The invasion of Britain, which was carried out by four legions plus auxiliaries under A. Plautius some time in the high summer of A.D. 43, and the subsequent sixteen-day expedition made by the emperor, Claudius, in person in the autumn of that year, form together one of the most famous, if not one of the best understood, episodes in the history of the Roman Empire. In spite of the apparent familiarity of the event our knowledge of the way in which the invasion was planned, and of the route followed, is scanty in the extreme. It is based in part on a very brief summary of Claudius' own journey to Britain, which was a separate expedition of reinforcement, undertaken in order to associate Claudius personally with the prestige of the project. This is described by Suetonius in his Divus Claudius, written some eighty years after the event, but the chief source for the whole invasion is the narrative in Greek given by the historian Cassius Dio some century and a half after the expedition. To these can be added short references of a mere sentence in length, also in Suetonius' Caesares. They relate to the presence of the future emperor, Galba, in Claudius' entourage in Gaul, and to the large part played by Vespasian, and his brother and son, in the early stages of the Roman conquest. Another, and earlier, mention of Vespasian's part in the conquest is to be found in Josephus' Bellum Judaicum, but it contributes no useful or circumstantial detail, and indeed nothing but praise of Josephus' patrons, the Flavian dynasty. Later Roman historians, such as Aurelius Victor and the anonymous writer of De Caesaribus, merely give abbreviated versions of the already meagre information retailed by the historians of the second and early third centuries. Eutropius does add some circumstantial detail, namely that Gn. Sentius (Saturninus) was jointly in command of the expedition with A. Plautius, and that the Orkney Islands (Orcades) were received under Roman control by Claudius. This submission, if it is historical, must have been received through envoys at very long distance, while Claudius was in Colchester. This latter item is repeated by the early fifth-century Christian writer, Orosius.

Modern Usk is a small market town situated within the county of Gwent on the east bank of the River Usk at its confluence with the tributary River Olway, and on the flood plain of both rivers. It lies at a height of c. 17 m O D, on a major bridging-point of the River Usk, and commands two natural routeways. The first, formed by the valley of the Usk itself, runs from the central highlands of southern Wales around Brecon, south-eastwards to Abergavenny and Usk, and from there southwards to reach the sea at Newport. The second, minor, route follows the valley of the Olway north-east to Raglan.

The series of forts which define the northern frontier of Britain after the recall of Agricola were abandoned before their construction had been completed. The latest coins found on these sites are bronze dupondii and asses of Domitian in mint or nearly mint condition, marked COS.XII (A.D. 86). It seems that as the coins were almost mint when lost these forts were abandoned in either late A.D. 86 or early A.D. 87 (see FIG. 1). There is now new numismatic evidence to support this and to cast further light on this period of Romano-British history. Recent work on the Roman coins from the Sacred Spring at Bath by David Walker has shown that the distribution by date of the bronze coins of Domitian follows a common and distinctive pattern throughout the province.

The problem of the names of the Roman forts at the west end of Hadrian's Wall and along the Cumbrian Coast has been eased somewhat by Mark Hassall's inspired elucidation of that sector per lineam valli which lies between Carvoran and Stanwix: he argues that Birdoswald was Banna, and Castlesteads Camboglanna.

So said Eric Birley in 1952. Since then, two major works by Callies and Baatz have appeared with relevance to numeri, but there has been no general article in English incorporating the discussion in these and previous publications. Speidel's article on ethnic troops filled the gap to a certain extent but he concentrated mainly on Moorish units.

Alchester, 1½ miles south of Bicester and 11 miles north-north-east of Oxford, has been recognized as a Roman settlement site since at least 1607 when Camden described it as ‘… desertae stationis paucae reliquiae, Alchester vocant’ Although there was at that time apparently little remaining to be seen, the site continued to be of interest to succeeding antiquarians who described not only Alchester itself but the presence of numerous remains of buildings and small artefacts of Roman date in the fields surrounding it. Excavations undertaken in 1766, the mid-1800s, the 1920s, and 1974 were small-scale and, with three exceptions, concentrated exclusively on the northeastern section of the site. The lack of any systematic or large-scale investigations of the town and its environs has left unanswered many questions about the siting, subsequent history, and internal planning of Alchester.

