Of the problems facing historians of Roman Britain few are so pressing, or so difficult to solve, as those associated with the Roman occupations of Scotland. The difficulties stem from the sparsity of contemporary or near-contemporary literary accounts, but they are exacerbated by the apparent lack of dated building inscriptions firmly assignable to the second Antonine period. Nevertheless, any assessment of Antonine Scotland must clearly start from the ancient historians, take into account all the available inscriptions and add the evidence provided by coins. The structural evidence for the forts has to be reviewed against this background. However, in recent years we have come to realise more and more that all these categories of evidence taken together are not enough to allow precise conclusions on some vital points. All this applies primarily to the Antonine period: the Flavian occupation indeed has its problems, but on the whole they are relatively minor ones, and do not involve widely different chronological interpretations.

The rectangular earthwork on Tregear Farm, Nanstallon, just west of Bodmin has long been suspected to be of Roman origin. When the eastern rampart was levelled in the early nineteenth century and those on the other three sides were cut back and reduced to typical high Cornish hedge banks, coins of Vespasian and some first-century pottery were found, including pieces of a samian form 29 and a stamped mortarium. The finds were deposited in the Bodmin Museum, where they were seen by Haverfield when he was preparing his account of Romano-British Cornwall for the Victoria County History. He tentatively suggested that the earthwork was a fort, or possibly ‘a protection for immigrant traders’, shrewdly observing that its occupation was of brief duration. Hencken in 1932 referred to it only as ‘a little frontier settlement’ and the Ordnance Survey Roman Britain map of 1956 also marked it simply as a settlement site. The generally accepted opinion was that the Roman campaigns and military occupation did not extend beyond the Fosse Way or, at most, the river Exe.

Early in 1961 the mechanical grader scooping out the line of the street called Via Romana in the new Readers' Estate at Chalk, Kent (Nat. Grid Ref. TQ, 677730) exposed the corner of a buried building. Trial excavation directed by Mr. A. F. Allen was followed by a full excavation mounted by the Ministry of Works, with the full cooperation of the developers; this was directed by the writer and Mrs. Anne Eastham. The Readers' Estate overlooks the mudflats of the Thames estuary and bears a varied topsoil of clays, flint, pebbles and sand. Between this and the underlying chalk is a layer of weathered chalk, glacially deposited, and known as ‘head’ or ‘bullhead’. The foundations of our buildings were cut into this.

Dudley and Webster state that Vespasian left Britain in A.D. 44, the year following the invasion, in order to attend Claudius' triumph in Rome and receive the triumphalia ornamenta. Webster adheres to this view in a recently published article, and it has been adopted elsewhere. Such a view drastically curtails the duration of Vespasian's command in Britain. This in itself is not perhaps a serious objection to it, even though Suetonius' record of Vespasian's campaign suggests protracted operations. There are other objections that are far more serious.

The standard view of the great temple at Camulodunum is that it served an early provincial cult which paid outright divine worship to the reigning emperor Claudius. ‘The British cult … was a personal cult of the Emperor Claudius, to whom it accorded divinity during his lifetime with an emphasis which went well beyond previous Roman practice.’ So entrenched has this belief become that discussion has centred almost entirely upon how such an anomalous situation is to be explained. Had Claudius' officials exceeded their orders in a fit of over-enthusiasm? Or should one rather suppose a more moderate cult, for example of the emperor's numen, that quickly merged into unadulterated divine veneration? Even in Rome the trend was more and more to regard the emperor as a praesens deus; so much so that a medical writer could boldly refer to Claudius as ‘our god Caesar’. Perhaps, then, one should think in terms of a provincial experiment, justifiable for local reasons but still too far ahead of its time to be risked in the political climate of the capital. Whatever explanation recommends itself, the temple of Claudius, as now interpreted, presents major difficulties that have never been satisfactorily resolved. I should like to reconsider the problem here by openly dissenting from the main tenets of present doctrine. Was Claudius ever the object of a purely personal cult at Camulodunum? Did a temple to the god Claudius even exist there within his own lifetime?

