The locally made colour-coated ware vessel known as the Colchester Vase is argued to be a commissioned piece recording a performance in the town. The inscription on the vessel, cut pre-firing, names individual arena performers depicted en barbotine. One name, Memnon, is argued to be a ‘stage name’ taken from a protagonist in the Trojan war. The connection of another combatant, Valentinus, to the 30th legion is re-considered as evidence for gladiators linked to the Roman army. The Vase's final use was as a cremation urn. Osteological and isotopic analysis reveals the cremated remains to be those of a non-local male of 40+ years; unlikely to be one of the performers, he may nevertheless have been closely connected to the event.

Decorated en barbotine with arena scenes and with an inscription cut pre-firing, the Colchester Vase is a late-second-century product of the local pottery industry. Of exceptional quality, it may have come from the workshop to which the named potter Acceptus iii belonged. It appears to record a performance in the town, and was used as the cremation urn for a non-local male of 40+ years.

This paper considers a new corpus of 490,154 Roman coins (site finds) which have been recorded from England and Wales. The corpus provides British and regional means to aid in the preparation of coin reports in line with Historic England guidelines, along with spatial data providing new opportunities for research. The methods of data collection will be detailed and some of the possibilities this dataset can provide presented through a number of case studies. Through the consideration of applied numismatic analyses, the social distribution of the material and, crucially, the spatial distribution of Roman coinage, we can identify new trends and patterns. Case studies evaluating the fourth century will emphasise the changing importance of settlements in Roman Britain and identify those linked with the late Roman state. Furthermore, the retraction of coinage distributions in the second half of the fourth century will be explored. Building on the national and site type means explored within the paper, the full dataset has been made available in a range of forms on the Archaeology Data Service and in an interactive map developed by Maploom.

The Dorchester Aqueduct, located to the north-west of Dorchester (Durnovaria) in Dorset, is arguably the most famous and well-examined Roman watercourse in Britain. The aqueduct has been intermittently investigated over the course of the last 100 years, but most extensively during the 1990s. The upper stretches of the aqueduct and its source have, however, eluded archaeologists, with multiple routes and water sources being suggested. A new programme of geophysical and topographic survey, combined with targeted investigation together with a reappraisal of the excavations from the 1990s, has provided additional evidence for the route of the aqueduct, extending its course for a further two kilometres to Notton on the River Frome.

The aim of this study is to estimate the minimum prevalence of intestinal parasites in the population of Roman London through analysis of pelvic sediment from 29 third- to fourth-century burials from the 1989 excavations of the western cemetery at 24–30 West Smithfield, 18–20 Cock Lane and 1–4 Giltspur Street (WES89). Microscopy was used to identify roundworm eggs in 10.3 per cent of burials. We integrate these results with past palaeoparasitological work in the province of Britannia to explore disease, hygiene and diet. The most commonly found parasites (whipworm and roundworm) were spread by poor sanitation, but other species caught from animals were also present (fish tapeworm, beef/pork tapeworm and liver flukes). Parasite diversity was highest in urban sites. The health impacts of these infections range from asymptomatic to severe.

This paper uses a case study of a shaft in Surrey, England, to illustrate the potential of traditionally overlooked material for increasing understanding of Romano-British minority mortuary rituals. Taphonomic analysis of a substantial assemblage of disarticulated human remains from a first-century a.d. quarry from the Nescot Former Animal Husbandry Centre in Ewell, Surrey, showed evidence of multi-stage post-mortem processing. This included decomposition of the remains within a protected environment followed by removal of certain skeletal elements. The assemblage is then contextualised against the treatment of human remains in other Romano-British shaft and well deposits. Finally, the material is compared to Iron Age examples of post-mortem processing, revealing the Nescot shaft is unlikely to be a direct continuation of pre-conquest practices.

Famars (ancient Fanum Martis) is situated in northern Gaul, in the south of the Nervian territory. Large-scale investigations undertaken over the last ten years have enabled in-depth analyses of archaeobotanical, archaeozoological and ceramic data, alongside other artefacts. These analyses have demonstrated the town's management of raw materials yielded by its territory, as well as the processing and redistribution of the finished products on a local and regional scale, and across the whole of northern Gaul. Such settlements were part of the Empire's system for supplying troops and inhabitants with food and materials of all kinds. Although data from perishable or otherwise ephemeral materials are limited, ceramics can act as proxy evidence of the production and distribution of other products. This paper provides an overview of these recent discoveries and places them in the broader context of Roman-period supply networks.

