Although Deva was primarily a military centre, the installation of a garrison was quickly followed by the growth of a neighbouring civilian community. Where such extramural settlements grew up beside auxiliary forts they were classed as vici and their occupants as vicani, while those which developed outside legionary fortresses were, from the time of Hadrian at least, known as canabae and their inhabitants as canabenses. This distinction could become blurred, however, as some canabae are known to have been divided into a number of constituent vici. The population of these settlements included purveyors of the modest luxuries and entertainments which appeal to soldierly tastes as well as a wide variety of other traders and craftsmen, some of the latter perhaps being under contract to the army while the remainder were attracted to the vicinity of military camps by the opportunities for financial gain which their garrisons afforded. In addition, there were the wives and families of serving soldiers (although, until the early third century, it was a condition of service for the ordinary soldier that he be single, this did not prevent large numbers from taking common-law wives), veterans and their families, and any servants or slaves employed in the households of such people. The only civilians allowed to reside within military installations were the families of the garrison commanders and, in the case of legionary fortresses, those of the other senior officers.

Tacitus is the only ancient writer to give any information about the Agri Decumates, or indeed even to mention them. Thus, all that we know of them is confined to the period c.a.d. 70-98. In the Germania, dated firmly to the latter year, Tacitus tells us that the occupants of the Decumates agri could hardly count as Germans. They were rather immigrants of fairly recent origin drawn from the least substantial groups among the Gauls, who, through want, had taken up possession of this risky territory. More recently, however, a defensive line had been drawn, garrisons sent in and the area had become a pocket of imperial security and a part of the province (of Upper Germany).

Dudley and Webster state that Vespasian left Britain in A.D. 44, the year following the invasion, in order to attend Claudius' triumph in Rome and receive the triumphalia ornamenta. Webster adheres to this view in a recently published article, and it has been adopted elsewhere. Such a view drastically curtails the duration of Vespasian's command in Britain. This in itself is not perhaps a serious objection to it, even though Suetonius' record of Vespasian's campaign suggests protracted operations. There are other objections that are far more serious.

Up to one hundred years ago no difficulty was felt in the translation of this passage: thus Church and Brodribb translated the first part of it as: ‘In the fifth year of the war Agricola, himself in the leading ship, crossed the Clota, and subdued in a series of victories tribes hitherto unknown.’ But in their edition of the following year they found some difficulty in nave prima, and in this were followed by Furneaux; both editions still found no difficulty in supposing the Clyde to be the object of transgressus. Anderson, however, regarded nave prima as definitely corrupt, since he could find only one parallel (Livy 21,5,5) for the position of prima. He admitted that the point of crossing would, in the context, most obviously be taken as the Forth-Clyde Isthmus, but said, ‘It is much more likely that the starting-point was not the Isthmus at all, but either headquarters at Chester, or some point on the Chester-Carlisle line.’ Then, apparently assuming that the object of transgressus was concealed in the ‘corruption’, he suggested that the phrase was explained more fully in the following reference to operations opposite Ireland. Bury agreed with Anderson about the probable position of headquarters, but went further, in denying that ‘the Isthmus’ can be supplied from the context, appealing to ‘the method of Tacitus's narrative’.

A broken statue of a Genius was accidentally discovered at Burgh-by-Sands (Aballava) on 5 October 1976 by a workman of the North Western Electricity Board who was using a mechanical excavator during cable laying. The findspot, in field No. 0120, was approximately 25 m east of the fort and 40 m north of the presumed line of Hadrian's Wall (NY 3293 5918. Mr Paul Austen of the Department of the Environment, who was present throughout the Electricity Board's operations, subsequently informed the present writer and made the statue available for examination before it was deposited in the City Museum, Carlisle (PL. VIII A).

Stone foundations, interpreted as part of a milecastle on Hadrian's Wall, were uncovered in 1985 during the conversion into the Newcastle Arts Centre of 67–75 Westgate Road (National Grid reference NZ 2452 6401). The initial discovery was made and pursued, and almost all the subsequent excavation carried out, by David Fry, the resident potter at the Centre, with constant encouragement from Mike Tilley, the director. The recording on site, and responsibility for eventual publication, was undertaken by members of the Tyne and Wear Archaeology Unit, who are grateful to Charles Daniels and Brian Dobson for their helpful advice during the preparation of this report, and to John Dore, John Casey and Jacqui Huntley for their specialist reports.

Carausius struck legionary coins, mostly in a very base silver alloy but also in good silver; only one specimen, however, of such a coin struck by Allectus is recorded. This piece was found during excavations at South Shields in 1880, and a woodcut illustration together with initial publication of its discovery may be found in Archaeologia Aeliana. Since that time mention has been made of this coin in various other journals and works but I can find no other attempts to illustrate it. The photograph of the coin (PL. XXVIII A) proves that it was faithfully recorded in the initial instance and undoubtedly represents a legionary antoninianus of Allectus:

In the Jubilee volume of the Journal of Roman Studies (1960), Dr Kenneth Steer surveyed a quarter century of excavation and research on the Antonine Wall, starting from the publication in 1934 of the second, definitive, edition of Sir George Macdonald's The Roman Wall in Scotland. The following pages aim to discuss in brief compass how our knowledge has been extended in the twenty years that have followed, and suggest some things which the next two decades could and should be aiming to achieve. As 1960 also marked the publication of the first edition of Professor Anne Robertson's indispensable handbook to The Antonine Wall and its visible remains, that year is a doubly appropriate starting point. The last two decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of excavations taking place along the line of the Antonine Wall, in the amount of money available to do this (most of it from government sources), in the number of full-time archaeologists concerned with its study and preservation, and in the number of students working on the problems of the frontier line at university level; there has also been a greater awareness of the Wall in relation to the general development of Roman defensive works. All this activity culminated in 1979 in the first ever full visit to Scotland of the International Limes Congress.