The locally made colour-coated ware vessel known as the Colchester Vase is argued to be a commissioned piece recording a performance in the town. The inscription on the vessel, cut pre-firing, names individual arena performers depicted en barbotine. One name, Memnon, is argued to be a ‘stage name’ taken from a protagonist in the Trojan war. The connection of another combatant, Valentinus, to the 30th legion is re-considered as evidence for gladiators linked to the Roman army. The Vase's final use was as a cremation urn. Osteological and isotopic analysis reveals the cremated remains to be those of a non-local male of 40+ years; unlikely to be one of the performers, he may nevertheless have been closely connected to the event.

This article discusses how the acclaimed twentieth-century author Rosemary Sutcliff drew upon the archaeological record to advance the didactic aspects of her narratives. Sutcliff was aware that she had a platform to instil certain values in her young readership, and these values were repeatedly exhibited by her protagonists, particularly bravery and fortitude in the face of adversity. In many cases, certain objects are passed down through the generations as a symbol of these values. Usually, these items were drawn either directly from the archaeological record or display close parallels with real-world objects. Subsequently, for the readers of Sutcliff's narratives, the real-world version of the artefact, or a similar item, become encoded with these values and serve to inspire them to emulate her heroes.

A Roman stylus tablet discovered at Vindolanda in 2014 preserves the partial text of a deed-of-sale for an enslaved person, only the second such document from Britain. This article presents the results of multiple techniques used to reveal the almost illegible text and proposes a restoration of the format of the document and its lost content, based on more complete examples from Italy and around the Empire. We examine the late first-century archaeological and historical context and suggest that the purchaser is probably the prefect Iulius Verecundus. We consider other possible evidence for the servi of the commanders at Vindolanda, for example in another hard-to-decipher stylus tablet which may be related to their travel. The deed-of-sale provides a new type of testimony for slavery at Vindolanda and adds to knowledge of enslavement in the Roman military.

In 2018, the AOC Archaeology Group unearthed a unique Roman figurine in Sandy, Bedfordshire, likely an offering in a domestic shrine or lararium. The figurine features a distinctive Gallic cloak, similar to those found on copper-alloy figurines in Trier and Cambridgeshire and on numerous relief sculptures. It may be related to the hooded garment known as the birrus mentioned in Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices of a.d. 301, including the expensive Birrus Britannicus.

Meyer, Mullen, and Vanhala analysed the inscription SECVNDINVS CACOR accompanying the carving of a phallus on a stone excavated at Vindolanda and explained CACOR as the present passive of the verb cacare ‘to shit out’. I suggest that CACOR may have been intended in abbreviation of CACORVM, the neuter genitive plural of the adjective cacus, a transliteration of the Greek κακός ‘evil’, and that the phallus is depicted ejaculating over this word to symbolise its apotropaic power over evil.

This article examines the significance of a highly unusual stone statue discovered at Teynham, Kent, depicting a triton and a ketos. It discusses the context of the find in what appears to be a mausoleum complex adjacent to Watling Street. It provides a detailed description of the statue itself, alongside a petrological study, and places this in the context of other depictions of marine deities, particularly of tritons, in Britain and beyond. The article considers how the sculpture might have been placed on the exterior or interior of the tomb. It also discusses the possible occupant of the mausoleum (perhaps a villa owner or sailor), taking into account the possible symbolic value of the triton, either as signifier of afterlife beliefs or biographical achievement, as well as the ritual treatment of the statue after the tomb was dismantled. The wider context of the Teynham mausoleum is then analysed in terms of its location and form in relation to comparable monuments found in south-east England and better preserved tombs on the continent.

