Professor C. Northcote Parkinson has demonstrated that government officials increase by a process of quasi-organic growth, unrelated to the burden of work for which they are responsible. The phenomenon is as apparent in the Roman Empire as in modern Britain; but modern British scholarship working on the evidence from the Roman Empire has carried the process even further by producing an official who never existed - though in fairness it must be admitted that no new post was created. It would be interesting and instructive to follow the process by which this apocryphal administrator became accepted into the canon of governors of Roman Britain, but problems of space mean that we can do no more than show why he must be declared redundant.

The fragment of skillet-handle illustrated (FIG. I) was found during the 1973 excavations in Goss Street, and is the first example of a Roman bronze vessel with a manufacturer's stamp to be found in Chester. Unfortunately the handle occurred in a medieval robber-trench, but is likely to be derived from Roman military levels. Bronze skillets would appear to have been used by legionaries and the civilian population for mulling wine, for cooking and as capacity-measures. It has been suggested by Wright that a group of legionaries would each have carried one of slightly different size which belonged to a graduated set, and often there are internal markings within the bowl to measure a known amount. Skillets of this type were brought into Britain during the first and second centuries. Most of the earlier examples were probably made at the Campanian centres of bronze-working in Southern Italy, at Capua and Nola, but after about 60 it would appear that Gaulish manufacturers progressively captured the market. Campanian metal-workers produced a wide range of vessels, but it is mainly skillets that are stamped with the maker's name. To date, forty different vessels are known with stamps from the British Isles (see Appendix).

This analysis of the stamps of Legio IX (or VIIII) Hispana found at Lincoln, Templeborough, Old Winteringham (Lines), Malton, Aldborough and mainly York, or at Carlisle and its legionary tilery at Scalesceugh forms a sequel to the present writer's article in Britannia vii (1976), 224-35 on ‘Tile-Stamps of the Sixth Legion found in Britain'. It has been based on rubbings and squeezes made from the originals. Much of the earlier bibliography has been omitted because stamps when published merely in printed capitals cannot be identified with specific dies. The die used for the one example known from Lincoln (Lindum) seems to have been taken north for use among others at one of the tileries, on sites not yet located, which supplied York (Eboracum). The rare examples from Aldborough (Isurium Brigantum), the capital of the canton fifteen miles north-west of York, match two of the dies from York. But in contrast one example, Type I, assigned with probability to Aldborough, has no parallel. The outlying post at Malton (Derventio) has produced two dies unmatched elsewhere, even at York.

Among the finds in the site museum at Corbridge are two related silvered ZA bronze mirrors. Although there are no details about the precise find spot, they can be paralleled by a number of mirrors found mainly in the region of the Lower Rhine, and by several undecorated examples from excavations in England. The first piece is a large fragment of an almost plain disc (PL. XVIII A), slightly convex on its reflecting side and with a narrow slightly convex border on the under side, marked off from the body of the mirror by a single engraved line 0·8 cm from the edge. The fragment measures 7·6 by 6·0 cm; the original diameter would have been about 9·8 cm.

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.

Dinorben, Denbighshire (SH 968757) has the distinction of being the only Welsh hillfort to produce items of undoubted Roman military equipment. This paper will be concerned with the origins, dating and probable historical context of two iron arrowheads. However, it is necessary to enumerate the other objects also which have been either termed ‘military’ in the Dinorben excavation reports, or which may originate from such a source.

An initial, superficial occupation (Period I, c. A.D. 43) of the site probably reflects a Roman military base of the Conquest period. The first formal layout (Period II, c. 44–50) included a main east-west street, north of which lay a metalled area and two wooden structures separated by a north-south road, again almost certainly part of a military base. A large scale Claudian redevelopment (Period III, c. 50–60) relaid both the east-west road and the metalled area. In the angle formed by these lay at least three large timber-framed buildings, on an east-west axis and probably consisting of ranges of rooms, at least one frontal verandah and two semi-basements; two of these buildings were divided from the third by a minor east-west road. The framed walls were infilled with wattle, daub or brick, over wooden sleeper-plates supported on trenched piles. The floors were of clay, some roofs tiled and many walls painted, one four times. Water was piped along the principal road. The layout, still reminiscent of military work, probably reflects the initiation of the civilian town east of the Walbrook which set the permanent street-pattern for the eastern half of the city. All the buildings on the site were destroyed by the Boudiccan fire of A.D. 60.

It has become fashionable in British archaeological circles to criticize airphotographers for continuing to reconnoitre the better-known districts such as the upper Thames valley or the Yorkshire Wolds, when they might be using their limited flying time to explore areas where little or nothing has yet been recorded from the air. The importance of making flights over the less rewarding ground is undeniable, but it is quite wrong to assume that the ‘classic’ crop-mark areas have nothing more to reveal. Every year brings major aerial discoveries on the chalklands and river-gravels of southern Britain, and their value is enhanced – not diminished – by the body of knowledge already available for each locality. Individual sites, although revisited year after year, may display vital new information only after literally decades of scrutiny, and continued surveillance is called for if air-photography is to play a fully effective part in archaeological exploration.