The subject of this article is a uniform group of Roman military horse-trappings of the first century a.d. found at Xanten and now in the British Museum. They were included with brief and, it is fair to say, inadequate entries in H. B. Walters' Catalogue of 1899 where it was suggested, wrongly, that the trappings were from an ornamental cuirass. Since then there has been no attempt at a comprehensive publication, or proper explanation of their purpose. The four large roundels in the group have, it is true, been frequently mentioned in the study of so-called phalerae However, discussion of these pieces has consistently ignored the related groups of harness furniture to which they belong. If this fact is surprising, it is all the more so when we reflect upon their obvious importance for the study of Roman military equipment. The publication of the, in many respects, parallel finds from Doorwerth on the Rhine in Holland by J. H. Holwerda in the 1930s has recently been challenged by M. Brouwer. While Holwerda claimed to have substantial parts of no less than five sets of horse-trappings, Brouwer argues that the horse-trappings from Doorwerth are too much of a miscellany even to attempt a reconstruction of one set. Brouwer condemns, accordingly, the plaster reconstruction (FIG. I) that used to stand in the Bronze Gallery of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden as inaccurate. The Xanten horse-trappings are, then, the most complete, single surviving set of Roman military horse-trappings of their kind. On the basis of comparison with grave reliefs, and on internal evidence, it is possible to offer here a reconstruction of the original harness. On the basis of inscriptions punched into the trappings themselves, it is possible to speculate on the ownership of the trappings and the significance they held for their owner. Not the least interesting of these graffiti is the inscription PLINIO PRAEF(ECTO) EQ(UITUM) punched into the face of one of the large roundels (A3). More than one scholar has seen here an explicit reference to the historical C. Plinius Secundus, commonly known as Pliny the Elder.

No Roman saddle survives complete. For its reconstruction we are therefore reduced to depictions or models of saddled horses and to making sense out of what archaeological evidence remains. Since Groenman-van Waateringe's study of 1967, it is clear that the archaeological evidence for saddles consists of the leather outer casing and metal horn stiffeners: neither of them, however, have ever been found in association.

The study of building-materials has been much neglected in the past, but it is not merely the technical examination of constructional minutiae but rather a key to wider aspects of economic history. How well did Romano-British builders exploit available building materials? How did such materials influence architectural styles? Where suitable stone was not readily accessible did they improvise, or import better material from a distance? What trading patterns can be discerned from the distribution of certain materials? Such questions can only be answered after detailed examination and identification of building-materials at particular sites, and there is insufficient material available as yet for a definitive survey. This article attempts, on the basis of such evidence as exists at present, to consider the building-materials, especially those of stone, employed in south-east England during the Roman period.

‘One of the difficulties facing the archaeologist when trying to use the evidence of ancient writers is to know when that writer (historian or otherwise) is relating fact, and when he is merely involved with “topoi” – the stock literary descriptions or situations inseparable from history as rhetoric’.

In defining this problem, J.C. Mann is thinking specifically about Tacitus' references to Britain. He presents a constructive warning to those who rely too confidently on literary sources, yet in one sense his statement is also misleading, for he elevates ‘fact’, regarding references that are ‘merely’ topoi as inferior, not to say deceptive. This distinction is indeed necessary when we are compiling information for a military or political history; but in the study of Roman Britain too little attention has been paid to the historical value of sources in their own right, as evidence for Roman culture and society rather than sources as such.

A number of infant burials in Britain, both cremations and inhumations, contained a consistent deposit of a small jet bear, black mineral jewellery, a coin, and a pottery beaker. Some of the graves held several examples of these items, and some a wider variety of objects. Comparison with more obviously amuletic grave deposits from Butt Road, Colchester, and Lankhills, Winchester, suggests that the coins were selected for their reverse image, and that both they and the bears are representations of guardians placed in the burials to ensure that the child did not enter the underworld alone and unprotected. These bears are set in the wider context of the animal's iconography and mythology, with particular reference to the Greek cult of Artemis, who oversaw childbirth and child-rearing. The choice and importance of materials and the positions of objects within graves are also briefly explored and the social identity of the dead infants is examined. In an appendix of other burials containing jet animals, the Chelmsford hoard of jet jewellery is reinterpreted as grave goods from the inhumation of a young woman.

