Colchester Museums has collected Roman-period medical instruments from the town since the late nineteenth century. Brought together here, along with items from the town housed in other institutions, their typological links or differences are explored, along with their wide range of uses. They are set in a variety of contexts, including a conquest-period British Doctor’s kit from Stanway, near Colchester, the alloys used in their manufacture, their distribution across the town and its suburbs, the diseases evident from late Romano-British human remains in the town’s cemeteries, and herbal remedies and other treatments. Interpretation of a previously enigmatic collyrium stamp attests to an eye infection not previously recorded in Roman Britain.

Decorated en barbotine with arena scenes and with an inscription cut pre-firing, the Colchester Vase is a late-second-century product of the local pottery industry. Of exceptional quality, it may have come from the workshop to which the named potter Acceptus iii belonged. It appears to record a performance in the town, and was used as the cremation urn for a non-local male of 40+ years.

A black mineral amulet in the form of a human bust is the only one of its kind so far found in Britain. Found c. 1900 during brick-making, it probably came from the burial of a young female. The authenticity of its provenance, context and associated finds is reviewed in the light of other grave groups, and its iconography and use are compared to those of other black mineral amulets from Britain and the Continent. Supplementary material available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X20000094) comprises a short biography of Henry Money and a catalogue of beads.

A hoard of objects found at the early Roman colony at Colchester in a small hole scraped into the floor of a house destroyed during the Boudican revolt includes a group of high-quality gold jewellery, three silver military awards, a bag of coins, an unusual silver-clad wooden box and other items. Buried in haste as the British approached, they provide a remarkably clear image of one couple's background, achievements, taste and social standing. A bulla shows that the man was a Roman citizen, the awards that he was a veteran soldier of some distinction, while parallels for the woman's jewellery suggest that it was acquired in Italy.

The circus at Colchester was discovered late in 2004. By the end of 2007, a succession of targeted investigations helped reveal its basic plan and provided some limited dating evidence for its period of use. The building proved to have been of average length for a provincial circus (457 m) but, at about 71.5–74 m across, it was relatively narrow. The stands appeared to have been raised a section at a time. The seating was carried on an earth bank revetted by two stone walls. The circus possessed only eight starting-gates. Excavation of the near meta yielded some remarkable evidence about the size and nature of the cones, the supply of pressurised water to the barrier, and the tactics adopted by the charioteers as they swung around the metae. The circus was built in stone probably in the second century A.D. The building ceased to be used if not c. A.D. 275, then sometime later in the Roman period.

The attributes of Mercury include his purse and winged sandals and one of his animal companions is the cockerel. Purse brooches are few in number, but shoe sole and cockerel brooches occur at Temple 10 at Colchester, a centre of the god's cult, and at other temples, and both also occur in graves, reflecting Mercury's role as the guide of dead souls. Fly brooches have been found at both Temple 10 and Uley, also a centre for Mercury worship, and in a grave, and may be a fourth type associated with the god.

For the first time petrological and geochemical analysis of the Marcus Favonius Facilis legionary tombstone at Colchester (RIB 200) was undertaken to determine its geological source. The results show the material to be identical with samples obtained from the Middle Jurassic quarries at Norroy-lès-Pont-à-Mousson of Eastern France. Rather than quarrying what became the more accessible native freestone outcrop between Humberside and Dorset, stone-masons based at Claudian Colchester were instead relying upon established continental materials from the Rhineland provinces. In this short article, petrological analysis has also been used to establish a geological link between this tombstone and the material used for funerary monuments at the pre-invasion legionary base of Facilis (and of legio XX) at Neuss.

This paper presents preliminary research into the social and economic impact of early urban settlement in Britain, focusing on the case-study area of Late Iron Age to Roman Essex. Through fresh analysis of ceramic assemblages from Colchester and Heybridge, we describe hitherto unrecognised socio-cultural groupings and identities through subtle differences in the deposition of pottery in the generations before and after conquest. The concluding discussion concentrates on problems that we still have to address in describing the economic basis of early urban society in Britain.