A unique linchpin depicting a human thumb, discovered in North Lincolnshire in the 1980s, is here reconsidered and particular emphasis is placed on its potential as an apotropaic symbol. This function is explored in terms of the wider material and literary basis for magical gestures in Roman Britain and the Roman world. The relationship between this image and the space in which it was used is also explored.

In 1849 Mark Anthony Lower published a pioneer paper on the ironworks of East Sussex, but this contained no mention of any ironworking at Beauport Park, near Battle. Ten years later, however, the Rev. S. Arnott, rector of the nearby parish of Hollington, wrote that, although there were no remains of early ironmaking in his parish, ‘there is a large cinder-bank in Beauport Park on which grow firs with oak and ash, all planted by the owner, Sir Charles Lamb’.

In addressing a CBA conference in 1965 Mr. C. E. Stevens performed his now famous ‘strip-tease act’, whereby he arrived at the conclusion that, save in a few exceptional areas, south-eastern England from Hengistbury Head to the Wash rarely produces Romano-British villas with patterned pavements. He related this phenomenon to the system of land-tenure which he believes he can recognize operating in south-eastern England during the Roman period—tenure in tir gwelyawg. Hence, the occupiers of the villas did not lay mosaic pavements because they ‘do not seem to have had the power of capital accumulation sufficient to place an order for them’. South-eastern England thus becomes a zone of ‘poor men's villas’ (to use Mr. Stevens' term), and sitting in the very centre of this zone are the villas of the Chilterns. Mr. Stevens generously recognized that High Wycombe was an exception to his rule, and rather more grudgingly admitted that Totternhoe might be another, but he was confident that ‘critics might find one or two more, but not many’. I have previously challenged, in passing, this harsh assessment of the Chiltern villas, but in the last two years additional information has come to light and the importance of well-dated mosaic pavements from villas has been emphasized by Dr. D. J. Smith's brilliant chapter on villa-mosaics in The Roman Villa in Britain.

The summer of 1983 was remarkable in certain parts of North Britain for the severity of the drought which developed during the months of July and August, all the more so because it was unexpected. The weather had been far from settled, even in early June, and among those engaged in aerial reconnaissance praesumpta illius anni quies. By the end of the season, however, flying in central and eastern Scotland, south of the Highland Line, had met with unparalleled success in terms of the quality and quantity of archaeological evidence recorded from the air. Considerable interest attaches to the identification of no fewer than three Roman forts, all of which appear to be of Flavian date (see below, p. 275), but one of them, the newly discovered work at Doune, appears to possess a special significance which justifies the presentation of this early report.