During the last half century a growing number of scholars have concerned themselves with the material remains of the later Roman and Migration periods. Discussion has centred, inter alia, on those classes of belt equipment which exhibit the kerbschnitt or ‘chip-carved’ manner of decoration, but surprisingly little mention has been made of those types of late Roman buckles and strap-ends that happen to fall outside the well-known categories of the ‘chip-carved’ material. The principal aim of the present paper is to propose a system of classification for these buckles and strap-ends, to discuss the evidence for their chronology, the likely area of their manufacture and the identity of those for whom they were intended. The catalogue which follows this discussion has been compiled primarily from a study of the published material, though it could be expected that a more extensive search in the museums and private collections of Europe and North Africa would substantially increase the number of pieces available for discussion. It is hoped that the evidence which this less well-known body of belt-equipment may afford will be of value to students of the later Roman military organization, both in Britain and on the continent.

It is generally assumed that the Brigantes under Queen Cartimandua had been formally recognised as Roman allies at some stage not long after the Roman invasion, though nowhere does Tacitus or any other ancient author make a direct statement to that effect. Cartimandua's reliance on Roman arms on more than one occasion, however, and her handing over of the fugitive Caratacus to the Roman authorities in A.D. 51 provide sufficiently strong hints that some such arrangement was in force. In modern parlance, she is characterised as a ‘client’ queen, although it is unlikely that this would have been the contemporary term applied. Precisely how long before A.D. 51 such a relationship had come into existence and whether with Cartimandua from the beginning is uncertain. She may have been placed on the throne after the Brigantian uprising of c. A.D. 48, although the scale of the problem, apparently dealt with quickly with only a few executions, seems more likely to reflect minor factional disagreement than a major revolt requiring a change of ruler.

Bricks and tiles stamped with the initials of the Classis Britannica, the fleet of Roman Britain, have been found on nine sites around the shores of Sussex and Kent and at two localities in the Boulogne region of France (FIG. I). Supplemented by a few inscriptions on stone, they form the principal archaeological evidence for the presence of the fleet in the Channel.

One of the most interesting documents to emerge from Egypt is a wooden tablet from the Fayum (PL XXX). The main text of the tablet reads: M. Acilio Avaviola et Pansa cos. pridie nonas lanuarias T. Haterius Nepos praef. Aeg. L. Valerio Nostro equiti alae Vocontiorum turma Gaviana emerito hone-stam missionem dedit This may be translated: ‘In the consulship of Manius (not Marcus) Aviola (not Avaviola) and (Corellius) Pansa (i.e. A.D. 122), on the day before the nones of January (i.e. on 4 January), T. Haterius Nepos, the Prefect of Egypt, gave an honourable discharge to L. Valerius Noster, time-expired cavalryman of the ala Vocontiorum, from the troop formerly commanded by Gavius.

Most students of Roman frontiers are familiar with the idea that, before the construction of Hadrian's Wall in c. 122, a system of frontier control had developed on the Tyne—Solway isthmus under Trajan, particularly after the withdrawal of the Roman army from southern Scotland in c. 105 (FIG. 1). A road running between Corbridge and Carlisle, known in medieval times as the Stanegate, has generally been seen as the basic component of this Trajanic frontier. The idea of the Stanegate road as a frontier originated with Forster, was developed by Collingwood, and the schedule of sites along it was formalised by Birley, who proposed a regular Stanegate system of forts at intervals of half a day's march, alternating with fortlets.

In 1980, during British Museum excavations at Stonea Grange, Cambs., a group of metal finds collected over a number of years in the fields surrounding the site, were shown to the writer. They included two examples (FIG. 1) of an enigmatic class of small cast bronze object first discussed more than sixty years ago by Reginald Smith. They are still ill-understood, but not uncommon; the present catalogue, certainly incomplete, contains 99 examples.

The Iron Age and Roman periods are often defined against each other through the establishment of dualities, such as barbarity–civilisation, or spiritual–rational. Despite criticisms, dualities remain prevalent in the National Curriculum for schools, television, museum displays and academic research. Recent scientific studies on human origins, for example, have communicated the idea of an ‘indigenous’ Iron Age, setting this against a mobile and diverse Roman-period population. There is also evidence for citizens leveraging dualities to uphold different positions on contemporary issues of mobility, in the UK and internationally. This paper discusses values and limitations of such binary thinking, and considers how ideas of ambiguity and temporal distancing can serve to challenge attempts to use such dualities to map the past too directly onto the present, reflecting on recent social media debates about Britain and the European Union.

A firm grasp of the episodes of Constantine III and Jovinus is essential for any understanding of the end of Roman Britain, and the decline of the Roman Empire in the West. The importance of these usurpers, in particular Constantine, has been reflected in a number of studies. Probably the most influential have been those by Stevens and Demougeot, the former for its demonstration of the need to set Constantine III firmly in an imperial context, the latter because of its scrupulous collection and analysis of the source material. Yet both are part of a lively tradition. Stevens was able to draw on the work of Seeck, and attracted criticism from Thompson; and Demougeot's study has been taken up and developed by, for example, Paschoud and Cesa.