This article examines the significance of a highly unusual stone statue discovered at Teynham, Kent, depicting a triton and a ketos. It discusses the context of the find in what appears to be a mausoleum complex adjacent to Watling Street. It provides a detailed description of the statue itself, alongside a petrological study, and places this in the context of other depictions of marine deities, particularly of tritons, in Britain and beyond. The article considers how the sculpture might have been placed on the exterior or interior of the tomb. It also discusses the possible occupant of the mausoleum (perhaps a villa owner or sailor), taking into account the possible symbolic value of the triton, either as signifier of afterlife beliefs or biographical achievement, as well as the ritual treatment of the statue after the tomb was dismantled. The wider context of the Teynham mausoleum is then analysed in terms of its location and form in relation to comparable monuments found in south-east England and better preserved tombs on the continent.

During excavations of a Roman villa at Fordham, Essex, a remarkable series of decorated bone and antler veneer plaques were recovered from villa destruction deposits. They are datable to the later fourth or fifth centuries a.d. and probably once adorned a casket holding bathing equipment and jewellery. Spread through the three main rooms of the villa, fragments were recovered from at least 10 metres apart, so the object is likely already to have been broken when deposited. The plaques are decorated with ‘late antique’ style figural, zoomorphic, vegetal and architectural motifs on a cross-hatched background, with the best-preserved design probably relating to female bathing.

A Roman stylus tablet discovered at Vindolanda in 2014 preserves the partial text of a deed-of-sale for an enslaved person, only the second such document from Britain. This article presents the results of multiple techniques used to reveal the almost illegible text and proposes a restoration of the format of the document and its lost content, based on more complete examples from Italy and around the Empire. We examine the late first-century archaeological and historical context and suggest that the purchaser is probably the prefect Iulius Verecundus. We consider other possible evidence for the servi of the commanders at Vindolanda, for example in another hard-to-decipher stylus tablet which may be related to their travel. The deed-of-sale provides a new type of testimony for slavery at Vindolanda and adds to knowledge of enslavement in the Roman military.

This article discusses how the acclaimed twentieth-century author Rosemary Sutcliff drew upon the archaeological record to advance the didactic aspects of her narratives. Sutcliff was aware that she had a platform to instil certain values in her young readership, and these values were repeatedly exhibited by her protagonists, particularly bravery and fortitude in the face of adversity. In many cases, certain objects are passed down through the generations as a symbol of these values. Usually, these items were drawn either directly from the archaeological record or display close parallels with real-world objects. Subsequently, for the readers of Sutcliff's narratives, the real-world version of the artefact, or a similar item, become encoded with these values and serve to inspire them to emulate her heroes.

Polyaenus (Strat. 8.23.5) includes an armoured elephant in his description of Julius Caesar crossing a defended ford in Britain (54 b.c.) – something found nowhere in Caesar's own Bellum Gallicum. From looking at a range of loci in the Strategica dealing with Caesar's military exploits in Celtic lands, it becomes clear that, instead of being the remnant of a now-lost source tradition, Polyaenus either based the elephant vignette on an underlying narrative structure provided by the Bellum Gallicum, or a source using this work very closely. Given the overall unlikelihood of Caesar taking an elephant to Britain, Polyaenus probably inserted an elephant for rhetorical and/or didactic purposes and was perhaps influenced by Caesar's own non-literary propaganda involving elephants.

An altar to Mars dedicated by a soldier of legio XI Claudia is shown to have been removed from the fabric of Marton church during restoration work and, along with much of the other stone for the Romanesque tower, nave and chancel probably derived from the Roman small town of Segelocum, Littleborough on Trent. The name of the dedicator, G. IVLIVS ANTONINUS, is discussed in the context of legio XI Claudia deployment on the Lower Danube.

Meyer, Mullen, and Vanhala analysed the inscription SECVNDINVS CACOR accompanying the carving of a phallus on a stone excavated at Vindolanda and explained CACOR as the present passive of the verb cacare ‘to shit out’. I suggest that CACOR may have been intended in abbreviation of CACORVM, the neuter genitive plural of the adjective cacus, a transliteration of the Greek κακός ‘evil’, and that the phallus is depicted ejaculating over this word to symbolise its apotropaic power over evil.

This short contribution presents an enigmatic clay mould recovered from a tile kiln in Vindolanda's North Field. This complete mould contains an impression of Apollo in bust form, but its exact use is unclear. This paper presents the mould and discusses its potential use for the manufacture of ceramic figurines. Found in an industrial area of the site, its discovery also provides valuable evidence for craft production along this frontier and hints at a largely unknown provincial industry.

In 2018, the AOC Archaeology Group unearthed a unique Roman figurine in Sandy, Bedfordshire, likely an offering in a domestic shrine or lararium. The figurine features a distinctive Gallic cloak, similar to those found on copper-alloy figurines in Trier and Cambridgeshire and on numerous relief sculptures. It may be related to the hooded garment known as the birrus mentioned in Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices of a.d. 301, including the expensive Birrus Britannicus.