A 15.2-ha Roman marching camp has been identified at the northern end of the Lune gorge where the Roman road northwards from Ribchester emerges into the Eden valley and the Cumbrian plain. The road runs here on an alignment that has not been determined before. The camp lies astride the road and faced east. The remains of the camp and the road are described and discussed.

Correspondence addressed to the antiquary Sir John Clerk, 2nd baronet of Penicuik, Midlothian, allows us to document the initial recording in 1723 of Roman inscriptions and relief sculpture observed at several forts along the line of the Antonine Wall between the Forth and Clyde, and the arrangements put in place to transport them to his home at Penicuik House. Particularly valuable is a series of drawings, which are sometimes our only visual record of the stones.

Archaeological evidence has emerged over the last half century which helps shed light on the British expedition (a.d. 208–11) of the emperor Septimius Severus and his sons, famously but meagrely reported by the historians Cassius Dio and Herodian. Excavation at the Severan supply-base at South Shields, full publication of excavations of the 1960s and 1970s at the fortress of Carpow on the Tay, and more recently at Cramond, and recent work on the indigenous societies encountered by the Romans, all offer new perspectives. The archaeological evidence is reviewed in conjunction with the historical. A critical assessment is made of: (1) the widespread belief that personal or political considerations brought Severus to Britain rather than actual need for military intervention; (2) recent claims that the fortress at Carpow was founded earlier under Commodus (a.d. 180s) and abandoned even before the Severan expedition; (3) the widespread assumption that Severus wished to occupy Scotland permanently and thus be the first conqueror of the whole of Britain; (4) the prevailing view that Carpow and Cramond were abandoned and that all Roman activity in Scotland ceased abruptly on Severus’ death in February 211, and that the campaigns brought about a period of peace in third-century Britain.

The report summarises results from an excavation site within the Wotton cemetery on the outskirts of Gloucester. A total of 20 cremations and 54 inhumations were excavated and are the subject of a detailed human bone report. The earliest cremation urns were of pre-Flavian date and could be paralleled by pots from the Kingsholm fortress. Cremation rite continued into the early second century, but was then replaced by inhumation burials. These dated from the later first/early second century till the fourth century. Part of a ditched enclosure, perhaps with an earlier precursor, was laid out in the second century and survived, respected by burials, into the later Roman period. The layout of this part of the Wotton cemetery is not in the orderly rows expected for urban burial in the province and this circumstance is compared both with other urban cemeteries and with practices known on rural sites. Analysis of the human bone suggested working people were buried in this part of the cemetery. At least one of the burials seems likely to have been a soldier and another may have been a person of importance very late in the life of the town.

Hoards of denarii are common in Britain and the number which have been recorded in detail means that it is now possible to suggest reasonably accurately what a ‘normal’ hoard of a particular date should look like. That being the case, we can then look for variation around that norm and both investigate and speculate what that variation means. A methodology is developed which suggests periods of faster and less rapid coin circulation which has implications for consideration of monetisation. The model also enables us to view where denarii entered circulation; unsurprisingly the army looms large in this picture. The methodology is directly transferable to other provinces and other periods where there are long-lived, relatively stable monetary systems.

Over 800 clay coin moulds, excavated from 85 London Wall in 1988, had been used for casting copies of silver denarii and copper-alloy dupondii and asses which dated from Trajan to Trebonianus Gallus. The discovery of the moulds in the ditch of Londinium's defensive wall led initially to thoughts that this was the concealment of incriminating evidence, but it is now recognised that counterfeiting coins was rife and perhaps even uncontrollable. The wide variety of moulds made it a complicated task to identify the numbers and types of coins used to make the moulds. This article describes the types of moulds found, examines how the moulds were produced, and discusses the prevalence of coin moulds at differing periods and on differing sites in Roman Britain and on the Continent.

A hoard found in Southbroom, Devizes in 1714 contained a group of copper-alloy figurines executed in both classical and local styles and depicting deities belonging to the Graeco-Roman and Gallo-Roman pantheons. The deities in a local style appear to form part of a larger tradition of figurines, predominantly found in the South-West, which are characterised both by a similar artistic style and by the use of Gallo-Roman symbolism and deities, such as the torc, ram-horned snake, carnivorous dog and Sucellus. The unique composition of the hoard in comparison with other hoards of similar date provides insights into the beliefs of Roman Britain.

A half-life-sized copper-alloy head of a bearded man was published in the Portable Antiquities Scheme's report of finds from Roman Britain in 2009.1 The head was purchased by the Ashmolean Museum in 2011. In this paper evidence for the identification of the subject as a portrait of the emperor Marcus Aurelius is reviewed by comparison with metropolitan and other certainly identified heads of deities and portraits of the emperor. The technique and likely function of the head are compared with those of similarly worked Roman copper-alloy heads of emperors and deities found in South-East Britain. Finally, a brief account is given of geophysical survey and trial excavation conducted in 2012–13 in the field where the head was found. This offers a unique opportunity to explore the head's archaeological context.

Damage to part of the earthwork at Dyke Hills, Dorchester on Thames, provided the opportunity to recover the badly disturbed remains of a late Roman burial which had contained an elaborate belt set and an axe. This burial, of a type very unusual in Roman Britain, is argued to be of early fifth-century date and to be directly comparable with well-known burials recovered near by in 1874 which formed a starting point for the ‘soldiers and settlers’ debates of the 1960s and beyond. The Dorchester burials are seen here as those of late Roman military personnel, and their local and wider context is discussed.

It was with considerable hesitation that I acceded to the request from the journal's Review Editor to review all nine volumes of this remarkable corpus. This will necessarily be a partial and personal view, since I am not competent to evaluate all of its aspects or the full extent of its impact. For this reason, the review is written unashamedly in the first person. I can, however, write from the very particular perspective of someone who has brought to fruition a similar, if much more modest, project: a second edition of the Corpus Vasorum Arretinorum (OCK). For those who do not know it, this is a catalogue of names on Italian terra sigillata, compiled by August Oxé between 1896 and 1943, finally brought to publication by Howard Comfort in 1968 and revised, enlarged and brought into the digital age by myself between 1992 and 2000.