The silver coins of Cunobelin have received relatively little attention in comparison to Cunobelin's gold and bronze coinage, although the artistic merit of the issues based on classical prototypes has been much commented upon. The lack of detailed examination of other aspects of the silver coinage has undoubtedly been due largely to its rarity. When Allen published ‘Cunobelin's gold’ in Britannia in 1975, some sixty-six silver coins were known, of nineteen types; only one type was known by more than six or seven examples. In contrast, the appendix to this paper lists approximately 335 coins, of twenty-eight types, from one hundred different locations. Most of this fivefold increase in finds is due to metal detecting, with less than five per cent of the total found in the course of archaeological excavation.

Dio provides the only surviving coherent account of the Roman invasion of Britain. Modern attempts to investigate the sources of his History have raised doubts about the reliability of certain details: in the chapters which concern us the description of the river-battle as lasting into a second day and even the division of the army into three parts before sailing have been held to be mere literary topoi. But these suggestions are by no means certain, for each passage is well suited to its context. With one emendation of the text, noted below, we see no certain justification in rejecting any part of Dio's account of the campaign. However, even if the passages concerned could be established as topoi, their rejection would make virtually no difference to an understanding of the campaign, for, as we shall show, the three divisions are irrelevant to the development of the advance while the reduction of the battle-span from one and a half days to one does not detract from the difficulties of the river crossing or from the decisiveness of victory.

At about the beginning of July, 1736, a servant to one Mr. Campion, a gentleman Farmer living at a little Village called Coddlestock in the County of Northamptonshire, at a distance of about one mile from Oundle, being at plow in an open field belonging to the said village, and at the edge of that lordship adjoining to Glaphorn Field on a Headland commonly call'd the Guild Acre, discovered in a furrow several little stones which made a very uncommon appearance, and with which having acquainted his Master, he with an intimate Neighbour or two went privately to the place, and caused so much of the earth to be cleared from it, as to give them a view of a small part of a very elegant piece of work, to which they were unable to assign any Name.

A collection of copper-alloy brooches and brooch moulds (PL. VA) dating to the Romano-British period has recently been found in Norfolk. The site lies in the south of the county on boulder clay in a relatively elevated position to the west of the village of Carleton Rode, South Norfolk. The field has been cultivated to a depth of 0.40 m for many years, most recently in autumn 1993. The finds were made within a restricted area and their location (FIG. 1) noted by the finder, Mr Derek Harty, who kindly brought his discoveries to staff at Norwich Castle Museum.

In the course of a detailed geological examination of the natural stones which have been incorporated into the fabric, and particularly the external fabric, of ecclesiastical buildings in the area of the London Basin, the author has recorded the occurrence of Roman bricks and tiles. The geographical and historical distributions of a number of natural stones that occur within these fabrics have already been described by the author. The rocks of the London Basin are down-folded into a syncline, and the geographical limits of the area of the studies are approximately confined by the geological outcrop of the Upper Cretaceous, Chalk, as shown in FIG. I. These limits reflect a geological area in which natural building stones are not obviously available. None of the typical rocks of the region, customarily clays, sands, and gravels, are sufficiently consolidated, in normal circumstances, to be directly utilised for building purposes. The Romans and others, however, mastered the techniques necessary to convert clay into bricks and tiles, and this paper examines the current distribution, in re-use, of some of these Roman products in the churches of the region. Other re-used Roman materials were, of course, also utilised in church construction. Some of these, such as silcretes, calcareous concretions and travertine, have been reported elsewhere.

The site of the Nash Waste Water Treatment Works (hereafter called WWTW) lies on the northern bank of the Severn Estuary, 4 km south of Newport (Casnewydd) (NGR ST 337 840), on the flood plain of the Severn, at the mouth of the River Usk (FIG. 1). The area forms part of the coastal wetlands of the Gwent Levels. Alluvial silts, the result of sediment deposition associated with post-glacial sea-level rise, are interleaved with layers of peat, characterised as the Wentlooge Formation, and overlie Triassic Mercia Mudstone bed-rock.

