Excavations at two sites in Gwynedd have produced new evidence for highland zone rural settlement during the Romano-British period. At Bryn Eryr this activity was the culmination of a long sequence of development during the Iron Age. At Bush Farm, similarly, a Romano-British phase succeeded earlier, probably late prehistoric occupation of the site. At both locations significant structural changes took place during the Romano-British period as small stone-walled houses replaced larger, clay-walled buildings. Changes in the local farming economy have been identified and the proximity of the vicus at Segontium provided access to Roman pottery vessels. The quality and range of pottery from Bryn Eryr and Bush Farm are considerable in comparison with other ‘Highland Zone’ settlements and the material is discussed in detail.

The practicalities of building-construction, timber buildings, and the physical effort of supporting military campaigning are not well covered in the literature. The majority of works on Roman buildings are concerned with stone and concrete structures, with an emphasis on public buildings, aqueducts, architectural appearance, dating, and historical associations. Recently there has been an interest in technical matters, and in reconstructions, but the emphasis is still on stonework and concrete and on appearance; discussion of the scale and method of supply of materials and labour is absent or very generalised. Work on constructional timbers (until recently somewhat lightly considered in excavations) tends to be confined to the largely descriptive.

Tacitus tells us that in A.D 81, during Agricola's fourth campaign, the Roman army paused in its northernward advance into what is now Scotland and sought to consolidate the conquest of those areas which had already been overrun. To ensure that such work went on undisturbed by incursions from Caledonia, a number of garrisons were deployed along the narrow neck of land between the estuaries of the Rivers Forth and Clyde – a line of natural strength later favoured by the builders of the Antonine Wall. The exact position of these Agricolan praesidia has long been a matter for debate, but until quite recently most historians would have agreed with Sir George Macdonald in assuming that they underlay the forts on the second-century frontier. In Macdonald's words, the Flavian garrisons ‘really determined the course of the Antonine Limes inasmuch as they fixed the points at which the Antonine castella were destined to stand’, and considerable effort, not to say ingenuity, has been employed to prove or disprove that not unreasonable assumption. However, the unexpected discovery of a new fort in the central sector of the Isthmus has provided a suitable occasion for the re-assessment of the evidence relating to the Agricolan ‘frontier’.

The problem of what happened in Britain in the fifth century A.D. has long fascinated historians, and archaeology is now helping to supplement the meagre written source-material. The county of Sussex is a very useful area to investigate thus, for it contains archaeological evidence which points to a Saxon settlement geographically isolated in the pagan period from the settlements in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, and it formed a known independent kingdom.

The date of 441/2 for the decisive point in the series of events which constituted the adventus Saxonum has frequently been quoted as deriving from a contemporary source. As a matter of fact, however, it is a ghostdate, born in 1892. It originated in a marginale by Mommsen to a chronicle-fragment which is one of the continuations used to extend the Carolingian edition of Jerome. This fragment was edited and annotated by Mommsen before the modern editions of Jerome were available. The information required to correct Mommsen has, however, been readily accessible since 1923, and the manuscript basis of his text has been open to consultation in London for much longer. It is not my purpose here to wage any wars, even upon a long neglect of the primary source, but merely to set out some considerations of Form-kritik which are the historian's equivalent to the archaeologist's typological criteria.

The rings and coins described below were found in a field adjacent to the presumed Iron Age earthwork in Rampier Copse, immediately to the south-west of the walled town of Calleva Atrebatum and about ioo m south of the road to Sorviodunum (FIG. 1). They were discovered by Mr J. Young and two colleagues using metal detectors after the field had been ploughed in the winter of 1986–7. In the autumn of 1985 a single gold ring (FIG. 2, No. 5) and four silver coins had been recovered from the same area and it was suggested that they had once formed part of a hoard. At the Coroner's inquest in December 1987 it was reported that the new finds were widely scattered and it was for this reason that the court decided that they were not treasure-trove. However, given the rarity of single finds of such coins and rings as opposed to the instances where they have been found in association with each other, it would be perverse to suppose that they did not originate from at least one hoard. Indeed, after the discovery had been reported, one of us visited the field in the spring of 1987 and noted that the area of greatest disturbance was confined to a small area adjacent to the field boundary and the tail of the counterscarp bank of the earthwork at SU 63486212 (FIG. 1). It is likely that both sets of finds derive from the same hoard and it is on the assumption of a common origin that the new finds are reported here.