The Roman villa at Stanwick (GR SP 972716) is situated on the west side of Stanwick village and the newly constructed A405 bypass. It occupies a gravel terrace on the east bank of the River Nene close to a point where the river swings west to join a secondary canalized channel on the west side of the floodplain. The area immediately west of the villa was partially disturbed in 1845 by the construction of an embankment for the now disused Blisworth-Peterborough railway. The south side of the site is bounded by a stream which rises as a spring east of the village: other springs issue from the valley slope close to the villa where the gravels give way to a bedrock of clay and cornbrash, a decomposed oolitic limestone. Beds of limestone occupy the higher slopes and were quarried in Roman and medieval times. Both the availability of fresh water and of building-stone probably influenced the location of the site.

Since the first general survey of the Romano-British Pewter Industry, published by Wedlake in his report on the excavations at Camerton in 1958, important further work has been done on the typology and distribution of pewter plates and dishes by Christopher Peal, and on the manufacture and typology of pewter vessels in a number of specialist reports. The present author first became interested in the Roman pewter industry whilst researching the development of the early tin industry of South-West England and has undertaken a reassessment of the evidence for the composition, distribution, manufacture and dating of Roman pewter in the light of recent research and examination of unpublished finds in museums.

Since 1974, over 100 greensand querns of a type common in late Iron Age and early Romano-British contexts have been collected by five different people from the foreshore at East Wear Bay, situated on the east side of the Channel port of Folkestone, on the coast of south-east Kent (FIGS, ia and ib). The majority of these has been recovered by local enthusiast, Mr M. Dugdale, who reported his findings to the writer. This article is intended as an interim statement to place on record these findings and seeks to show that a major quern-production site was situated hereabouts, which was active during the late Iron Age and early Roman periods.

The following pages consider the stone torso of a seated quadruped which was found in a well on the axis of the Roman temple at Pagans Hill (the name is coincidental) in north Somerset, excavated in 1951 by Mr (now Professor) P.A. Rahtz. The sculpture is worked in a limestone of the Inferior Oolite now somewhat denatured, according to Professor D.T. Donovan, by the percolation of water during burial. It is probably of Doulting stone. The piece now consists of four conjoining fragments, 63 cm overall. No others were found in the well or the area of about 70 sq.m opened around its mouth (FIG. 1). What is left (PLS. VII-IXA. FIGS. 3–4) shows that the work had been competently and naturalistically rendered.

The rings and coins described below were found in a field adjacent to the presumed Iron Age earthwork in Rampier Copse, immediately to the south-west of the walled town of Calleva Atrebatum and about ioo m south of the road to Sorviodunum (FIG. 1). They were discovered by Mr J. Young and two colleagues using metal detectors after the field had been ploughed in the winter of 1986–7. In the autumn of 1985 a single gold ring (FIG. 2, No. 5) and four silver coins had been recovered from the same area and it was suggested that they had once formed part of a hoard. At the Coroner's inquest in December 1987 it was reported that the new finds were widely scattered and it was for this reason that the court decided that they were not treasure-trove. However, given the rarity of single finds of such coins and rings as opposed to the instances where they have been found in association with each other, it would be perverse to suppose that they did not originate from at least one hoard. Indeed, after the discovery had been reported, one of us visited the field in the spring of 1987 and noted that the area of greatest disturbance was confined to a small area adjacent to the field boundary and the tail of the counterscarp bank of the earthwork at SU 63486212 (FIG. 1). It is likely that both sets of finds derive from the same hoard and it is on the assumption of a common origin that the new finds are reported here.