Excavation of the Roman tilery at Little London, Pamber, Hampshire, has prompted a reassessment of the dating of relief-patterned tile, assigning the bulk of production to the Claudio-Neronian period rather than the late first to mid-/late second century. This material has been privileged for retention in excavation archives but can now be seen as a proxy for the manufacture of a much wider range of ceramic building material, typically discarded on site, which, in the case of products from Little London and pre-Flavian Minety (Wiltshire), travelled distances of up to 100 km. Redating implies more extensive public and private building in town and country south and east of the Fosse Way before the Flavian period than has previously been envisaged. While private building included the construction of bath-houses, heated rooms and the provision of roofing materials, public building, we suggest, provided tabernas et praetoria along the principal roads of the province. In the private sphere such building provides a possible context for Dio Cassius’ mention of the recall and confiscation of large loans made to Britons before the Boudican rebellion. Finally, consideration of fabric needs to be added to the criteria for retaining ceramic building material in excavation archives.

A magnetometry survey of the Roman fort at Lake Farm, near Wimborne Minster in Dorset, first discovered in 1959, has upgraded the status of this site to a full legionary fortress: a major base of the legio II Augusta during the subjugation of the Durotriges and other tribes of south-west Britain. The interior layout of the fortress was identified for the first time, together with the original road and river connections, extensive areas of extramural activity and evidence for an earlier phase of the site as a marching camp.

Exceptional aspects of the design and location of a pair of first-century fortlets on the Exmoor coast are explicable as a product of local influence. Previous explanations for the remote setting of these small posts and the distinctive defences securing them have focused on a signalling role, with the fortlets serving as a means to transmit messages to naval vessels patrolling the Bristol Channel. Instead, both the landscape setting and articulation with local settlement patterns imply that these installations strengthened pre-existing measures to counter coastal raiding. Parallels between this variant fortlet design and settlement morphology in the South-West peninsula suggest that the army co-opted an indigenous architectural style. The two fortlets could act as components of what was effectively a composite coastal cordon, built on collaboration between the Roman military and the local population.

The dice tower, or pyrgus, an ancient device for rolling dice, was an everyday object in the Roman world, but up to now only two towers, from Germany and Egypt, have been found. In re-examining a group of bone box-casings from Richborough Roman Fort, however, the author has found that some of these casings must have belonged to such a tower. This article shows how this dice tower may have been constructed. The author also summarises the literary and artistic evidence for dice towers, and shows how the rosette decoration on this tower links it to the Roman game of Duodecim Scripta.

New interpretations are suggested for two terms in Docilis' letter found on a wooden tablet from Carlisle and published in Britannia 29 (1998), 34–84, no. 16 (= AE 1998, 839). Lanciarius does not refer to all the horsemen of ala I Gallorum, but only to those equipped with lancea-spears and subarmales are not weapons but felt-padded, rainproof doublets worn under the armour.

A ROMANO-CELTIC bust was discovered in 1967 by Mr. C. N. Moore, then Assistant Curator of the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, set into a wall-niche in Chapel Cottage, Sutton Row, Sutton Mandeville, about ten miles to the west of Salisbury. It was purchased by the museum in 1968. Sor far it has only been summarily published – in JRS lviii (1968), p. 201, pl. 18, fig. 3 (front view, while still in the wall), in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Annual Report 1967–1968, pp. 16, 17, pl. l, c (left profile view, after removal to the museum), and in Salisbury Heritage, 1973, p. 18, fig 32 (same view as the last). But photographs giving several other views — three-quarters to right and left and from the back — were taken, both before and after the bust's removal from the cottage wall, by Mr Moore, who has kindly given me permission to publish here a selection of those that show it as it is now displayed.

Excavations at this site, first uncovered by Sir John Evans over a century ago, have so far been undertaken in two seasons, one in 1966 and the other in 1969. No final report can be published until more work has been done not only on the main building but also on outbuildings that may exist. It is hoped that the following brief architectural description and tentative dating will suffice until a more substantial report is prepared on these and further excavations to be carried out over the next few years.