At the frontiers of the Roman Empire, military settlements had a profound influence on local crafting traditions. Legions were not just fighting units - they contained a large number of craftsmen, and the fortress would have been a centre of manufacturing activity. A timber legionary fortress, for example, required vast numbers of nails, many of which would have been made by legionary smiths on site, and an army of thousands would require many more pots, shoes and tents than could be produced by local domestic potters and leather workers. But can all developments in local craft and industry be seen as a result of the appearance of the Roman army? The ten papers in this volume focus on craft production in Roman Yorkshire, and the evidence for the role of the army in local manufacturing activities. Several papers examine broad questions surrounding the organisation and scale of production in urban and rural areas. Others consider the local evidence for individual materials and production processes, including those associated with pottery, glass, copper alloys, non-ferrous metals, leather, jet, and building stone.

This volume draws together for the first time all the fieldwork known to have taken place from the earliest located trenches in the 1720s up until the modern campaigns of Fulford. It integrates this work with a new geophysical survey of 217ha to provide a new overarching narrative for the town. The volume starts with a historiography of work on the city from earliest antiquarian investigations. This sense of changing interpretations of the site permeates all the later discussion, showing how new discoveries have transformed understandings. The core of the volume contains the empirical data, mapping the past excavations alongside evidence from aerial photography, fieldwalking, LiDAR and geophysics. The final sections provide essays in interpretation, with thematic reviews of: the defenses; the development of the oppidum; the military connection; the mortuary landscape; trade and industry; and pubic entertainment. Finally a narrative overview examines how the town’s remains have been interpreted within an historical setting.

Textile imagery is pervasive in classical literature. An awareness of the craft and technology of weaving and spinning, of the production and consumption of clothing items, and of the social and religious significance of garments is key to the appreciation of how textile and cloth metaphors work as literary devices, their suitability to conceptualise human activities and represent cosmic realities, and their potential to evoke symbolic associations and generic expectations. Spanning mainly Greek and Latin poetic genres, yet encompassing comparative evidence from other Indo-European languages and literatures, these 18 chapters draw a various yet consistent picture of the literary exploitation of the imagery, concepts and symbolism of ancient textiles and clothing. Topics include refreshing readings of tragic instances of deadly peploi and fatal fabrics situate them within a Near Eastern tradition of curse as garment, explore female agency in the narrative of their production, and argue for broader symbolic implications of textile-making within the sphere of natural wealth The concepts and technological principles of ancient weaving emerge as cognitive patterns that, by means of analogy rather than metaphor, are reflected in early Greek mathematic and logical thinking, and in archaic poetics. The significance of weaving technology in early philosophical conceptions of cosmic order is revived by Lucretius’ account of atomic compound structure, where he makes extensive use of textile imagery, whilst clothing imagery is at the centre of the sustained intertextual strategy built by Statius in his epic poem, where recurrent cloaks activate a multi-layered poetic memory.

In Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, the term “oppidum” – used to designate any fortified community – indicates those particular Gaulish sites which are characterized both by a strong tendency to social cohesion and the development of a centralized territorial policy. From a chronological point of view, these sites are limited to a very precise period: the two last centuries BCE, from La Tène D1 to La Tène D2 (120–30 BCE). The purpose of this study is to define the role of animal production within the new urban structures. Hence, the research focuses on the specific economical aspect of meat resources and their management: what is the place of this activity in the economy of Gaulish peoples? Is it possible to detect within the sites any precise organisation in sectors in relation to the butchering activities? What about the meat imports and, consequently, the interactions between the communities and the sites of production? Who was the target of the produced food resources? Were they part of some large-scale “sales strategy”. The research aims to approach these economic issues through the study of the fauna remains recovered mostly from Condé-sur-Suippe, in the territory of the Remi, and also from Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, the capital of the Suessiones. Dating respectively from 120 to 90 BCE and from 90 to 40 BCE, these fortified communities are among the most important in Europe, not only because of their size and of the exceptional conservation of their town planning but also because of their almost unequalled faunal wealth. The comparison between the two sites and their neighbours, i.e. contemporaneous rural sites of an a priori inferior status will hence attempt to cast a new light on the economic role of these fortified communities which are the outcome of a long stratification process within the Gaulish society.

