This article examines the phenomenon of so-called North African-style pottery made in early third-century York. The pottery, which was produced in significant quantities in late Ebor ware, is strikingly different from vessels in circulation in Roman Britain and the north-west provinces – so much so that the late Vivien Swan argued that it was ‘made by Africans for the use of Africans’. The present study reassesses the evidence of ceramic genealogical influences, production waste, fabric supply, consumption patterns and contextual finds associations. The results shed new light on the manufacture and use of late Ebor ware by York's military community, qualifying claims made about the repertoire's links with novel culinary practices, cultural diversity and the unique historical circumstances of Severan York.

Querns and millstones were central to the Roman agricultural economy, but are still relatively poorly understood. Using an exceptionally detailed dataset from the Roman town of Silchester as its main case study, this paper explores the supply of querns and the supply of flour in Romano-British urban sites and their rural hinterlands. The first part of the paper focuses on the assemblage of 715 querns and millstones from Silchester as commodities in their own right. It describes the stone types used for querns in the region, how the use of these changed over time, within and outside the town, and how the supply of querns to the town differed to that of the hinterland. These patterns of exploitation are used to make inferences about social and economic behaviour. Querns and millstones are also evidence for the preparation of flour and can be used to help us understand food-supply mechanisms, especially when considered together with archaeobotanical evidence. Analysis of the querns and millstones from closely dated contexts demonstrates that use of hand-powered rotary querns peaked in the town during the latest Iron Age and earliest Roman period. The use of rotary querns decreased significantly thereafter until, by the third century, the use of hand-operated rotary querns within the town was probably confined to a very basic household level in a domestic setting. At the same time, during the second or third century, powered millstones were introduced, with the archaeobotanical evidence suggesting a mill at an out-of-town location. Analysis of querns and millstones from a 20 km hinterland around Silchester suggests that household-level grinding was common, but that centralised milling was operating at a very low level and only to the north-west of the town. It is suggested that some flour was produced at centralised locations further afield and brought into the town ready ground. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X21000040) and comprises detailed information on the lithologies of the querns and millstones from Silchester (including photographs), publication details of the sites in the town's hinterland and a spreadsheet recording the material.

Recent aerial photographs of Pen y Gaer have revealed significant new details about the fort and its extramural adjuncts. These provide a springboard for examining the wider implications for extramural activity outside other forts across Wales and the Marches, and for exploring the function and chronology of potentially official buildings within the wider landscape of communications and control. Such an approach invites comparison with other frontier regions.

It is often stated that the Ninth Legion was transferred from Britain and continued to exist until the 130s or beyond. The evidence is reviewed, and it is concluded that: (1) no more than a detachment of the legion went abroad, and that only for the period c. 105 to c. 120; (2) there is no prosopographical or other evidence which proves that the legion existed after the early 120s. Given that war, heavy Roman losses and an interruption in the building of Hadrian's Wall are directly attested in Britain, probably occurring in 122 or shortly after, it is argued that it is most likely that the legion was defeated and disbanded in connection with those events.

Excavations at Knobb's Farm, Somersham, Cambridgeshire, uncovered three small late Roman cemeteries, positioned at the edge of a farming settlement. The 52 burials found included 17 decapitated bodies and 13 prone burials – far higher than the British average. In two cases, cut marks show decapitation to have been the mechanism of death, and cuts on two other bodies indicate they experienced extreme violence. We conclude that the decapitations were the result of judicial execution. The significance of the prone burials is less clear, but it is demonstrably related to decapitation. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X21000064) and comprises a detailed osteological report and skeleton catalogue, specialist reports, DNA and isotopic analyses, and a complete description of the settlement's development.

In 2015, an unusual burial was uncovered during construction works at Great Casterton, Rutland. A male adult human skeleton, secured at the ankles with a pair of iron fetters and a padlock, was buried in a probable ditch. Iron hobnails were present around the feet of the individual. A radiocarbon date (AMS) from the burial produced a date of a.d. 226–427 with 95.4 per cent probability. This example appears to be the first definitive archaeologically excavated instance of an individual buried in this manner in Roman Britain. The character of the burial may imply that this was a slave, although other possibilities are also considered, as are the wider social and symbolic implications of the inclusion of shackles in a burial.