The provisions in the will of Augustus concerning the boundaries of Roman empire came to be disregarded. The Rhine and the Danube, indeed, formed the Northern frontier of the Empire in continental Europe, and mountains and desert bordered the Empire on the east and the south and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. Yet, in spite of the fact that the Danube formed a natural boundary that was relatively secure in Eastern Europe, two areas remained vulnerable and caused the strategists of Rome great anxiety: the Bohemian plateau on the middle course of the Danube and the Transylvanian plateau on the lower. The first was never to be conquered; the second, where the centre of the Dacian state was established, became too dangerous and the Empire had to concentrate all its strength for its conquest (FIG. 1).

In November 1990 a new sewage pipe was being laid at Wraggs Farm, Arrington, when a JCB bucket struck the coffin (FIG. I). The Archaeology Section of Cambridgeshire County Council was alerted immediately and, after a visit to the site to assess the problem, the burial was excavated on the following day under the difficult conditions imposed by a deep narrow construction trench (PL. VII). Excavation was made more awkward by the need to remove heavy lead in reasonable condition from very sticky and intransigent clay in a confined space. Surviving bones were extremely fragile and fragmentary, which also posed problems. Figurine fragments had already been collected by workmen and soil containing them had been removed, so no more could be found.

The renewed excavations in the pre-Hadrianic area of the Vindolanda site have continued to produce large numbers of writing-tablets. The inventory numbers under which the finds of 1985 and 1986 are catalogued run as far as 670; many include pieces of more than one tablet but there is, of course, a large number of scraps which are either blank or have only exiguous traces of writing. It is gratifying to report that the 1985 tablets have now gone to join their predecessors of 1973–5 in the British Museum, with an agreement that subsequent discoveries will also reach the same destination. It is envisaged that there will be two further seasons of excavation in 1987 and 1988. A rough estimate of the bulk of the significant written material which emerged in 1985 suggests that it is approximately the equivalent of the corpus of texts published in 1983. The yield of 1986 was somewhat smaller but there are good grounds for believing that this was not because the progress of the excavation was coming to the end of the tablet deposit and there is every reason to hope for significant quantities of tablets in 1987 and 1988.

The summit of Lamyatt Beacon was totally excavated. The earliest structure was a Romano-Celtic temple, built in the late third century, in use into the early fifth century, and of square plan with two annexes on the east side. To the south was a sunken-room. Finds from related features and from looting of the site included many votive objects. Probably of later date than the temple were a small building to the north and a cemetery of at least sixteen burials, aligned east-west with heads to the west.

The achievement of textile producers in Roman Britain is highlighted most strikingly by two sets of entries in the Edict of Diocletian, a conspectus of traded goods and services available across the Empire, published in A.D. 301. The British birrus, a hooded cape of wool, is ranked equal sixth in a list of fourteen categories of birrus distinguished from one another by price and quality. A corresponding, but shorter, list of tapetia, wool rugs, puts both the British first-class and second-class grades ahead of all the rest: the British tapete, in short, was second to none. No other British product was deemed worthy of mention by the compilers of the Edict; prima facie, therefore, one could argue that textile production was Britain's leading industry by the late third century A.D. Can such a notion be substantiated?

Excavations by MoLAS at 30 Gresham Street and 12 Arthur Street in the City of London in 2001 have led to a complete reassessment of the provision of Roman London’s water supply. Four massive first- and second-century wells contained remains of two types of mechanical water-lifting machines or bucket-chain systems. The discoveries allowed identification of a similar bucket-chain from the Cheapside Roman baths, found 50 years earlier by Ivor Noël Hume of the Guildhall Museum. Archaeological and engineering analysis has revealed the water-lifting capacity of the machines, which could have supplied a significant proportion of the town’s population with clean water.

The last decade has seen renewed interest in late Roman Britain and its transition to Saxon England. There have been a number of attempts to clarify the chronology of events between the collapse of the central Roman administration and the establishment of a substantial and permanent Saxon presence. These attempts at chronological certainty have, of necessity, focused upon the entries in the so-called Gallic Chronicles since these sources are the nearest in date of composition to the events which they record. Two events in the Chronicles relate to Britain. One records a Saxon invasion in the first decade of the fifth century whilst the second alludes to the subjection of Britain, or some substantial part of it, to the Saxons some thirty years later.