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.

This paper deals with magic figurines from the Western provinces of the Roman Empire based on an inventory of twelve figurines and their archaeological context. It underlines the place of the figurines in the ritual of defixio and demonstrates that complex curse rituals such as those described in the Greek Magical Papyri (GMP) were not performed only in the Mediterranean basin. It also notes that these magic Western figurines are often found in important places (such as cities and large villas) and in late contexts.

The structural relationships of the forts, Wall curtain and Vallum are reviewed and a revised sequence of construction for Hadrian's Wall is proposed. The original plan (Stage 1) incorporated much of the earlier Trajanic frontier (the Stanegate) and probably included the Devil's Causeway which ran north-eastwards from Corbridge. Forts were then added to the line of the Wall as a result of three modifications of the plan (Stages 2–4), continuing until late in Hadrian's reign. The Vallum was added in Stage 3. Hadrian probably conceived the original plan for the Wall, but the modifications that followed seem to have been consequences of shifting focuses of loyalty, resistance and outright warfare, beyond and behind the frontier.

The attributes of Mercury include his purse and winged sandals and one of his animal companions is the cockerel. Purse brooches are few in number, but shoe sole and cockerel brooches occur at Temple 10 at Colchester, a centre of the god's cult, and at other temples, and both also occur in graves, reflecting Mercury's role as the guide of dead souls. Fly brooches have been found at both Temple 10 and Uley, also a centre for Mercury worship, and in a grave, and may be a fourth type associated with the god.

Craft debris and finished artefacts in Reading Museum's Silchester Collection are used alongside current understanding of Romano-British urban intensive carcass processing and object assemblages to re-assess the evidence for bone- and antler-working in the town over that period.

The story of the ill-fated British leader, Vortigern, is familiar to most serious students of the history of Britain. This is true whether it be viewed as a last melancholy episode in the Roman period or as an initial and important chapter in the Saxon era. But to appreciate fully the significance of the events of this tempestuous time of transition one should have a clear idea of just what Vortigern was and what he was not. In this short study I shall consider successively a number of important questions about Vortigern, finishing with a rapid reassessment of his role in the final collapse of Roman Britain.

Marcham/Frilford is a large religious site with a temple, an amphitheatre and a central shrine feature. Adjacent to the shrine is a large fourth-century structure containing a significant deposit of coins, hobnails and bones. The absence of diffusion of the tiles from the temple roof to the wider site suggests that it continued to function as a religious complex throughout the Roman period; therefore the large structure is unlikely to have been a building which would have blighted the shrine but was more probably an altar platform where rituals were performed in conjunction with it.

A military diploma of 2 July a.d. 133 (RMD I, 35), first discovered in 1960 but published several times since, has provoked a debate concerning the origin of the discharged soldier, with commentators proposing either Corinium in Britain or the Cornacates in Lower Pannonia. The new reading presented here suggests that the soldier was actually Cornovian, allowing a reassessment of the recruitment of Brittones in the Roman auxilia.