This paper investigates Roman writing habits through the evidence of metal styli. An assemblage of more than 400 styli from London constitutes the basis of the analysis, which explores their similarities with examples from other sites in Britain and continental Europe during the Imperial period. The geographical and social distribution of styli suggests that certain types were employed or made in specific locations by different social actors, and that the major political and military centres of the Empire shared a common material culture of writing. The analysis also suggests that styli types of the northern European regions possibly developed from ‘military styli’ brought by soldiers and bureaucrats during the conquest.

The publication of the RurLand (Rural Landscape in North-East Gaul) project has provided an opportunity to compare methodologies and results with those of The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain project. Two themes, which draw out the asymmetrical development of settlement in the two regions, are examined: the very different impacts of the Roman conquests of Gaul and of Britain on settlement numbers and settlement continuity, and the development of the agricultural economy and its relationship with the frontiers of Britain and Germany, as reflected in the growth and decline of villa estates in Britain and Gaul.

A broken statue of a Genius was accidentally discovered at Burgh-by-Sands (Aballava) on 5 October 1976 by a workman of the North Western Electricity Board who was using a mechanical excavator during cable laying. The findspot, in field No. 0120, was approximately 25 m east of the fort and 40 m north of the presumed line of Hadrian's Wall (NY 3293 5918. Mr Paul Austen of the Department of the Environment, who was present throughout the Electricity Board's operations, subsequently informed the present writer and made the statue available for examination before it was deposited in the City Museum, Carlisle (PL. VIII A).

In the Jubilee volume of the Journal of Roman Studies (1960), Dr Kenneth Steer surveyed a quarter century of excavation and research on the Antonine Wall, starting from the publication in 1934 of the second, definitive, edition of Sir George Macdonald's The Roman Wall in Scotland. The following pages aim to discuss in brief compass how our knowledge has been extended in the twenty years that have followed, and suggest some things which the next two decades could and should be aiming to achieve. As 1960 also marked the publication of the first edition of Professor Anne Robertson's indispensable handbook to The Antonine Wall and its visible remains, that year is a doubly appropriate starting point. The last two decades have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of excavations taking place along the line of the Antonine Wall, in the amount of money available to do this (most of it from government sources), in the number of full-time archaeologists concerned with its study and preservation, and in the number of students working on the problems of the frontier line at university level; there has also been a greater awareness of the Wall in relation to the general development of Roman defensive works. All this activity culminated in 1979 in the first ever full visit to Scotland of the International Limes Congress.

In December 1976 the construction of a new private road and car park at The Hall, Welwyn, exposed traces of Roman building material. These were observed by Tony Rook, who led the rescue team of the Welwyn Archaeological Society on the site. Initial excavation during the Christmas break was limited to the removal of the hardcore already on the new road and the plotting of the feature so exposed. Later, excavation was permitted throughout 1977 in two bays of the proposed car park. The corner of a very large robber-trench was investigated, and, with the information from the road, supplemented with trial-trenching, the plan of a mausoleum and its enclosure ditch was recovered. One length of the enclosure ditch contained inhumation burials of Roman date. A report on the skeletons by C. B. Denston is appended.

Tacitus is the only ancient writer to give any information about the Agri Decumates, or indeed even to mention them. Thus, all that we know of them is confined to the period c.a.d. 70-98. In the Germania, dated firmly to the latter year, Tacitus tells us that the occupants of the Decumates agri could hardly count as Germans. They were rather immigrants of fairly recent origin drawn from the least substantial groups among the Gauls, who, through want, had taken up possession of this risky territory. More recently, however, a defensive line had been drawn, garrisons sent in and the area had become a pocket of imperial security and a part of the province (of Upper Germany).

Although Deva was primarily a military centre, the installation of a garrison was quickly followed by the growth of a neighbouring civilian community. Where such extramural settlements grew up beside auxiliary forts they were classed as vici and their occupants as vicani, while those which developed outside legionary fortresses were, from the time of Hadrian at least, known as canabae and their inhabitants as canabenses. This distinction could become blurred, however, as some canabae are known to have been divided into a number of constituent vici. The population of these settlements included purveyors of the modest luxuries and entertainments which appeal to soldierly tastes as well as a wide variety of other traders and craftsmen, some of the latter perhaps being under contract to the army while the remainder were attracted to the vicinity of military camps by the opportunities for financial gain which their garrisons afforded. In addition, there were the wives and families of serving soldiers (although, until the early third century, it was a condition of service for the ordinary soldier that he be single, this did not prevent large numbers from taking common-law wives), veterans and their families, and any servants or slaves employed in the households of such people. The only civilians allowed to reside within military installations were the families of the garrison commanders and, in the case of legionary fortresses, those of the other senior officers.