The Dorchester Aqueduct, located to the north-west of Dorchester (Durnovaria) in Dorset, is arguably the most famous and well-examined Roman watercourse in Britain. The aqueduct has been intermittently investigated over the course of the last 100 years, but most extensively during the 1990s. The upper stretches of the aqueduct and its source have, however, eluded archaeologists, with multiple routes and water sources being suggested. A new programme of geophysical and topographic survey, combined with targeted investigation together with a reappraisal of the excavations from the 1990s, has provided additional evidence for the route of the aqueduct, extending its course for a further two kilometres to Notton on the River Frome.

This paper considers a new corpus of 490,154 Roman coins (site finds) which have been recorded from England and Wales. The corpus provides British and regional means to aid in the preparation of coin reports in line with Historic England guidelines, along with spatial data providing new opportunities for research. The methods of data collection will be detailed and some of the possibilities this dataset can provide presented through a number of case studies. Through the consideration of applied numismatic analyses, the social distribution of the material and, crucially, the spatial distribution of Roman coinage, we can identify new trends and patterns. Case studies evaluating the fourth century will emphasise the changing importance of settlements in Roman Britain and identify those linked with the late Roman state. Furthermore, the retraction of coinage distributions in the second half of the fourth century will be explored. Building on the national and site type means explored within the paper, the full dataset has been made available in a range of forms on the Archaeology Data Service and in an interactive map developed by Maploom.

The aim of this study is to estimate the minimum prevalence of intestinal parasites in the population of Roman London through analysis of pelvic sediment from 29 third- to fourth-century burials from the 1989 excavations of the western cemetery at 24–30 West Smithfield, 18–20 Cock Lane and 1–4 Giltspur Street (WES89). Microscopy was used to identify roundworm eggs in 10.3 per cent of burials. We integrate these results with past palaeoparasitological work in the province of Britannia to explore disease, hygiene and diet. The most commonly found parasites (whipworm and roundworm) were spread by poor sanitation, but other species caught from animals were also present (fish tapeworm, beef/pork tapeworm and liver flukes). Parasite diversity was highest in urban sites. The health impacts of these infections range from asymptomatic to severe.

This short contribution presents an enigmatic clay mould recovered from a tile kiln in Vindolanda's North Field. This complete mould contains an impression of Apollo in bust form, but its exact use is unclear. This paper presents the mould and discusses its potential use for the manufacture of ceramic figurines. Found in an industrial area of the site, its discovery also provides valuable evidence for craft production along this frontier and hints at a largely unknown provincial industry.

This paper addresses the archaeological contexts of the clay moulds used to produce copies of Roman coins in third-century Britain. Previous research has focused primarily upon the technology and chronology of the use of moulds to produce coins with the discarded remains of the used moulds considered as ‘waste’ items from an industrial process. This paper focuses attention on the deposition of the moulds. Using the best-recorded finds, it builds upon earlier suggestions that disused moulds were regularly discarded in boundary locations (settlement boundaries, field boundaries, drainage features, shafts/wells, coastal locations and disused structures). It proposes that the magical and ritual associations of production meant that the clay moulds, in addition to the coins that were produced, required careful handling.

Estimating the numbers of residences, and thus the residential densities and populations, of ancient settlements remains a significant problem. This is true even for ‘greenfield’ sites due to the differential visibility of structures made of different materials in aerial and geophysical surveys. In this paper, we take advantage of statistical relationships among elements of the built environments of Roman cities in Britannia and more broadly across the Empire, to estimate the total number of buildings, total population and population density of Silchester. The results indicate that the current site plan dramatically under-represents these values. We also consider the implications of our results for broader discussions of urbanism in Britannia.

This paper presents a new approach to an old problem, the provincial reception of the image of Roman emperors. Applying 3D computer modelling, we captured the portrait features of Hadrian as represented on coinage minted for the British province, produced a 3D model from a coin and compared it with the bronze head of Hadrian found in London. The aim was to test the possibility, previously posited by other scholars, that the London portrait might have been produced by an artisan who used coin portraits of the emperor as his main – if not only – model. More generally, the paper examines the dependencies of coinage and sculpture on shared models and applies new technology to Roman portrait studies.