At the end of a recent die-study of the gold coins of Cunobelin, it was suggested that there might be something to learn from a comparable die-study of the gold coinage of Cunobelin's contemporary, Verica. The index of pre-Roman coins kept by the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford now makes such a task feasible without excessive labour. Thanks are again due to Mr Robert Wilkins of the Institute, for arranging and executing the tedious photography involved.

The timber gateways of the Roman forts and fortresses of Britain show considerable variation, but with a few exceptions they fall into a series of clearly defined types, all capable of subdivision. They may be classified on increasing size and complexity, although, as will be shown in the final discussion, this arrangement has no chronological significance.

The provisions in the will of Augustus concerning the boundaries of Roman empire came to be disregarded. The Rhine and the Danube, indeed, formed the Northern frontier of the Empire in continental Europe, and mountains and desert bordered the Empire on the east and the south and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. Yet, in spite of the fact that the Danube formed a natural boundary that was relatively secure in Eastern Europe, two areas remained vulnerable and caused the strategists of Rome great anxiety: the Bohemian plateau on the middle course of the Danube and the Transylvanian plateau on the lower. The first was never to be conquered; the second, where the centre of the Dacian state was established, became too dangerous and the Empire had to concentrate all its strength for its conquest (FIG. 1).

The standard pattern of Gallic local magistracies, so familar to all students of the Roman west, is apparently very straightforward. The progression of the tribal decurion from quaestorship (dealing with finance) to aedileship (dealing with administration) to duumvirate (the chief magisterial office, dealing especially with justice) is repeated by modern authorities time and again more or less as an absolute fact of civitas-life. In such circumstances one would be perfectly justified in assuming that the existence of this system was supported by a strong body of indigenous evidence; however, any close examination soon reveals that the theory as postulated is not derived from information available from the Three Gauls. A careful reading of Jullian's influential account of the Gallo-Roman magistracies shows that the greater part of his examples were drawn, not from Gaul as a whole, but from the grossly atypical province of Narbonensis, with its mass of colonies. Moreover, when even Narbonese evidence was lacking, such emphasis on highly-Romanized administrative practices allowed him to introduce the results of the vast amount of work done on the coloniae and municipia of Italy and Spain. In short, as far as the civitates of the Three Gauls are concerned, the prevailing orthodoxy as to the local career-patterns supposedly followed by their ruling aristocracies is derived not from peregrine Gallic communities but from Roman and Latin settlements clustered around the western Mediterranean.

Since the first discovery of its remains in 1790, or rather since Samuel Lysons published his exceptionally fine reconstruction-drawing of it in 1802, the Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath has remained outstanding among the monuments of Roman Britain that are known to have been built and decorated in the classical style. It has, however, proved difficult to establish its date. There are two available sources for this, in the absence of any inscription: the archaeological evidence, and the ornament of the temple's architecture. Cunliffe has summarized what little can be said of the former: although the precinct wall appears to post-date the wall of the reservoir of the baths, the temple itself may well have been built before its precinct was enclosed; since it is likely that the baths and the temple were planned together, the late first-century date indicated for the baths renders probable a first- or early second-century date for the other buildings. The arguments depend on circumstantial evidence. Unless excavations in the future produce more closely-datable archaeological material, it would seem that we are not on very strong ground here.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of a type of first-century pottery with moulded-relief decoration found mainly in Wiltshire. The ware is reminiscent of samian, copying (albeit sometimes loosely) its forms and certain of its decorative motifs, the vessels being formed in moulds as with true decorated samian. Discoveries of this pottery have been rare and suggest that production was short-lived and intended for a limited market, which was perhaps the Roman army. The possible relevance of this ware to the military occupation of the south-west is discussed, following an appraisal of the pottery and its ceramic context.

The extensive Romano-British coarse-pottery manufacturing centre in the Farnham area of west Surrey and north-eastern Hampshire has now been known for over half a century and several isolated kilns have been investigated. Until recently however the dating of the pottery has lacked precision owing to the scarcity of stratified and dated groups near to the kilns. As a result of this and the lack of a synthesis of the kiln evidence excavators have found the pottery of little value as dating evidence. Since 1969 a series of excavations on the Romano-British site at Neatham (Vindomi), about 8 km from the main kiln group, have produced large quantities of the pottery, much of it from a series of stratified groups. A study of this material has resulted in improved dating. This paper presents a dated typology of the more widely-distributed types and re-examines the dating of the excavated kilns.

One of the reasons for the Roman invasion of Britain was the hope of exploiting the natural resources of the country. It was not long before there was considerable iron-working in the Weald, especially in the area round Battle, East Sussex. Iron slag is to be seen at several sites, but little excavation of these has taken place. The best evidence for iron-working comes from Beauport Park, where a vast slag heap was discovered in 1862: much of this was removed during the 1870s for road-making, and there was no excavation of the site until the writer began work in 1967, and after three years' search found a building that proved to be a bath-house (FIG. 1).

Bone pins are often regarded as undatable. Though several classifications of head-types have been produced, notably that from the Jewry Wall site at Leicester (Kenyon 1948: 264), no attempt has been made to relate any type to a particular date-range and to test such dating against comparable published material.

