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)).

In the hierarchy of legionary centurions, the princeps prior of the first cohort held the second highest position, ranking immediately below the primus pilus. He was the princeps as such, often without further specification. By contrast, the princeps posterior of the first cohort, and the principes in the other nine cohorts, had to specify their titles as prior and posterior and to add their cohort, e.g. octavus princeps posterior or (centuria) X (decimi) pr(incipis)pos(terioris).

In a recent attempt to clarify the basis on which commercial and domestic buildings in Roman provincial towns were laid out, it was suggested that two different units of measurement had been employed in the planning of the Insula xiv timber buildings at Verulamium. It appeared that in Periods I, IIA and IIB the block had been planned in terms of the pes Drusianus, but that in Period IIC, c. A.D. 130, the pes Monetalis had been adopted and remained in use throughout subsequent periods.

A catalogue of stamped bronze vessels found in Britain, published by McPeake and Moore in a recent volume of this journal, discusses a total of 40 vessels, one of which was omitted by accident from their published list (Part II below, No. 34). There are, however, a number of errors and omissions in this catalogue, and they have failed to include three stamped skillets that have been known since early this century: all these vessels are referred to in papers used by McPeake and Moore in compiling their catalogue. A principal purpose of this paper, therefore, is to correct the major inaccuracies in McPeake's and Moore's contribution, and to bring to wider notice the three ‘forgotten’ skillets together with three recent finds from Cumbria: this work forms the basis of our Part II. In Part I, however, we discuss the evidence for the date at which Publius Cipius Polybius, the most prolific of the Capuan bronzesmiths, was chiefly active.

Brockworth is situated in the Severn Valley between Gloucester and the Cotswold escarpment. The parish is divided by the line of Ermin Street, with the church and Court lying to the north. The Horsebere Brook winds its way past the site from the slopes of the Cotswolds to reach the Severn about 8 km away near Gloucester. Three other westward-flowing streams cross the low-lying undulating country between Churchdown Hill, 4-5 km due east of Gloucester, and Robinswood Hill to the south, both outliers of the Jurassic escarpment. Over the Lower Lias clay are spreads of Superficial Deposit, here composed of gravel and sand intermingled with a yellow clay.

The purpose of this paper is to draw together the results of a campaign of excavation and field-survey in the March area of the Cambridgeshire Fens. The work was carried out between 1958 and 1964, at a time when the last earthwork sites in the region were coming under the plough. That the excavations were undertaken before the destructive contemporary programme of deep cultivation began is a matter of some importance. Study of the earthwork sites showed that the third- and fourth-century buildings lay only a few inches below the surface and, although often constructed in stone, never possessed more than shallow footings. We may surmise that, unless a well preserved pasture site has escaped attention, deep ploughing has stripped off most traces of late-Roman structures on these Fenland settlements. Only the lower fills of the larger ditches and pits are likely to have survived intact.

The great wall of Hadrian comes to an end at Bowness-on-Solway at a large fort on high ground commanding the narrowest part of the Solway Firth. In the first phase of construction a curtain of laid turf was planned and executed from the River Irthing to Bowness, and there is a hint, from the fortlets and towers of the Cumberland coast, that provision had been made for the turf curtain to continue beyond Bowness. The change of plan that brought the garrisons of the Stanegate frontier forts forward to new forts on the Wall also moved the garrison in the fort at Kirkbride to a new fort at Bowness and added the fort at Beckfoot to the coastal system at the position of Tower 14B. The units in the coastal watch and patrol system comprised stone-built towers and turf and timber fortlets, the fortlets being quite accurately set out close to the shore-line at intervals of one Roman mile, each mile being divided into three parts by two towers.

The possibility of a Roman site on a small plateau at the W end of Seabegs Wood (NS 812792) was suggested by the surface recovery of Roman pottery (both samian and coarse wares) over a number of years by members of the Cumbernauld Historical Society, under the supervision of Mr J. J. Walker. Initially it was thought that the plateau (FIG. 1) could mark the site of the missing Seabegs fort (see below p. 160), but in the event a fortlet was located by excavation in June 1977, clearly to be identified with the fort at the ‘West end of Seabegwood’ noted by Dr Christopher Irvine during his journey along the Wall about 1680. No traces of the fortlet's defences have as yet been detected from the air (cf. PL. IXA).

We have recently been presented with an excellent summary of what is known of granaries in civilian contexts in Roman Britain by Miss Pat Morris in her Agricultural Buildings in Roman Britain. Most prominent in her discussion, because they are most easily recognised, are granaries with raised floors. Among a number of granaries which Miss Morris discusses under the heading ‘Unclassified’ is a room in the villa at Pitney in Somerset. Professor Applebaum first suggested this was a granary, largely because of what seem from the plan to have been external buttresses. The purpose of this article is to propose a new class of granaries, including the room at Pitney, on the basis of their flooring.

During the early stages of excavation at the Chessalls, Kingscote, Gloucestershire (ST 8065 9608) late in 1975, several large fragments of wall-plaster were exposed in the destruction debris of an early-fourth-century building with mortared stone walls. Subsequent excavation revealed that the plaster was lying in situ, face up and face down, concertina fashion, as it had fallen. Dr Norman Davey gave instruction and assistance in the lifting of this material and it was removed to his workshop in Potterne, near Devizes, for reconstruction to be carried out. As a result of several months of painstaking work Dr Davey was able to restore large areas of a mural painting or paintings, which will shortly be put on exhibition in the Corinium Museum, Cirencester.

Bradley Hill, 8·8 km (5½ miles) north-west of Ilchester, is a low hill projecting northwards from the Lower Lias plateau between Somerton and Langport and is capped by a thin band of Rhaetic clay.

The site of the Romano-British farmstead, 53 m (175 ft.) above sea level, is in a prominent and exposed position at NGR ST 4800 3034 (FIG. 1; PL. XVIII A). There are extensive views in all directions, particularly over the valley of the River Cary to the north and over the great expanse of King's Sedgemoor to the west. On the hilltop plateau, the calcareous ploughsoil was 0·20 to 0·25 m in depth, except around the sites of the Romano-British buildings.

THE purpose of this paper is to bring together, describe and assess the significance of the 40 or so miniature items occurring, for the most part, in or near military installations in Roman Britain and other sites in the North. The compilation of this material was undertaken with the aid of a grant from the British Academy in 1977–1978; the work has entailed visits to about 15 museums mainly in the Hadrian's Wall region, whence the bulk of the evidence has come. I have elsewhere discussed the model items occurring in what may loosely be described as the civilian areas of south-east Britain, where I have attempted to demonstrate their essentially ritual significance (I use the term ‘civilian’ purely in a geographical sense). That study covered an area bounded in the north and west by the Fosse Way, but excluded Richborough as an essentially non-civilian installation. The present survey involves the remainder of the British Isles and includes Richborough.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the construction, decoration and possible uses of Roman circular lead tanks which have been found in Britain. Twelve examples exist, plus fragments of perhaps two more, while one possible example is now lost. A short discussion of the possible functions of these tanks was published in 1943, when seven examples were known, and the tanks have also been considered in connection with Roman art and Christianity in Britain. Circular lead tanks would appear to have been a purely insular development since not one has been found elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

A group of bone artifacts found at Butt Road, Colchester, points to the location of a craft workshop in the vicinity. The objects were almost certainly intended as applied ornament on wooden furniture. As most of the pieces are unfinished, the tools and techniques employed in the manufacture of the objects can be recognized. Experiments to simulate the tools used have provided valuable help in the interpretation of the artifacts, and highlight both the strength of bone and the speed with which it can be worked.