Since 1983 the Museum of London's Department of Greater London Archaeology has completed nine rescue excavations (HGS. I and 2) and numerous watching briefs in advance of redevelopment within the area of the Roman cemetery to the east of the City of London. The excavations have uncovered 104 cremations and 575 inhumations, dating from the first to the fifth centuries A.D. This article is intended to make known some of the initial results in advance of full publication.

The cemetery lay on a gravel terrace 600–700 m north of the River Thames. The geology of the area consists of sands and gravels, locally overlain by brickearth. The cemetery was typical of urban Roman cemeteries, sited beyond the city limits and adjacent to a road from the city. It extended at least 600 m to the east of the city wall and covered an area of over 16.5 ha.

In Rome, during the late Republic, it became increasingly usual for those who had undertaken the construction of a building, whether as civic magistrates ex officio or as private individuals, to ensure that their achievements would be remembered by having the building inscribed with a record of what they had done. The practice became commonplace in the provinces of the Empire, on civic buildings, in military forts and on private funeral monuments. Sometimes, surviving inscriptions can be related to archaeological remains of the buildings to which they belonged. More often they cannot be so related; but even then, they may provide valuable information about the nature of building construction and who was responsible for it.

In this article we offer editions of two texts which were discovered at Vindolanda in the excavation seasons of 1986 and 1988, respectively. Both the letters are complete and are of exceptional interest from the linguistic point of view, as well as for the information which they yield on a variety of points of military, social and economic history.

The site of the Forum-Basilica of Londinium was uncovered in the late nineteenth century, when demolition of a block of buildings to make way for the new Leadenhall Market revealed the remains of massive Roman walls. The function of the building was not, however, recognised until 1923, despite its central position in the Roman town (FIG. 1). Superimposed on the Roman remains were structures of later date, mainly associated with the fifteenth-century garner, a late medieval municipal market and storehouse. The remains of both Roman and medieval buildings were recorded by William Miller in 1880–1 and by the architect Henry Hodge in 1881–2. Subsequent discoveries revealed further details of the plan of the Basilica, and of the great Forum which lay to the south. Additionally, the walls of a smaller first-century civic centre were recorded beneath the Forum, demonstrating continuity in the status of the site.

The Roman waterfront in London has been discussed several times, most recently in The Port of Roman London (Milne, 1985) and The Roman Quay at St Magnus House, London (Miller, Schofield and Rhodes, 1986). The former dealt largely with the late-first-century waterfront and associated buildings recorded on sites excavated to the north of Thames Street, on either side of the Roman London Bridge, including Pudding Lane, Peninsular House and Miles Lane (FIG. I). The subsequent redevelopment of existing properties, and the construction of new buildings relating to succeeding waterfronts further to the south, were also covered in detail, although the later quays themselves (of early-second to mid-third-century date) lay beyond the site boundaries, and were only briefly discussed. The second report, however, dealt with the mid-second- to early-third-century waterfronts and the section of riverside wall recorded between 1974–78 at New Fresh Wharf (St Magnus House), adjacent to the more recent (1982) Billingsgate Lorry Park site. Both works discussed evidence for trade, as represented by finds from the various sites involved, in some depth.

It is an unfortunate fact that historians of the Later Roman Empire are forced to derive much of their chronological material from chronicles and consular fasti. I say unfortunate, for chronicles are not nearly as accurate as modern historians would like them to be. This is because they were an exceptionally difficult type of history to compile, prone to error at every turn, from the gathering of sources to the copying of the final text, and because most chroniclers were essentially ‘amateurs’, having little experience in doing research, thinking or writing historically, and usually separated by considerable time and space from the events they were describing. These facts constantly rankle with modern historians, and some who have had to rely heavily on chronicles rather than attempt methodological or historiographical explanations of why they believe particular entries in chronicles are incorrectly dated, have often taken the easy way out and tried to solve their problems by emending them away: they alter the texts themselves, offering as excuses the assumptions (usually only implicit) that the chroniclers were skilful historians with access to reliable sources, that they were able to present their information accurately and carefully, and that the texts as we have them now were corrupted by ignorant and careless medieval scribes.

