Over the past decade, archaeological research in Roman-period Macedonia has seen significant advances, driven by the emergence of Roman archaeology as a distinct discipline focused on spatial organization, identity, and provincial dynamics within the Mediterranean context. Large-scale infrastructure projects, such as Thessaloniki’s Metro and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, have provided unprecedented opportunities to investigate both urban and rural landscapes, revealing dense settlement patterns, economic networks, and cultural continuity from the Hellenistic to the Late Antiquity periods.

Urban excavations in key Macedonian sites such as Thessaloniki, Dion, Philippi, Edessa, and Amphipolis have refined our understanding of urban development, architectural sophistication, and resilience amid political and natural challenges. The Thessaloniki Metro project stands out for uncovering well-preserved urban grids, monumental public architecture, and diverse burial grounds, highlighting the city’s evolution and enduring cultural vitality. Similarly, discoveries of elite residences, public buildings, and monumental statues across Macedonia reveal the complexity and transformation of provincial urban centres. In parallel, public work-facilitated archaeological investigations have exposed a vibrant countryside marked by small cemeteries, artisanal workshops, agricultural estates, and infrastructure such as roads and bridges. These findings challenge traditional villa-centric models, emphasizing continuous rural habitation, intensified agricultural activity, and sophisticated land management strategies. Interdisciplinary approaches, including geoarchaeology and bioarchaeology, further illuminate the socio-economic networks and daily lives of rural communities. Despite challenges such as economic constraints and publication delays, recent archaeological efforts have fostered a holistic understanding of Macedonian antiquity, integrating technological innovation and collaborative methodologies. The cumulative research underscores the resilience and adaptability of both urban and rural populations, revealing a complex, interconnected landscape that reshaped our perceptions of ancient life in this key Roman province.

This introduction presents the structure and contents of the current issue of Archaeological Reports. It also offers an overview (not meant to be exhaustive) of archaeological activity in Greece over the past 12 months, focusing on major exhibitions and other cultural events as well as important recent publications.

The programme of radiocarbon dating undertaken at Stanwick, Northamptonshire, demonstrates the value of scientific dating of Romano-British sites, including those with good pottery sequences and large numbers of datable coins and other finds. It has refined and clarified the chronology and phasing of the site, particularly in its final phase of occupation. It confirmed some of our original dating of the human burials, and showed other dates were significantly wrong. It also addresses issues relating to the calibration of radiocarbon dates and dietary isotopes in the period. This has enabled us to identify activities, material culture and burial practices current at Stanwick and elsewhere in the immediate post-Roman period.

Scholars have been sharply divided over the legal status of temple cult in the fourth century. This is due to a large body of evidence that appears in some ways to be contradictory. However, insufficient attention has been paid to Libanius’ claim (Or. 30.33–6) that the civic cults of Rome and Alexandria were exempt from the bans that were in effect elsewhere. The hypothesis derived from this testimony is capable of explaining all of the evidence, resolving the apparent contradictions. To simplify the matter somewhat, all aspects of temple cult were legal in Rome and Alexandria until 391, but, except for the period from late 361–c. 366/372, the central ritual of public sacrifice (at a minimum) had been illegal in the rest of the Empire since the latter years of Constantine’s reign.

Between 2023 and 2024, the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project and the Libyan Department of Antiquities (DoA) collaborated to apply the newly-developed EAMENA Machine Learning Automated Change Detection (MLACD) method to a series of case studies across Libya. The first of these case studies concerns the region of Lefakat, south of Benghazi, which is facing rapid urbanization, placing heritage sites under immediate threat. An initial desk-based assessment was conducted to identify archaeological sites and apply the MLACD method. Following the remote sensing analyses, a team of Libyan archaeologists from the DoA conducted fieldwork to verify and validate the results. The work involved archaeological and condition assessments of the sites. The remote sensing and fieldwork survey documented 30 archaeological sites, primarily dating from the Roman period, recording new information about these sites. The threats affecting them related primarily to urbanization and vegetation growth, looting and rubbish dumping. The approach highlighted in this article combines advanced remote sensing technologies with fieldwork validation, providing a robust framework for monitoring and safeguarding archaeological sites.

In this paper the Latinate gentilicia Flavius and Iulius, as well as the rank tribunus with its Punic equivalent, found in the Latino-Punic sub-corpus from the necropolis at Bir ed-Dreder are discussed. The texts date roughly to the mid fourth century AD, and attest to the continued survival of Punic in the Tripolitanian pre-desert, also in an official Roman context. While the inscriptions are difficult to understand, direct Latin influence is limited to these three nouns related to their service in the Roman army. The Roman military rank tribunus could, however, also be rendered in Punic. By all accounts, knowledge of Latin was still at best limited in this region during early Late Antiquity.

In recent years a redating of relief-patterned tiles has been proposed, which argues against an established Flavian to Antonine chronology in favour of an earlier and much shorter Claudio-Neronian chronology. This paper tests the chronological underpinning of this important hypothesis by revisiting the dating for relief-patterned tiles in Roman London, which has produced by far the largest corpus of these tiles from any settlement in Roman Britain. The results provide considerable support for the traditional chronology, but do not necessarily rule out an earlier start date for this keying technique or the continued use of these tiles beyond the second century. The technique may have initially been used by certain tile makers supplying building projects that were largely outside London.

As the leading journal for studies of Roman Britain for over 50 years, Britannia has proved a successful publishing outlet for papers that have arisen from the UK developer-funded archaeology sector. This level of interest should encourage the sector to submit more papers to Britannia, but it could also encourage influential journals to improve inclusivity in the publishing traditions of the sector, which are discussed in terms of a widespread failure to acknowledge intellectual property and expertise and to encourage wider involvement in analysis and publishing. The authors use three case studies from their own areas of work to illustrate current problems surrounding authorship, leadership and gendered practice. We then propose ways in which these issues could be tackled.