In December 1976 the construction of a new private road and car park at The Hall, Welwyn, exposed traces of Roman building material. These were observed by Tony Rook, who led the rescue team of the Welwyn Archaeological Society on the site. Initial excavation during the Christmas break was limited to the removal of the hardcore already on the new road and the plotting of the feature so exposed. Later, excavation was permitted throughout 1977 in two bays of the proposed car park. The corner of a very large robber-trench was investigated, and, with the information from the road, supplemented with trial-trenching, the plan of a mausoleum and its enclosure ditch was recovered. One length of the enclosure ditch contained inhumation burials of Roman date. A report on the skeletons by C. B. Denston is appended.

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.

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.

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’.

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:

Marcham/Frilford is a large religious site with a temple, an amphitheatre and a central shrine feature. Adjacent to the shrine is a large fourth-century structure containing a significant deposit of coins, hobnails and bones. The absence of diffusion of the tiles from the temple roof to the wider site suggests that it continued to function as a religious complex throughout the Roman period; therefore the large structure is unlikely to have been a building which would have blighted the shrine but was more probably an altar platform where rituals were performed in conjunction with it.

The story of the ill-fated British leader, Vortigern, is familiar to most serious students of the history of Britain. This is true whether it be viewed as a last melancholy episode in the Roman period or as an initial and important chapter in the Saxon era. But to appreciate fully the significance of the events of this tempestuous time of transition one should have a clear idea of just what Vortigern was and what he was not. In this short study I shall consider successively a number of important questions about Vortigern, finishing with a rapid reassessment of his role in the final collapse of Roman Britain.

The ancient sources for the location of Thule are reviewed.1 It is suggested that the identification of the Shetland Isles as Thule was an error by Agricola. The identification was then accepted by Ptolemy, who moved Thule from the more northerly location implied by Pytheas’ account to the site of the Shetland Isles. This would account for his description of Thule/Shetland as one island. The coincident location of Ptolemy's Thule with Shetland suggests that the Roman fleet did see the islands. The emendations of Wolfson relating to Thule are examined and rejected. There is no evidence that Agricola's fleet landed in Shetland.