In 1757, a sailing ship owned by an affluent Connecticut merchant sailed from New London to the tiny island of Bence in Sierra Leone, West Africa, to take on fresh water and slaves. On board was the owner’s son, on a training voyage to learn the trade. The Logbooks explores that voyage, and two others documented by that young man, to unearth new realities of Connecticut’s slave trade and question how we could have forgotten this part of our past so completely. When writer Anne Farrow discovered the logbooks of the Africa and two other ships in 2004, her mother had been recently diagnosed with dementia. As Farrow bore witness to the impact of memory loss on her mother’s sense of self, she also began a journey into the world of the logbooks and the Atlantic slave trade, eventually retracing part of the Africa’s long-ago voyage to Sierra Leone. As the narrative unfolds in The Logbooks, Farrow explores the idea that if our history is incomplete, then collectively we have forgotten who we are—a loss that is in some ways similar to what her mother experienced. Her meditations are well rounded with references to the work of writers, historians, and psychologists. Forthright, well researched, and warmly recounted, Farrow’s writing is that of a novelist’s, with an eye for detail. Using a wealth of primary sources, she paints a vivid picture of the eighteenth-century Connecticut slavers. The multiple narratives combine in surprising and effective ways to make this an intimate confrontation with the past, and a powerful meditation on how slavery still affects us.

Excavations were conducted in the early 1970s at the site of an elaborate Roman farmstead at Newnham, Bedfordshire. Nearly all of the Roman remains have been destroyed by gravel quarrying that began in the 1950s. The excavations, under the direction of the late Angela Simco, recorded part of the core area of the farmstead and recovered significant assemblages of artefacts and animal bone. Post-excavation analysis and publication was not completed at the time and the site archive eventually passed to Bedford Museum in 2000. Funding from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, distributed by English Heritage, allowed the results of fieldwork to be published.The farmstead probably originated in the 1st century AD, just before the Roman conquest, and was initially fairly typical of contemporary rural settlements in the Great Ouse Valley. Settlement was characterised by ditched enclosures, some of which were used for livestock management, with a mixture of roundhouses and rectangular buildings of simple earthfast-post construction. By the end of the 2nd century, however, the site had acquired at least one relatively substantial rectangular building with stone foundations, suggesting a degree of ‘Romanisation’ not usually apparent on farmsteads in the Bedford region. In the 3rd century an even more elaborate stone-founded building was constructed, which comprised a range of rooms with under-floor heating. The stone footings had been heavily robbed, hampering detailed interpretation, but three of the hypocaust rooms in the later building are thought to have been a bath suite.Elements of the finds assemblage also suggest that the site had a higher status than that of other farmsteads in the region. Fine-ware pottery and continental imports are relatively well represented, while ceramic building materials and painted wall plaster indicate a degree of prosperity, albeit not on the scale of villa sites known elsewhere. The faunal assemblage has a species profile somewhere between that of contemporary local farmsteads and classic villa sites of the wider region. Other high-status indicators are absent, and the paucity of the coin assemblage suggests a largely unmonetised economy, at least prior to the 4th century AD. Because of this apparent ambiguity, the authors conclude that the Newnham farmstead should not be classed as a ‘villa’. Instead it is suggested that the later buildings housed the administrative and/or communal functions of a large organised farm, without the luxurious domestic element of a villa. The focus of farming operations was probably livestock (mainly cattle and sheep), which culminated at the end of the 4th century in commercial butchery to supply lamb or wool to other settlements.After the end of Roman administration in Britain the ruined farmstead seems to have been a site of early Anglo-Saxon settlement. This is evidenced by the presence of Anglo-Saxon pottery, although hardly any features can be dated to this period.The main datasets analysed for this report consist of structural records, pottery (excluding the amphorae, now missing), ceramic building material, a range of other artefacts (animal products, metalwork, glass, stone, plaster/mortar and slag), and animal bone. The small collection of human bone is fragmentary or from unphased contexts and is not analysed in detail. Because this is a rather unusual site for the locality, detailed specialist reports and full catalogues are included with this report on a CD-ROM, to aid comparison of the Newnham assemblages with those from other sites.

PLLS 16 contains papers mainly arising from several Langford Colloquia held by the Department of Classics, Florida State University. Contents The Elder Pliny S. Citroni Marchetti (Università di Firenze):‘Cicero as Role-Model in the Self-Definition of Pliny the Elder’ Trevor Murphy (University of California, Berkeley): ‘Notes from Underground: the Curious Katabasis of Dionysodorus’ Eugenia Lao: ‘Taxonomic Organization in Pliny’s Natural History’ Aude Doody (University College Dublin): ‘The Authority of Greek Poetry in Pliny’s Natural History 18. 63-65’ Trevor S. Luke (The Florida State University): ‘Pliny the Elder on Pythagoras’ Greek and Roman Poetry Nigel Nicholson (Reed College): ‘Four Reasons not to have an Epinician’ Alex Hardie (University of Edinburgh): ‘Callimachus at the Mouseion (the Hymn to Delos)’ Annemarie Ambühl (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz): ‘Literary Love Triangles: Berenice at Alexandria and Rome’ Alberto Canobbio (University of Pavia): ‘Lucilius and Horace: from criticism to identification’.