Bath-houses are a frequent part of Roman military installations in Britain. This work explores differences in the social meaning of bathing between legionary fortresses and auxiliary forts. It demonstrates variations in the scale of and investment in these facilities between the two groups. It also argues for greater complexity in the legionary bath-houses, with duplication of facilities, and more activities being catered for. A comparison of the proportion of space allocated for bathing and non-bathing activities reveals that the two groups respond to different ideas of what a visit to the bath-house entailed.

This article examines the phenomenon of so-called North African-style pottery made in early third-century York. The pottery, which was produced in significant quantities in late Ebor ware, is strikingly different from vessels in circulation in Roman Britain and the north-west provinces – so much so that the late Vivien Swan argued that it was ‘made by Africans for the use of Africans’. The present study reassesses the evidence of ceramic genealogical influences, production waste, fabric supply, consumption patterns and contextual finds associations. The results shed new light on the manufacture and use of late Ebor ware by York's military community, qualifying claims made about the repertoire's links with novel culinary practices, cultural diversity and the unique historical circumstances of Severan York.

The Canterbury Hinterland Project (CHP) has combined aerial photographic and LiDAR analysis, synthesis of HER and other data across east Kent with targeted survey south and east of Canterbury. We present possible hillforts, temples, large enclosures, a major trackway, linking paths, burials and high-status Roman-period complexes and argue that people organised the landscape to communicate meaning in two main ways: a ‘public’ face oriented towards the Dover–Canterbury road and expressions of ritual and remembrance for local groups. The character of this rural population has traditionally been understood in terms of its relationship to the civitas capital and villas; we look beyond this to examine a more detailed vision of possible social interactions.

Excavations at Knobb's Farm, Somersham, Cambridgeshire, uncovered three small late Roman cemeteries, positioned at the edge of a farming settlement. The 52 burials found included 17 decapitated bodies and 13 prone burials – far higher than the British average. In two cases, cut marks show decapitation to have been the mechanism of death, and cuts on two other bodies indicate they experienced extreme violence. We conclude that the decapitations were the result of judicial execution. The significance of the prone burials is less clear, but it is demonstrably related to decapitation. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X21000064) and comprises a detailed osteological report and skeleton catalogue, specialist reports, DNA and isotopic analyses, and a complete description of the settlement's development.

Two recent articles in Britannia by Simon Ellis and Patricia Witts have considered the identification of certain rooms in high-status Roman houses in Britain as dining/reception-rooms. Ellis, in a survey of a relatively small number of sites, concentrated upon the shape and position of rooms, and concluded that apses were indicative of dining-rooms designed to accommodate stibadia (semicircular couches). Witts's careful analysis, based mainly on a survey of twenty rooms with figured mosaics, dwelt more on the widths of borders, simple geometric mosaic panels which suggest the position of furniture, the orientation of figures, etc., to help adduce the function. She demonstrated that some of Ellis's examples should not be regarded as dining-rooms, and, with the notable exception of Room W at Keynsham, the present author accepts Witts's interpretations. However, both writers make no distinction between heated and unheated dining-rooms in their respective surveys, and this aspect has a significant bearing on the design and position of the rooms, and, more importantly, their function. It is known from ancient sources that high-status Roman villas and town-houses had winter and summer dining-rooms. But how far did this trend extend to Roman Britain? An analysis of architectural form together with the design and position of mosaic panels can give some clues concerning the function of rooms. This paper attempts to clarify the issue of seasonal dining-rooms, demonstrate their development in Britain, and identify types.

Complete excavation in 1971 confirmed the Roman date and provided a complete plan of the fortlet at Barburgh Mill (NX 903884) which measured 29·50 m by 28·50 m within its single ditch and turf rampart. The entrance was defended by a gate of six timbers probably surmounted by a tower. It contained two timber buildings in plan appropriate for an infantry century. A latrine lay in one corner of the fortlet and two possible hearths between the two buildings. The fortlet was surrounded on the north and east by an outer rampart and ditch and the resulting enclosure subdivided by a medial ditch. The entrance of the outer enclosure was undefended. There was only one structural phase represented at the site and the pottery suggests a date in the Antonine I period, c. 142-58. When the site was abandoned the buildings were probably burnt, the rampart slighted and broken and surplus pottery dumped in the ditches.

The site of the Nash Waste Water Treatment Works (hereafter called WWTW) lies on the northern bank of the Severn Estuary, 4 km south of Newport (Casnewydd) (NGR ST 337 840), on the flood plain of the Severn, at the mouth of the River Usk (FIG. 1). The area forms part of the coastal wetlands of the Gwent Levels. Alluvial silts, the result of sediment deposition associated with post-glacial sea-level rise, are interleaved with layers of peat, characterised as the Wentlooge Formation, and overlie Triassic Mercia Mudstone bed-rock.