Excavation of the Roman tilery at Little London, Pamber, Hampshire, has prompted a reassessment of the dating of relief-patterned tile, assigning the bulk of production to the Claudio-Neronian period rather than the late first to mid-/late second century. This material has been privileged for retention in excavation archives but can now be seen as a proxy for the manufacture of a much wider range of ceramic building material, typically discarded on site, which, in the case of products from Little London and pre-Flavian Minety (Wiltshire), travelled distances of up to 100 km. Redating implies more extensive public and private building in town and country south and east of the Fosse Way before the Flavian period than has previously been envisaged. While private building included the construction of bath-houses, heated rooms and the provision of roofing materials, public building, we suggest, provided tabernas et praetoria along the principal roads of the province. In the private sphere such building provides a possible context for Dio Cassius’ mention of the recall and confiscation of large loans made to Britons before the Boudican rebellion. Finally, consideration of fabric needs to be added to the criteria for retaining ceramic building material in excavation archives.

Excavated between 1984 and 1992, the site of a large Roman villa complex at Stanwick, Northamptonshire, produced a significant quantity of sculpted and architectural worked stone. This paper assesses the various aspects of that material, including the petrological sources, and offers a new interpretation. Many items were discovered as post-packing or were otherwise reused within the fabric of the enlarged fourth-century villa, but originally derived from what were probably two earlier monumental structures dated on stylistic grounds to the early third century. The sculpture was initially examined in 1994–95 by Martin Henig and the late Thomas Blagg, whose work, especially on the large number of architectural pieces, has been subsumed into this paper and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X21000052) and comprises additional figures and tables.

The construction of a free-standing stone wall was a significant occasion in Londinium's history, remarkable for the quantity of masonry used and for the continuing additions to the defences over at least three identifiable phases. Since the local geology in the London Basin does not offer suitable building stone, Londinium's walls offer an exceptional example by which to examine the logistics of construction and the transportation of materials in the context of Romano-British building projects. We examine the sources of the materials used, their transport and the scale of labour and investment involved in the construction of the Landward Wall using an energetics-based methodology. Finally, we provide new insights into Londinium's Landward Wall and the socio-economic and practical implications of its construction. Supplementary material is available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X21000088) and comprises technical data related to the architectural energetics.

A decorated copper-alloy key handle was recovered during excavation of a town house in Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltavorum). The decoration comprises two groups of figures modelled in high relief: a bearded, unarmed man fighting with a lion, arranged above four naked male youths embracing one another in a protective manner. This decoration cannot be paralleled among other similarly elaborate Roman key handles and is best interpreted as a scene of damnatio ad bestias, although it does not directly replicate other known scenes of this punishment and spectacle. Other readings of the image are possible, depending on the context and perspective of the viewer as they handled the object.

Roman military bases were once regarded as strictly male domains with the only women living there being the senior officers’ wives. This view was challenged by studies that used material culture to identify women in Roman forts and interpret the roles they played. The best of this work considers both the multiple identities expressed through objects and the complexities of depositional and recovery processes. The article presented here fits into this recent development, as it investigates the presence of women in the Augustan military base and the Flavio-Trajanic fortress on the Hunerberg in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, by examining the spatial distribution of brooches (fibulae) associated with women. The distribution of female brooches is compared to that of military (male) brooches in order to highlight and interpret any significant patterns. While numbers are small, the quality of the contextual information allows for the examination of depositional and recovery practices. The paper also raises wider questions about the possibility of ‘gendering’ brooches.

Excavations at Brandon House, Southwark, uncovered a fragment of Roman pottery with a graffito identified as the Chi-Rho symbol, only the second example to be found in London. This note describes the find itself and its context, presents an overview of similar finds from Roman Britain and offers a glimpse into the significance of the sherd as evidence for Christianity in Roman Britain and its place in the dynamic religious landscape of Roman Southwark.

This contribution presents the first overview of an integrated remote-sensing survey undertaken across Harpham Roman Villa, East Yorkshire, and its wider landscape setting. The survey revealed one of the largest Roman courtyard complexes in northern Britain, nestled within an impressive crossroads system that formed part of a multiphase ‘ladder settlement’. The paper considers the impact of the results on both our understanding of this unique landscape and broader methodological approaches to the study of rural settlement in Roman Britain.

An alternative is proposed to the interpretation of the plan of Dalswinton Roman fort offered by W.S. Hanson and colleagues in their important study of the air-photographic, geophysical and LiDAR evidence published in Britannia in 2019. It is suggested that the larger, second-phase fort faced not east, but south, as previously thought, but that most of the remains of this layout have been removed by the plough. A suggestion is made concerning the possible garrison of the second-phase fort.