An extensive Romano-British site, on the bank of the River Arrow at Alcester, Warwickshire, was excavated under the direction of Miss C. Mahany in 1964–65. The settlement contained, as well as habitation, what appeared to be an industrial area. In this area, with the remains of buildings, a pit was uncovered containing a muddy matrix in which was embedded a great number of scraps of leather. This so called ‘leather pit’ has been provisionally dated by Miss Mahany as belonging to the Antonine period, i.e. middle to late second century, or possibly a little later, on archaeological evidence. It was the infilling of this pit from which the insect fauna described here was recovered. The sample, collected by Professor F. W. Shotton, Drs. G. R. Coope and C. H. S. Sands and the author, was dug directly from the pit after the surface layers had been removed. The material was put into clean polythene bags and taken immediately back to the laboratory for processing. As the site of collection was well away from present-day buildings, the possibility of contamination by modern insects would seem to be remote.

Arecent paper made reference to the three iron beams found at the Chedworth villa. They were called ‘blooms’ and it was suggested that they were the product of the Forest of Dean ironworks. The place of origin may be correct, but it is no longer right to refer to these great objects as ‘blooms’. They had been manufactured for a definite purpose and had a definite structural part to play in building work, as is shown by a study of the find-spots, not only of the Chedworth examples, but also of others found in more recent years, and by their condition when found. Moreover they are also of interest as being probably the largest single objects yet known to have been manufactured by Romano-British smiths. Their function and manufacture has already been discussed by Dr. R. F. Tylecote, in spite of which many misconceptions still seem to survive about them. Indeed, I am grateful to Dr. Tylecote for discussing the Catterick examples with me soon after they were found; also to Mr. H. Cleere of the Iron and Steel Institute for arranging a study of the broken Catterick beam, and to Mr. L. Biek of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory for making the report available to me.

In addressing a CBA conference in 1965 Mr. C. E. Stevens performed his now famous ‘strip-tease act’, whereby he arrived at the conclusion that, save in a few exceptional areas, south-eastern England from Hengistbury Head to the Wash rarely produces Romano-British villas with patterned pavements. He related this phenomenon to the system of land-tenure which he believes he can recognize operating in south-eastern England during the Roman period—tenure in tir gwelyawg. Hence, the occupiers of the villas did not lay mosaic pavements because they ‘do not seem to have had the power of capital accumulation sufficient to place an order for them’. South-eastern England thus becomes a zone of ‘poor men's villas’ (to use Mr. Stevens' term), and sitting in the very centre of this zone are the villas of the Chilterns. Mr. Stevens generously recognized that High Wycombe was an exception to his rule, and rather more grudgingly admitted that Totternhoe might be another, but he was confident that ‘critics might find one or two more, but not many’. I have previously challenged, in passing, this harsh assessment of the Chiltern villas, but in the last two years additional information has come to light and the importance of well-dated mosaic pavements from villas has been emphasized by Dr. D. J. Smith's brilliant chapter on villa-mosaics in The Roman Villa in Britain.

In the past few decades, the spread of the knowledge of ironmaking technology from its origins in the Near East throughout the Old World has been the subject of considerable study. Archaeologists and metallurgists have collaborated in the investigation of technological material, notably furnace remains, slags, and iron artefacts. Slowly a coherent picture is beginning to emerge, but many questions remain unanswered.

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.

The Roman town of Venta Icenorum lies adjacent to the church of Caistor St. Edmund some three miles south of Norwich, Norfolk, where the circuit of its defences still survives impressively though everything within them has been flattened by agriculture. The publication of a famous vertical air photograph (PL. I) taken by the R.A.F. in the dry summer of 1928 aroused great interest, and funds were collected for the excavation of the town. The direction was entrusted to Mr. (later Professor) Donald Atkinson. Work started in 1929 and continued every year with the exception of 1932 down to 1935. Publication, however, did not keep abreast with excavation. A fairly full account of the first season's work was indeed printed, and the pottery-kilns excavated in 1930 were fully published; finally a report appeared of the pottery and coins found in 1929–31. For the rest there are the brief annual reports in ‘Roman Britain in 1929–35’ (JRS xix–xxvi), and a short summary of results compiled by Professor C. F. C. Hawkes with Atkinson's collaborations and published in 1951.

The Romano-British theatre at Gosbecks is situated in the parish of Stanway, three miles west of the colonia at Colchester on a small promontory between the Roman river and a lesser tributary. It lies on the eastern edge of a thirty-acre area which was covered in Roman times by numerous buildings including a possible bath-building, the large Gosbecks temple standing within its own temenos, and a massive walled ‘fairground’. The theatre lies 125 yards due south of the temple and may well have stood within the ‘fairground’. The entire area (FIG. I) falls into a class of rural site widespread in Roman Gaul where large temples are associated with theatre, mansio and bath-buildings, but where private houses and town walls are absent.

During the past few years several late Roman churches have been excavated inside the towns and forts along the Rhine-Danube frontier. These churches were built in the fourth and early fifth centuries, and were designed for congregational worship and the celebration of the Eucharist; in this respect, they differ from the churches which developed from memorial chapels in the cemeteries outside the towns. Baptism was one of the functions of these congregational churches, and at several of the excavated sites fonts have been found. These churches and fonts provide a number of parallels to an unexplained structure at Richborough and to various unexplained features of the excavations, suggesting that there was a congregational church of this type with a nearby baptistery inside the fort there.