A collection of copper-alloy brooches and brooch moulds (PL. VA) dating to the Romano-British period has recently been found in Norfolk. The site lies in the south of the county on boulder clay in a relatively elevated position to the west of the village of Carleton Rode, South Norfolk. The field has been cultivated to a depth of 0.40 m for many years, most recently in autumn 1993. The finds were made within a restricted area and their location (FIG. 1) noted by the finder, Mr Derek Harty, who kindly brought his discoveries to staff at Norwich Castle Museum.

Among discoveries in Roman Britain in 1978 one of the most exciting and most unexpected was that made in Littlecote Park in Wiltshire, 3½ miles west of Hungerford. Here the remains of a new Roman villa have come to light. But much more important was the relocation by Mr Bryn Walters, Director of the Littlecote Park Excavation Unit, and his colleagues of the large half triconch, half rectangular room structurally separate from the villa that lies to the south of it, sited between the villa and the river Kennet to the north, and measuring 41 by 25 ft. (12·5 × 7·6 m). The floor of this room had been completely covered by a partly figured, partly geometric mosaic pavement (PL. 1), found in 1727 a few feet below the ground surface by Mr William George (steward of Mr Edward Popham, the then owner of Littlecote House and Park), who made coloured drawings of it on separate sheets of paper and died not long afterwards. From these drawings (now no longer extant) Mr George's widow made a complete needlework reproduction in colour (still preserved at Littlecote House) of the mosaic, which was meanwhile reported to be wholly lost and destroyed. But when Mr Walters uncovered the triconch room there was a large portion of the mosaic floor, c. 40 per cent still surviving in situ, including important parts both of the figure-work and of the geometric patterns (B. Walters and B. Phillips, Archaeological Excavations in Littlecote Park, Wiltshire 1978: First Interim Report (1979)).

The invasion of Britain, which was carried out by four legions plus auxiliaries under A. Plautius some time in the high summer of A.D. 43, and the subsequent sixteen-day expedition made by the emperor, Claudius, in person in the autumn of that year, form together one of the most famous, if not one of the best understood, episodes in the history of the Roman Empire. In spite of the apparent familiarity of the event our knowledge of the way in which the invasion was planned, and of the route followed, is scanty in the extreme. It is based in part on a very brief summary of Claudius' own journey to Britain, which was a separate expedition of reinforcement, undertaken in order to associate Claudius personally with the prestige of the project. This is described by Suetonius in his Divus Claudius, written some eighty years after the event, but the chief source for the whole invasion is the narrative in Greek given by the historian Cassius Dio some century and a half after the expedition. To these can be added short references of a mere sentence in length, also in Suetonius' Caesares. They relate to the presence of the future emperor, Galba, in Claudius' entourage in Gaul, and to the large part played by Vespasian, and his brother and son, in the early stages of the Roman conquest. Another, and earlier, mention of Vespasian's part in the conquest is to be found in Josephus' Bellum Judaicum, but it contributes no useful or circumstantial detail, and indeed nothing but praise of Josephus' patrons, the Flavian dynasty. Later Roman historians, such as Aurelius Victor and the anonymous writer of De Caesaribus, merely give abbreviated versions of the already meagre information retailed by the historians of the second and early third centuries. Eutropius does add some circumstantial detail, namely that Gn. Sentius (Saturninus) was jointly in command of the expedition with A. Plautius, and that the Orkney Islands (Orcades) were received under Roman control by Claudius. This submission, if it is historical, must have been received through envoys at very long distance, while Claudius was in Colchester. This latter item is repeated by the early fifth-century Christian writer, Orosius.

During the third century A.D., there was a series of barbarian invasions in Gaul. The last, in 276, was the most serious, for some fifty or sixty towns had fallen into enemy hands and had to be recaptured. Most Gallic towns had proved an easy prey to the Germanic invaders, for they were built in a spacious style, and for the most part without defensive walls. Dijon is said to have received its walls in the time of Aurelian, but positive evidence for the construction-date of the walls of the Gallic towns is in most cases not forthcoming, although it seems that these defences were constructed in the late third century and early fourth, probably as a result of the Germanic invasions. The style of building was what became the well-known style of the third century and after—thick walls, with exterior towers or bastions, tile bonding courses, and much re-use of earlier material.