In about 1827 a small hoard of coins and jewellery was found whilst ploughing at Castle-thorpe, Buckinghamshire. The hoard consisted of a pair of silver bracelets, a silver ring with a cornelian intaglio showing Bonus Eventus, and silver and bronze coins, the latest of which belonged to the reigns of Antoninus Pius (138–161) and Verus (161–169). The hoard had been contained in a ‘small black urn’ which was not recovered at the time. During a recent detailed study of the jewellery, which is now in the British Museum, it was observed that the bracelets were inscribed.

In 1954 a chip-carved slab was discovered on the Romano-British settlement at Gatcombe, near Bristol. Interest in its decoration and possible use led to a search for other examples, and has resulted in the listing of some 30 slabs from 23 sites in the counties of Avon, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Gwent, Hampshire, Somersetshire and Wiltshire. The map (FIG. 1), together with the gazetteer, provide a record of the known find spots. Attempts to trace slabs outside of the counties above have been unsuccessful but no doubt some have been missed and others will continue to appear on excavations.

A broken statue of a Genius was accidentally discovered at Burgh-by-Sands (Aballava) on 5 October 1976 by a workman of the North Western Electricity Board who was using a mechanical excavator during cable laying. The findspot, in field No. 0120, was approximately 25 m east of the fort and 40 m north of the presumed line of Hadrian's Wall (NY 3293 5918. Mr Paul Austen of the Department of the Environment, who was present throughout the Electricity Board's operations, subsequently informed the present writer and made the statue available for examination before it was deposited in the City Museum, Carlisle (PL. VIII A).

Most writers have seen the Car Dyke as a navigable Roman canal, connecting the fenlands of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire with the major Roman markets of Lincoln and York. Its course is shown on the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain as running from Waterbeach on the Cam to Washingborough, a few miles below Lincoln, on the Witham, and many, following Stukeley, have seen it as supplying the northern markets with the agricultural produce of the Roman fenland. The importance of cereals in this trade has indeed been questioned, but the general theory has persisted.

In order to assess the validity of the theory, and to establish the purpose of the work and the date and method of its construction, the northern half of the Dyke, from the Witham to Bourne, a distance of about 36 miles (57-6 km), has been studied over a period of some 10 years. This paper summarizes the findings to date. It is, of course, realized that all the conclusions reached here do not necessarily apply equally to the southern end.

At Annals 14. 29. 1, Tacitus begins his account of the rebellion led by Boudicca in Britain with Caesen〈n〉io Paeto et Petronio Turpiliano consulibus gravis clades in Britannia accepta. The rebellion is described by Tacitus in Annals 14. 29–39. All scholars who have dealt with this revolt have realized that the events narrated cover more than one year. These events must cover parts of two years: at least part of one campaigning season (Suetonius's attack on Mona [Anglesey] and his battle with Boudicca), plus a winter, during which the governor of Britain was changed, and the period when Petronius was governor. Hitherto, Tacitus's habit of giving the events of more than one calendar year under one annalistic year in his discussion of the Armenian Wars has been cited to prove that he does this. A nearer instance is his discussion of British affairs prior to the revolt. Tacitus records the events of separate years together and tells why: haec, quamquam a duobus [Ostorio Didioque] pro praetoribus plures per annos gesta, coniunxi, ne divisa haud perinde ad memoriam sui valerent (Annals 12. 40. 5). Without doubt, he has done the same in his account of the rebellion.

I shall assume that Gildas wrote towards the middle of the sixth century and that he composed the De Excidio much as Mommsen printed it. I shall also assume that, apart from the works of St Patrick, his book is the only British literary source of authentic information about the history of Britain in the mid-fifth century. To be sure, Bede's conjectures deserve careful attention, but scholars (apart from Dr D. N. Dumville) have unwisely disregarded Mommsen's words about the De Excidio: ‘unicus liber omnino qui eius saeculi condicionem insulae publicam aliqua luce illustret’.

By the time that the Romans had become involved in the affairs of Britain the use of client-kings as an instrument of foreign policy and military strategy was well-established. It is hardly surprising, then, that the employment of local chieftains, often against other local chieftains, should have been an important aspect of Caesar's policy. It was also a policy maintained by Claudius nearly a century later when he undertook the final conquest of Britain. The names of some of the rulers who threw in their lots with the Romans, such as Bodvoc(us), Cartimandua, Prasutagus, are of course, familiar, but none is more celebrated than the man generally considered the perfect exemplum of the British client-king, Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus. We have grown accustomed to thinking of Cogidubnus as a ruler who unreservedly embraced Roman authority and the Roman way of life, and who throughout his career epitomizes the benefits that Roman civilization can bestow on other nations. So prominent a place is he given in general accounts of the conquest, and so vivid a personality has he acquired, that it comes almost as a suprise to realize that there are only two ancient references to Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus.

One of the best-known inscriptions from Roman Britain was found in 1723 at Chichester. It is a dedication on a slab of Purbeck marble of which the left-hand portion is lost, and the remainder was broken into four pieces during recovery. These are now bound by concrete and built into the wall of the portico at the west face of the Council House in North Street at Chichester (PL. IX). There the inscription is protected by a sheet of plate glass.