This report presents the results of archaeological investigations along the 17km-long Gloucester Security of Supply Water Pipeline in the vicinity of Tewkesbury. The archaeological mitigation works were commissioned by Severn Trent Water; following evaluation of the whole route, three sites were chosen for excavation, at Fiddington and Pamington in Gloucestershire and at Bredon’s Norton in Worcestershire. The site at Pamington revealed oval enclosures of mid-late Iron Age date, that at Fiddington elements of a rural settlement spanning all of the Roman period. At Bredon’s Norton the pipeline cut through a series of Iron Age and Roman settlement enclosures and their internal features, and also included human burials of both periods. Unusually, one Iron Age burial was accompanied by a saw, and among the Roman burials was a cemetery of seven newborn infants. An unexpected discovery was the remains of a Roman bath-house with a plunge pool flagged with stones and decorated with painted wall-plaster. This was later drained and had a central cistern inserted, while the loft was used to store grain. The building was destroyed by fire at the very end of the Roman period, resulting in the exceptional preservation of charred grain, together with fragmentary timbers, on the floor.

About 2000 years ago the Romans conquered the Netherlands. The river Rhine formed the northern border of the Roman Empire. In 15 AD, however, the Romans made an attempt to further expand their Empire and built a fort and harbour near the present-day town of Velsen. Hundreds of Roman soldiers were stationed here, but soon the local Frisian population started a rebellion. Historical sources are scarce, but archaeological evidence show the remains of fierce battle taking place. In the end, the Romans had to retreat. Less than 10 years later they attempted to re-take Velsen with a large military campaign, but again, they could not hold the fort. The river Rhine would remain to be the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. This book tells the story of the Romans in Velsen. What did they do here? What did they built and what remains in the ground today? How did the Romans live in the fort and the Frisians in their farms? Why was the Rhine to be the border of the Empire and what happened to the Frisians after the Romans left? 50 years after the first excavations this richly illustrated book presents a full overview of the Roman history of Velsen.

The last several decades have seen a dramatic increase in interest in the Roman period on the island of Crete. Ongoing and some long-standing excavations and investigations of Roman sites and buildings, intensive archaeological survey of Roman areas, and intensive research on artefacts, history, and inscriptions of the island now provide abundant data for assessing Crete alongside other Roman provinces. New research has also meant a re-evaluation of old data in light of new discoveries, and the history and archaeology of Crete is now being rewritten. The breadth of topics addressed by the papers in this volume is an indication of Crete’s vast archaeological potential for contributing to current academic issues such as Romanisation/acculturation, climate and landscape studies, regional production and distribution, iconographic trends, domestic housing, economy and trade, and the transition to the late-Antique era. These papers confirm Crete’s place as a fully realised participant in the Roman world over the course of many centuries but also position it as a newly discovered source of academic inquiry.

This volume presents for the first time an authoritative and systematic account of the coins minted in the Roman provinces during the period from the accession of Trajan Decius in AD 249 to the death of Uranius Antoninus in AD 254 and covers the reigns of Trajan Decius (AD 249–51), Trebonianus Gallus and Volusian (AD 251–3), Aemilian (253) and Uranius Antoninus (AD 253–4). The publication gives a complete picture of the material, thereby not only meeting the needs of numismatists but also providing an essential reference book for historians, archaeologists and other students of the Roman empire. The introductory essays and extensive catalogue section are followed by indexes and an illustration of every major issue listed. It catalogues over 15,000 coins classified into 2,330 main varieties from the world’s principal collections, including the British Museum and Bibliothèque nationale de France. These were minted at 120 cities located throughout the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from Viminacium in Serbia to Rhesaena in eastern Syria and from the Bosporan Kingdom in Crimea to Alexandria in Egypt. The catalogue includes the extensive coinages made by the cities of the Roman provinces of Asia and Phrygia-Caria and the complex coinage from Syrian Antioch.

