This paper attempts to put the Gorgon from the pediment of the Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath into a wider provincial context, by arguing for links between the Gorgon and first- and early second-century imitations in Gaul and Spain of the iconography of the Forum of Augustus in Rome. These imitations, part of what might be called a ‘visual language of empire’, served to connect the urban spaces of the provinces to Rome; by linking the Gorgon to this trend and setting aside interpretations of the Gorgon which have focused on his perceived status as a ‘Romano-Celtic’ masterpiece, we can justify more satisfactorily his position as the centrepiece of a pediment dominated by imperial imagery.

The date of 441/2 for the decisive point in the series of events which constituted the adventus Saxonum has frequently been quoted as deriving from a contemporary source. As a matter of fact, however, it is a ghostdate, born in 1892. It originated in a marginale by Mommsen to a chronicle-fragment which is one of the continuations used to extend the Carolingian edition of Jerome. This fragment was edited and annotated by Mommsen before the modern editions of Jerome were available. The information required to correct Mommsen has, however, been readily accessible since 1923, and the manuscript basis of his text has been open to consultation in London for much longer. It is not my purpose here to wage any wars, even upon a long neglect of the primary source, but merely to set out some considerations of Form-kritik which are the historian's equivalent to the archaeologist's typological criteria.

Tacitus tells us that in A.D 81, during Agricola's fourth campaign, the Roman army paused in its northernward advance into what is now Scotland and sought to consolidate the conquest of those areas which had already been overrun. To ensure that such work went on undisturbed by incursions from Caledonia, a number of garrisons were deployed along the narrow neck of land between the estuaries of the Rivers Forth and Clyde – a line of natural strength later favoured by the builders of the Antonine Wall. The exact position of these Agricolan praesidia has long been a matter for debate, but until quite recently most historians would have agreed with Sir George Macdonald in assuming that they underlay the forts on the second-century frontier. In Macdonald's words, the Flavian garrisons ‘really determined the course of the Antonine Limes inasmuch as they fixed the points at which the Antonine castella were destined to stand’, and considerable effort, not to say ingenuity, has been employed to prove or disprove that not unreasonable assumption. However, the unexpected discovery of a new fort in the central sector of the Isthmus has provided a suitable occasion for the re-assessment of the evidence relating to the Agricolan ‘frontier’.

The problem of what happened in Britain in the fifth century A.D. has long fascinated historians, and archaeology is now helping to supplement the meagre written source-material. The county of Sussex is a very useful area to investigate thus, for it contains archaeological evidence which points to a Saxon settlement geographically isolated in the pagan period from the settlements in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, and it formed a known independent kingdom.

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).

Excavations at two sites in Gwynedd have produced new evidence for highland zone rural settlement during the Romano-British period. At Bryn Eryr this activity was the culmination of a long sequence of development during the Iron Age. At Bush Farm, similarly, a Romano-British phase succeeded earlier, probably late prehistoric occupation of the site. At both locations significant structural changes took place during the Romano-British period as small stone-walled houses replaced larger, clay-walled buildings. Changes in the local farming economy have been identified and the proximity of the vicus at Segontium provided access to Roman pottery vessels. The quality and range of pottery from Bryn Eryr and Bush Farm are considerable in comparison with other ‘Highland Zone’ settlements and the material is discussed in detail.

The left hand and forearm from a slightly over life-size bronze or copper-alloy arm was excavated during 2001 at 20–30 Gresham Street, within the City of London. It was discarded in a quarry pit, which fooded with groundwater turning it into a pond and was subsequently backflled C.A.D. 60–70. The arm was presumably part of a public statue, perhaps of an emperor or god, which had been deliberately broken up. The Boudican revolt of A.D. 60/1 is one possible context for the destruction of Roman statuary in London, but the end of Nero's reign, some ten years later, is another period when any statues of this very unpopular emperor could have been broken up. The article includes a catalogue of previous fnds of bronze statuary from London (where more fragments of arms and hands have been recovered than anywhere else in Britain), the results of metallurgical examination of the arm, and a discussion of iconoclasm in Roman Britain.

1 Westgate Street is close to the central crossroads of Gloucester (FIG. 1). The site straddles the line of the main Roman E.-W. street, and is directly in front of the second-century forum. The Roman street alignment is not preserved in the medieval and modern Westgate Street, which has shifted north so that the line of Westgate Street, in its course down to the river crossing, occupies the site of several Roman insulae. The other three main Roman streets, Northgate, Eastgate and Southgate Streets, still run approximately on Roman lines, probably because their course was conditioned by the position of the gates.

The practicalities of building-construction, timber buildings, and the physical effort of supporting military campaigning are not well covered in the literature. The majority of works on Roman buildings are concerned with stone and concrete structures, with an emphasis on public buildings, aqueducts, architectural appearance, dating, and historical associations. Recently there has been an interest in technical matters, and in reconstructions, but the emphasis is still on stonework and concrete and on appearance; discussion of the scale and method of supply of materials and labour is absent or very generalised. Work on constructional timbers (until recently somewhat lightly considered in excavations) tends to be confined to the largely descriptive.