While the basic sequence of innovations that characterise ceramic production in southern Britain during the first centuries b.c. and a.d. is well-established, our understanding of resistance to these innovations remains in its infancy. Led by the theoretical principles of social constructionism, this paper presents a detailed technological characterisation of Silchester ware, a hand-built ceramic type common in late Iron Age and early Roman Berkshire and northern Hampshire, and a conspicuous example of technological and stylistic anachronism when compared to contemporary wheel-made pottery. Multi-period analyses using radiography, petrography and typology indicate that Silchester ware was not merely a technological ‘hangover’, but a traditional form of material culture with its own role in changing socio-economic structures. Contextualisation of the findings within the local archaeological background further suggests that Silchester ware may have been instrumental in the maintenance of local community and identity at a time when these aspects of social life were under threat. Supplementary material available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X20000355) comprises a characterisation of the chaînes opératoires of Silchester ware and its middle Iron Age antecedents, and a summarised version of the data, interpretations and the original radiographs.

In 1960 during construction work for the Water's Edge Hotel, Cold Knap, Barry, the remains of a Roman building were revealed. It was not possible to excavate, but one of the authors (HJT) was able to carry out a watching brief during the demolition. From the remains visible at the time, it was believed to be a free-standing building of approximately square plan, and, since human remains had been recorded from close at hand in 1866, it was tentatively identified as a mausoleum.

Recent decades have seen many Romano-Celtic temples excavated in Britain, as a consequence of which evidence has accumulated which challenges the present consensus that they generally had surrounding porticos open to the weather. This interpretation is presented in most standard works on Roman Britain; for example, Professor S. S. Frere has written in Britannia: ‘In the civil zone, the majority [of cults] had much smaller temples of the Romano-Celtic type, where the small square shrine is surrounded by a square portico or cloister’. The same opinion can be traced back through the writings of Sir Ian Richmond and R. G. Collingwood to those of Haverfield. It stems ultimately from nineteenth-century studies in France and Germany, such as those of Fontenay, which anticipated the full presentation of the theory in Lehner's classic survey of Gallo-Roman temples. So far as English studies were concerned, the definitive statement was made in 1928 by the then Dr. Mortimer Wheeler. Among subsequent writers, only Penn and Goodchild and Kirk have expressed strong reservations. This paper seeks to review all the evidence available from Britain on this subject, as a result of which it is suggested that, contrary to previous opinions, the great majority of such temples had enclosed surrounding ambulatories. In the early stages of the discussion, only material from Britain has been considered. This has involved omitting any evidence from pictorial representations or upstanding structures, since neither category of evidence is represented in this province; discussion is focused entirely on the interpretation of excavated remains rarely exceeding a metre in height.

The Roman site at Wanborough is usually identified with the Durocornovium of the Antonine Itinerary. The settlement lies some 20–22 kilometres south-east of Cirencester, on Ermin Street, at a point where a branch road diverges to Mildenhall, and just before the main road ascends the northern scarp of the Berkshire Downs.

Much interest has been taken recently in the reuse of prehistoric ceremonial sites during later prehistory and early history, but only limited attention has been paid to this phenomenon during the Romano-British period. This article seeks to build on existing work by making a detailed study of such activity in three specific cases: the limestone caves of the Bristol Channel region, the Neolithic chambered tombs of the Cotswold-Severn area and the Peak District, and the three most spectacular prehistoric monuments of the Wessex chalklands: Stonehenge, the Avebury complex and the Uffington White Horse.

Evidence for prehistoric activity and settlement in the area covered by the modern city of Lincoln has accumulated gradually. Published accounts of the material from Lincoln have treated it as part of a wider study of the county as a whole, while excavations on various sites in the city prior to 1972 had produced a number of prehistoric artefacts, all occurring in secondary contexts. Since these were residual, a distribution map would not necessarily be of any significance, but it is true that the vast majority were found in the lower part of the city, in the vicinity of (or on the bed of) the River Witham.

Mediobogdum is founded on comparatively level ground half-way down the west side of Hardknott pass, above the 800 ft. contour. It is an extremely wet site, peat having formed up to o·60 m thick in hollows between the rock outcrops or where collapsed walling has blocked the natural drainage. It was by chance in digging a drain through the retentura to improve the upper part of the site behind the granaries that the first piece of leather was found in 1965. This is thought to be part of a soldier's jerkin.