The 2015 TRAC proceedings feature a selection of 14 papers summing up some of the key sessions presented at the conference held at the University of Leicester in March 2015, which drew over 180 delegates of 17 nationalities from a variety of universities, museums, and research institutions in the UK, Europe, and North America. As this conference marked the 25th anniversary of TRAC, the volume opens with a preface commemorating the last 25 years with an eye toward the future direction of both conference and community. The proceedings begin with Dr Andrew Gardner’s keynote paper on the topic of ‘Debating Roman Imperialism: Critique, Construct, Repeat? ’. This is followed by an array of papers with topics ranging in geographic scope and period, from small finds in early Roman Britain to bathing practices Late Antique North Africa, and from the investigation of deviant burials to the application of urban scaling theory in Roman contexts. Because of this diversity the volume is not broken into specific sections, however, papers with similar themes are grouped accordingly, allowing the text to flow and be read as a whole. The range of contributing authors is also of note, as papers were submitted by PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and university faculty, all helping to make the 25th anniversary of this series one that continues to emphasise and reflect the aims of TRAC, both as a conference and as a conduit for exploring more theory-driven approaches to the Roman past.

The book is depicting the Jewish Diaspora in the Roman Imperial period

This volume contains reports on excavations undertaken in the lower walled city at Lincoln, which lies on sloping ground on the northern scarp of the Witham gap, and its adjacent suburbs between 1972 and 1987, and forms a companion volume to LAS volumes 2 and 3 which cover other parts of the historic city. The earliest features encountered were discovered both near to the line of Ermine Street and towards Broadgate. Remains of timber storage buildings were found, probably associated with the Roman legionary occupation in the later 1st century AD. The earliest occupation of the hillside after the foundation of the colonia towards the end of the century consisted mainly of commercial premises, modest residences, and storage buildings. It seems likely that the boundary of the lower enclosure was designated before it was fortified in the later 2nd century with the street pattern belonging to the earlier part of the century. Larger aristocratic residences came to dominate the hillside with public facilities fronting on to the line of the zig-zagging main route. In the 4th century, the fortifications were enlarged and two new gates inserted. Examples of so-called ‘Dark Earth’ deposits were here dated to the very latest phases of Roman occupation.Elements of some Roman structures survived to be reused in subsequent centuries. There are hints of one focus in the Middle Saxon period, in the area of St Peter’s church, but occupation of an urban nature did not recommence until the late 9th century with the first phases of Anglo-Scandinavian occupation recorded here. Sequences of increasingly intensive occupation from the 10th century were identified, with plentiful evidence for industrial activity, including pottery, metalworking and other, crafts, as well as parish churches. Markets were established in the 11th century and stone began to replace timber for residential structures from the mid-12th century with clear evidence of the quality of some of the houses. With the decline in the city’s fortunes from the late 13th century, the fringe sites became depopulated and there was much rebuilding elsewhere, including some fine new houses. There was a further revival in the later post-medieval period, but much of the earlier fabric, and surviving stretches of Roman city wall, were swept away in the 19th century.

Volume II describes the excavation and finds from the Special Deposits at Kavos at the sanctuary on Keros lying opposite the settlement on the islet of Dhaskalio (described in Volume I). The finds of marble from the Special Deposit South are described in Volume III, and the pottery in Volume V. The sanctuary at Kavos, dating from c. 2700 BC to 2400 BC has yielded the richest ritual deposits of the early bronze age Cyclades. The finds are presented here in their excavation contexts, and the significance of the Special Deposit South as a ritual deposit is examined in the context of Aegean prehistory.

Excavations in the upper Walbrook valley, in a marginal area in the north-west of the Roman city, recovered over 70kg of broken vessel glass and production waste from a nearby workshop, giving new insights into the workings of the glass industry and its craftsmen. The area was developed in the early 2nd century AD, with evidence of domestic buildings and property boundaries. Two later buildings constructed in the mid 2nd century AD may have been associated with the glass-working industry. The disposal of a huge amount of glass-working waste in the later 2nd century signals the demise of the workshop, with the area reverting to open land by the 3rd century AD.The comprehensive nature of the glass-working waste has made it possible to study the various processes – from the preparation of the raw materials in the form of cullet, broken vessel and window glass, to the blowing and finishing of the vessel. All the glass originated ultimately in the eastern Mediterranean, some of it arriving as raw glass chunks, which was supplemented by cullet collected locally for recycling. A review of the current evidence for glass working in London also examines the implications for the organisation of the industry.