It has always been apparent that some (probably the majority) of the classicizing coin types of the British kings were taken from Roman republican and imperial issues. The best known example is, perhaps, the reverse of a stater of Tincommius which is thought to be the work of a Roman engraver. It shows a horseman with a javelin and is copied from a denarius of P. Crepusius. For cases of similar borrowings we may cite the head of Jupiter Ammon on bronze coins of Cunobelin, which appears on certain late republican denarii and aurei; the standing figure of Hercules on a silver coin issued by the same king, which was taken from a denarius of C. Vibius Varus; and a running lion on the reverse of a silver coin struck by Verica, that was almost certainly adapted from the reverse of a denarius issued in Gaul by Augustus for Legio XVI. This by no means exhausts the list, which also includes Neptune standing with his trident on another silver coin of Verica; the butting bull on issues of Tasciovanus, Cunobelin and Eppillus; the capricorn on a coin of Eppillus; Victory sacrificing a bull on an issue of Cunobelin; and virtually all the classicizing portraits on the obverses of the British dynastic coins.

It is now twenty years since Professor Stuart Piggott published his classic paper on ‘Three Metalwork Hoards of the Roman Period from Southern Scotland’, in which he re-examined the ironwork hoards from Blackburn Mill, Berwickshire, Carlingwark Loch, Kirkcudbrightshire, and Eckford, Roxburghshire. Since then no fewer than four new hoards of ironwork have been found in Scotland or the north of England, and five in southern England: a series of discoveries which amply justifies a reappraisal of their significance. Their importance in the study of Romano-British ironwork can scarcely be exaggerated, for they provide a width of types and a series of associations which does not occur in the material from excavations. Many of the pieces are unique, or are the only complete examples of their type surviving, and together they form the largest group of dated ironwork from Roman Britain, indeed probably in British archaeology. Yet, with the partial exception of Professor Piggott's paper, they have never been considered as a group, and many even among the older discoveries remain unpublished.

Many hundreds of fragments of painted plaster have been recovered from Roman buildings excavated in Britain during the past 200 years or so. They are preserved in museum collections, and many of the pieces have been drawn or photographed, and described in some detail in the accounts of excavation. Useful summaries of many of these discoveries have been given by Lethaby, Liversidge, Toynbee and others, the first mentioned, however, dealing specifically with material found in London.

In the summary of the Roman coins published in the Fifth Richborough Report, I made my first attempt at expressing the coin-finds from an archaeological site in a way that would facilitate comparison with other sites. Some problems and errors of that method have already been dealt with in the Numismatic Chronicle and need not be further discussed here. It was then already obvious that before the coins from one site could safely be evaluated, a background knowledge of the coinage of the Roman province or area in question was essential, together with a knowledge of the variation of coin-finds from area to area. This sample of site-finds from varied sites in England is offered as a fourth instalment of an examination of groups of coins stretching from Rome, through northern Italy and southern and northern France, to the British frontier. Lists of coins from northern Italy, southern France and northern France have been published in the Numismatic Chronicle. I hope that a comparison of the coins from these four areas will appear following the present survey, in the next volume of Britannia.

The story of the ill-fated British leader, Vortigern, is familiar to most serious students of the history of Britain. This is true whether it be viewed as a last melancholy episode in the Roman period or as an initial and important chapter in the Saxon era. But to appreciate fully the significance of the events of this tempestuous time of transition one should have a clear idea of just what Vortigern was and what he was not. In this short study I shall consider successively a number of important questions about Vortigern, finishing with a rapid reassessment of his role in the final collapse of Roman Britain.

Cae Metta (SH 536650), 1.5 km south-west of Llandeiniolen: preliminary examination of the polygonal enclosed hut-group suggested occupation from the mid third into the fourth century.

Caernarvon fort (Segontium, SH 485624) :3 excavation outside the north-east gate (porta decumana) showed that the original Flavian causeway and inner ditch remained in use unaltered until shortly after 330. The causeway was then dug through and the ditch re-cut from a W-profile to the normal V-section, while a new outer ditch was constructed some 10 m out from the gate. Access to the gate was now over wooden bridges, for which structural evidence was found at the inner ditch. Fresh details were also obtained of the Flavian timber gate.

Wanborough, Wilts. (SU 194853). For this defixio (curse) (FIG. 22) see the report by Mr. J. Rea printed on pp. 363-7 as an Appendix.

Cirencester {Corinium, SP 028012), Gloucestershire (PL. XXIX, A). Oolitic limestone tombstone 0.65 by 1.21 by 0.26 m found in 1971 with two others by contractors carrying out demolition in School Lane on the site of the Stepped Stairs development (see above, p. 339). The three came from the rear of the earth rampart forming part of the defences of the town and may have been intended as building material (for the construction of bastions), which was then discarded. The tombstone, which tapers slightly towards the top, is surmounted by a triangular pediment within which is a lunette in relief. Pediment and die are surrounded by a plain border which has suffered some damage, particularly to the right of the lower part of the die.