It is not widely appreciated that the Roman presence in North-West Europe radically transformed a number of basic technological processes, marking a fundamental break in native traditions at a mundane level which must have profoundly affected people's everyday experience. Archaeologically, amongst the more eye-catching innovations are the changes in the methods of skin processing and the manufacture of footwear. It is becoming increasingly evident that, prior to the Roman conquest, the native peoples of North-West Europe were unfamiliar with the techniques of vegetable tanning. Skins were treated with oils and fats or by methods such as smoking, and they continued to be processed in these ways in regions beyond the Roman frontiers. Since none of these curing methods results in permanent and water-resistant leather, artefacts made of animal skin will only survive under exceptional environmental conditions, such as extreme dryness (e.g. in Egypt), salinity (e.g. in the salt mines of Hallstatt), or in peat bogs, where a sort of secondary, natural tanning process has taken place. In contrast, true tanning using vegetable extracts gives a chemically stable product, resistant to bacterial decay, which survives well in damp, anaerobic conditions. The Classical world appears to have been conversant with vegetable tanning from about the fourth century B.C., but where this knowledge originated and how it spread is as yet unclear. As a direct result of this technological innovation, leather goods first become fully visible in the archaeological record of North-West Europe from the start of the Roman occupation. Shoemaking is equally affected by Roman practices, with the appearance of a variety of distinctive footwear styles which are technologically and stylistically unrelated to earlier, native types. The most obvious introductions are hobnailed shoes and sandals, but even the single-piece shoes (carbatinae) which are technologically similar to pre-Roman native footwear are totally different in concept (FIG. 1, No. 10).

Recent theoretical debate combined with a greater attention to the nature of individual deposits in the archaeological record has focused on the nature of ritual behaviour, its material correlates and its significance as social practice. In southern Britain a particular focus for this debate has been presented by the study of ‘special deposits’ and the structured (ritual) deposition of archaeological deposits from the Iron Age. Cunliffe's review and interpretation of an extensive range of evidence from the hillfort of Danebury, Hampshire, can be set in the context of Hill's penetrating regional study of ritual in the Iron Age of Wessex. For the former, ‘special deposits’ or ‘structured deposition’ have been seen as the evidence of propitiatory rites, particularly to ensure fertility; for the latter, they are seen as a defining reflection of the ‘mediation, transformation and classification of people, animals, spaces and things’.

Two recent articles in Britannia by Simon Ellis and Patricia Witts have considered the identification of certain rooms in high-status Roman houses in Britain as dining/reception-rooms. Ellis, in a survey of a relatively small number of sites, concentrated upon the shape and position of rooms, and concluded that apses were indicative of dining-rooms designed to accommodate stibadia (semicircular couches). Witts's careful analysis, based mainly on a survey of twenty rooms with figured mosaics, dwelt more on the widths of borders, simple geometric mosaic panels which suggest the position of furniture, the orientation of figures, etc., to help adduce the function. She demonstrated that some of Ellis's examples should not be regarded as dining-rooms, and, with the notable exception of Room W at Keynsham, the present author accepts Witts's interpretations. However, both writers make no distinction between heated and unheated dining-rooms in their respective surveys, and this aspect has a significant bearing on the design and position of the rooms, and, more importantly, their function. It is known from ancient sources that high-status Roman villas and town-houses had winter and summer dining-rooms. But how far did this trend extend to Roman Britain? An analysis of architectural form together with the design and position of mosaic panels can give some clues concerning the function of rooms. This paper attempts to clarify the issue of seasonal dining-rooms, demonstrate their development in Britain, and identify types.

Scholars of late Roman Britain will be familiar with the name of the Attacotti, who appear in several fourth- and fifth-century Roman texts. Ammianus refers to this mysterious people attacking the British diocese in the second half of the fourth century. In the same period the promiscuous marriage customs and, more so, the ferocious cannibalism of this ‘British race’ shocked a young St Jerome. It is somewhat surprising therefore that the Notitia Dignitatum lists a number of Attacotti units among the auxilia palatina stationed in Gaul, Italy, and Illyricum, and in the last instance their presence is also attested in epigraphic sources. Scholarly consensus has been content to regard the Attacotti as just one among the many minor and otherwise unknown tribes of Ireland or north Britain. It is interesting to note, however, that for a brief period Ammianus ranks the Attacotti alongside the Scots, Picts, and Saxons as a threat to the north-western frontiers of the Empire. It is also to be noted that the recruitment of the Attacotti into the Roman army, seemingly in considerable numbers, is apparently unique among the peoples of the British Isles beyond Roman rule. The writer's purpose is to assess the fourth- and fifth-century evidence for the Attacotti and to examine the problems of their identification and origins, together with their relationship to other peoples hostile to the late Roman diocese of Britain. The results of this examination will demonstrate that the character of the Attacotti and the location and nature of the threat they posed have been misunderstood. This study will suggest circumstances for their recruitment and transfer into the continental comitatus, set in the wider context of the on-going debate concerning the presence of barbarian troops in later Roman Britain, and the size and nature of the British garrison in general. Furthermore, at a time when there are many studies of the mutual relations between the Roman Empire and its neighbours, this contribution seeks to shed new light on the interaction between Roman Britain and Ireland, a subject relatively neglected by Roman historians, despite considerable advances in the fields of early Irish history and literature.