-enthusiasm? Or should one rather suppose a more moderate cult, for example of the emperor's numen, that quickly merged into unadulterated divine veneration? Even in Rome the trend was more and more to regard the emperor as a praesens deus; so much so that a medical writer could boldly refer to Claudius as ‘our god Caesar’. Perhaps, then, one should think in terms of a provincial experiment, justifiable for local reasons but still too far ahead of its time to be risked in the political climate of the capital. Whatever explanation recommends itself, the temple of Claudius, as now interpreted, presents major difficulties that have never been satisfactorily resolved. I should like to reconsider the problem here by openly dissenting from the main tenets of present doctrine. Was Claudius ever the object of a purely personal cult at Camulodunum? Did a temple to the god Claudius even exist there within his own lifetime?

Chanctonbury Ring (NGR TQ 139 121) is one of the best known landmarks in Sussex. It consists of a clump of trees, mostly beech, but with occasional sycamore, situated on the very northern edge of the South Downs, about 8 km (5 miles) from the coast (FIG. I). The height above sea-level is 234 m (780 ft.), and the subsoil is Upper Chalk, though several local patches of Clay-with-flints were encountered during the excavation.

Dinorben, Denbighshire (SH 968757) has the distinction of being the only Welsh hillfort to produce items of undoubted Roman military equipment. This paper will be concerned with the origins, dating and probable historical context of two iron arrowheads. However, it is necessary to enumerate the other objects also which have been either termed ‘military’ in the Dinorben excavation reports, or which may originate from such a source.

This paper presents the interim results of Oxford University's on-going excavations at the Roman religious complex at Marcham/Frilford, Oxfordshire. This site has been the focus of debates about continuity from the Iron Age into the Roman period since the original excavations at the temple by Bradford and Goodchild in the 1930s. New findings from the current excavations are brought to bear on this question, in particular how the Iron Age activity influenced the design and layout of the Roman complex. In addition, the paper uses preliminary analysis of the finds from the excavations to discuss the nature of religious practices and activities at the site.

This paper provides description and context for some of the discoveries made by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales during aerial reconnaissance in the drought conditions of the summer of 2018. New discoveries include two marching camps, three auxiliary forts and a remarkable series of stone buildings outside the fort at Pen y Gaer. The photographs also clarify the plan of several known villas as well as identifying some potential villa sites and enclosure systems of probable Romano-British date in south-eastern, south-western and north-western Wales. The recognition of a new road alignment south of Carmarthen is suggestive of another coastal fort at or near Kidwelly.

A building inscription from the fort at Ribchester (Bremetennacum) in the Pennines is preserved in the following drawing (RIB 589):

Compared with many other branches of Romano-British archaeology, the study of buildings is in its infancy. This paper concentrates on one aspect of building study, the principles of design upon which plans were based; and it is further confined to military buildings. These were selected partly to limit the material under consideration to a manageable group and partly because the methods used to erect them were more likely to have been standardised to some degree. Military architecture should not, however, be seen as a selfcontained discipline: it can only really be understood as a manifestation of architectural methods and philosophy in a wider world.

Archaeological knowledge of Canterbury's remote past obtained by excavation is of comparatively recent acquisition, being in large measure the result of work carried out since the second world war. In 1868 the streets were trenched for the installation of drains, and the city engineer of the time, James Pilbrow, F.S.A., wrote a brief account of his discoveries for Archaeologia, xliii (1871), illustrated with a plan of the city and one or two diagrams. Unfortunately the opportunity was not taken to note the Roman street plan. Nevertheless important details of the building here to be discussed were recorded under the south end of St. Margaret's Street and the west end of Watling Street.