Geophysical survey prior to the upgrading to motorway status of the A1 in the vicinity of Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, identified a new Roman castra site with double defensive ditches, a series of outwork defences, and strong indications of extramural activity on both the north and south banks of the river Ure. Excavation permitted the examination of a corridor over 0.5 km long through the extramural settlement. Dating evidence suggested a period of occupation ranging between a.d. 71 and at least the first, and possibly the second, half of the 80s.

This paper presents the interim results of Oxford University's on-going excavations at the Roman religious complex at Marcham/Frilford, Oxfordshire. This site has been the focus of debates about continuity from the Iron Age into the Roman period since the original excavations at the temple by Bradford and Goodchild in the 1930s. New findings from the current excavations are brought to bear on this question, in particular how the Iron Age activity influenced the design and layout of the Roman complex. In addition, the paper uses preliminary analysis of the finds from the excavations to discuss the nature of religious practices and activities at the site.

A large number of hoards of silver coins are known from late fourth-century Britain, and every year still more come to light. These hoards usually contain more or less the same sorts of coin and it may be helpful to give a summary of the main issues, as they are not presented very clearly in the standard reference book for the period, RIC IX.

The idea that the town of Venta Icenorum (Caistor-by-Norwich) was laid out in the early Flavian period, as part of the Roman reaction to the Boudican revolt, has become canonical in literature on Roman Britain. Drawing on the results of recent excavations, this paper re-evaluates the evidence relating to the establishment of the street grid and questions the idea that the town reflects a coherent act of urban planning. It concludes by arguing that previous interpretations of the site within a ‘Boudican’ paradigm are fundamentally flawed.

In Britannia, volume viii (1977), Professor E. A. Thompson published a long account of British political history in the early fifth century. Arguing carefully and ingeniously, he derived from the literary sources an attractive and detailed narrative of the last years of Roman Britain. The source material, however, is full of difficulties; and it is the purpose of the present paper to draw attention to these difficulties and to show that the evidence cannot serve as a foundation for the elaborate superstructure which Thompson wishes to erect upon it.

Hadrian's Wall studies owe a great debt to those who raised the flag of revolution in 1848. They forced John Collingwood Bruce to abandon his planned holiday in Rome and visit Hadrian's Wall instead. Although he is known to have visited the Wall as a boy, a student, and a young man, now, at the age of forty-two, Bruce commenced the study by which his name is principally remembered. Bruce's Handbook to the Roman Wall remains the primary academic guide to Hadrian's Wall. Four successive editors, and now myself, the sixth including Bruce, have revised — or are revising — the Handbook in ten editions since Bruce's death: thirteen editions so far. This discussion flows from the work of editing the new edition of the Handbook, which is due to be published in 2004, and of considering the contributions of the successive editors.

Three aspects of Cassius Dio's account of the Claudian invasion of Britain are discussed. First, the convention, by which ancient historians routinely introduced their detailed narrative of military campaigns with a summary, allows the two first battles in the sequence to be eliminated as separate events. Secondly, the kings, Togodumnus in Cassius Dio and Cogidumnus in Tacitus' Agricola, are taken to be the same individual, who after defeat was reconciled to be Claudius' client-ruler. Thirdly, the argument is restated that the invasion took place through the harbours of West Sussex on a route suggested by the description given by Dio and by the evidence of place-names, known from the Geography of Ptolemy and the Antonine Itinerary.

The site was first noted on a high level vertical air photograph taken in 1964 by the Ordnance Survey, and a spread of Roman pottery was found to its immediate south-west, and running north, in a field survey carried out by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England). The site has not appeared on the extensive series of air photographs taken by Dr S.G. Upex, principally owing to the differing level of the local water-table: hardly any of the major geological markings which tend to mask all the archaeology are present on the Ordnance Survey series of the northern part of the parish.

Archaeological knowledge of Canterbury's remote past obtained by excavation is of comparatively recent acquisition, being in large measure the result of work carried out since the second world war. In 1868 the streets were trenched for the installation of drains, and the city engineer of the time, James Pilbrow, F.S.A., wrote a brief account of his discoveries for Archaeologia, xliii (1871), illustrated with a plan of the city and one or two diagrams. Unfortunately the opportunity was not taken to note the Roman street plan. Nevertheless important details of the building here to be discussed were recorded under the south end of St. Margaret's Street and the west end of Watling Street.

The existence of chains of signalling-posts in some Roman provinces has been accepted as a normal feature of military control, but recently Donaldson has raised some common-sense questions about the efficacy of such systems and the technicalities of their operation. As he points out, over anything but short distances, visual signals of any kind whether by flags, or lights, or any other means, can be disrupted by inclement weather and are susceptible to faulty transmission and misinterpretation, so that only the most uncomplicated messages can be sent by these methods. Consequently, long distance communication by relays between chains of signalling-towers was probably entirely out of the question. It may be significant that in the section ‘on sending and receiving messages’ in Frontinus' Stratagems there is no mention whatsoever of communications by visual signals and no mention of signalling between towers, despite the fact that Frontinus was fully aware of the towers built by Domitian in Germany, described in a different passage. All the messages which Frontinus includes in his list were sent either verbally or by letter. One series of messages was sent by pigeon.

The building of some 75 miles of massive curtain-wall, incorporating forts, milecastles, turrets and bridges, together with a further chain of forts, milefortlets, and turrets 32 miles long on the Cumbrian coast, represents an impressive civil-engineering undertaking by any standards. The fact that this was accomplished in a relatively short space of time on the remote northern fringe of the Roman Empire makes the achievement even more remarkable. Unfortunately, there is a lack of firm evidence for many aspects of the building of the Wall, so that it is impossible to assess precisely the scale of effort and organisational complexity involved in this operation. Many details of its original structure remain a matter for conjecture, since it has nowhere retained anything like its original height, and large sections of its length lie beneath buildings or roads, or have been destroyed by quarrying, cultivation, or the robbing of stone for construction. Alterations during the three centuries of Roman activity on the Wall have, in many cases, obliterated evidence of the earliest structural features. The actual source of much of the original building material is uncertain, so that transport routes and distances must remain a matter for debate. There is little archaeological record of Roman transport methods, and depictions of vehicles, such as those on Trajan's Column, owe more to artistic licence than to realistic detail, so that here again methods can only be conjectured. Literary record of happenings in Britain around A.D. 120 is sparse and precise dating of events, such as Hadrian's presumed visit to Britain, rests largely on a concensus of opinion based on circumstantial evidence.

In the course of examining the charioteer mosaic discovered at Rudston (Yorks.) in 1971 it struck me that certain aspects of the iconography had been either misunderstood or over looked in the first publications. In particular the idea that the bust of a Season holding a rake must be identified as Winter seems to rest on a misconception. It is much more likely that the Season in question, both here and in other similar representations, is Autumn.

Compared with many other branches of Romano-British archaeology, the study of buildings is in its infancy. This paper concentrates on one aspect of building study, the principles of design upon which plans were based; and it is further confined to military buildings. These were selected partly to limit the material under consideration to a manageable group and partly because the methods used to erect them were more likely to have been standardised to some degree. Military architecture should not, however, be seen as a selfcontained discipline: it can only really be understood as a manifestation of architectural methods and philosophy in a wider world.

A building inscription from the fort at Ribchester (Bremetennacum) in the Pennines is preserved in the following drawing (RIB 589):