Innumerable Romano-British copper-alloy bow brooches have been found throughout Britain; indeed, after coins the brooch is generally the commonest ‘datable’ metal artefact on the majority of first- and second-century Roman sites. An enormous amount of work has already been carried out by specialists such as M.R. Hull and D.F. Mackreth on the development arid typology of the bow brooch: this article goes no further than merely suggesting another aspect of brooch study that may repay further investigation.

The Tetrarchie building inscription RIB 1912 has been regarded as of interest mainly because it would indicate that the Diocletianic policy of separating gubernatorial civil powers from military command had not been implemented in the province of Britannia Secunda up to the period of consolidation in the diocese of Britain (A.D. 296–305) by the Caesar Constantius Chlorus. The inscription, however, has an important military content which has hitherto been overlooked.

In 1964 Chester suffered one of its worst archaeological catastrophes when extensive and well-preserved elements of the intramural fortress thermae were exposed and then destroyed within the brief space of a few months in order to facilitate the construction of an underground service bay for a new shopping precinct. Although some archaeological examination of the site was conducted before redevelopment works commenced, this was restricted by circumstances to those areas free of standing buildings. This effectively limited investigations to the area beyond and to the east of the thermae, where barrack accommodation sufficient to house a cohort occupied the corner insula in the sinistrai half of the praetentura (FIG. 1). Over the remainder of this enormous site, no facility for formal excavation was given as construction work by the contractor was timed to begin immediately following demolition of existing buildings. Although, in the event, the contractor did re-arrange his programme of works on several occasions to allow some time for archaeological investigation, and intercession by the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate won several weeks stay of execution for one part of the baths complex, most of the affected sections of the thermae were recorded merely in the form of observations made during mass mechanical excavation by the contractor.

The character and origin of the Roman naval forces outside Italy in the early Principate is obscure. They are usually referred to as ‘provincial’ fleets: they appear on the military diplomas only rarely. The earliest of these refers to classici who were discharged from a fleet in Egypt in A.D. 86; since the diploma was only issued after a minimum of 26 years' service, the fleet can presumably be dated to 60. Its existence under Nero is confirmed by an inscription recording a sub-prefect of the classis Alexandriae of the time and an edict of a prefect of Egypt in 63 referring to the personnel of the fleet. So far as the northern provinces are concerned, the Classis Flavia Moesica is so named on a diploma of 92. The recipients may have started their 26 years' service in other formations; but it is equally possible that they entered directly into the Moesian fleet in 66, which can then be presumed to have been in existence under Nero.

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.

Severn Valley Ware has long been recognized as one of the most widespread and enduring classes of Roman coarse pottery found on sites in the west of England. It is usually represented in a distinctive orange, or less commonly, light grey-coloured fabric in a characteristic range of forms including jars, tankards and bowls. A detailed distribution of these wares on a national scale has never been compiled, although it is known that Severn Valley Wares have been found in greater or lesser quantities from Somerset in the south up to the Antonine Wall in the north. It is generally believed that the centre of the Severn Valley Ware industry was, as the name suggests, in the lower Severn Valley, particularly the area around Gloucester. This is supported by the high proportion of Severn Valley Wares in all contexts of Roman date at sites in central Gloucestershire and by petrological analysis of Severn Valley Wares which suggests that clays matching those used for making the pottery were available in the area. The actual production sites are less well documented with only two identified kilns known from the area; at Alkington and Malvern (see FIG. I).

During post glacial times relative land- and sea-levels have changed continuously but inconsistently, for reasons which are complex and numerous. Relevant studies can be found ‘among the works of astronomers, geophysicists, geologists, geomor-phologists, hydrographers, oceanographers, climatologists, biologists, archaeologists, historians, land surveyors, civil engineers’ and even ‘etc’. Further investigations ‘to identify and quantify the processes of sea-level change by producing detailed local histories that can be analysed and correlated’ have been undertaken by geographers: their approach involves the radiocarbon analysis of organic samples, but the difficulties encountered in fixing the exact position of these, determining the actual tidal level which they represent and assessing the errors associated with the dating method are recognised. It might, therefore, be expected that archaeological evidence from the Roman period, to which remains of major structures erected at locations on coasts and estuaries can be assigned with some certainty from the associated epigraphic, numismatic or ceramic finds, would make an important contribution to studies on sea-level changes. The findings, however, have often been ignored or repudiated, especially when they conflict with the deductions offered by researchers in other disciplines.