A collection of 19 papers from a conference held at Knutston Hall in December 1992. Papers include: Roman small towns and medieval small towns; the plan of Romano-British Baldock, Hertfordshire and new thoughts on town defences in the western territory of the Catuvellauni.

Part of the Penguin History of Britain series, An Imperial Possession is the first major narrative history of Roman Britain for a generation. David Mattingly draws on a wealth of new findings and knowledge to cut through the myths and misunderstandings that so commonly surround our beliefs about this period. From the rebellious chiefs and druids who led native British resistance, to the experiences of the Roman military leaders in this remote, dangerous outpost of Europe, this book explores the reality of life in occupied Britain within the context of the shifting fortunes of the Roman Empire.

The focus of this book is to draw together still scattered data to chart and interpret the changing nature of life in towns from the late Roman period through to the mid-Anglo-Saxon period. Did towns fail? Were these ruinous sites really neglected by early Anglo-Saxon settlers and leaders?

The varied character of Britain's countryside and towns provides communities with a strong sense of local identity. One of the most significant features of the southern British landscape is the way that its character differs from region to region, with compact villages in the Midlands contrasting with the sprawling hamlets of East Anglia and isolated farmsteads of Devon. Even more remarkable is the very 'English' feel of the landscape in southern Pembrokeshire, in the far south west of Wales. Hoskins described the English landscape as 'the richest historical record we possess', and in this book Stephen Rippon explores the origins of regional variations in landscape character, arguing that while some landscapes date back to the centuries either side of the Norman Conquest, other areas across southern Britain underwent a profound change around the 8th century AD.

From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.

When we think of Roman Britain we tend to think of a land of togas and richly decorated palaces with Britons happily going about their much improved daily business under the benign gaze of Rome. This image is to a great extent a fiction. In fact, Britons were some of the least enthusiastic members of the Roman Empire. A few adopted roman ways to curry favour with the invaders. A lot never adopted a Roman lifestyle at all and remained unimpressed and riven by deep-seated tribal division. It wasn't until the late third/early fourth century that a small minority of landowners grew fat on the benefits of trade and enjoyed the kind of lifestyle we have been taught to associate with period. Britannia was a far-away province which, whilst useful for some major economic reserves, fast became a costly and troublesome concern for Rome, much like Iraq for the British government today. Huge efforts by the state to control the hearts and minds of the Britons were met with at worst hostile resistance and rebellion, and at best by steadfast indifference. The end of the Roman Empire largely came as 'business as usual' for the vast majority of Britons as they simply hadn't adopted the Roman way of life in the first place.

The Journal of Roman Pottery Studies continues to present a range of important new research in the field by both established and early career scholars. Volume XVIII has a strong theme on pottery production with papers on kiln sites, mortaria and late Roman pottery production in East Anglia and at a small town in Belgium. A major new third century assemblage from civitas Cananefatium in South Holland is presented. The second part of an important gazetteer of less common samian ware fabrics and types in northern and western Britain covers fabrics from Central and East Gaul

This study investigates the development of urbanism in the north-western provinces of the Roman empire. Key themes include continuity and discontinuity between pre-Roman and Roman ‘urban’ systems, relationships between juridical statuses and levels of monumentality, levels of connectivity and economic integration, and regional urban hierarchies.

This important and significant volume examines, for the first time, the ordinary people of Roman Britain. This overlooked group – the farmers, shopkeepers, labourers and others – fed the country, made the clothes, mined the ores, built the villas and towns and got their hands dirty in the fields and at the potter’s wheel. The book aims to rebalance our view of Roman Britain from its current preoccupation with – archaeologically visible – elite social classes and the institutions of power, towards a recognition that the ordinary person mattered. It looks at how people earned a living, family size and structure, social behaviour, customs and taboos and the impact of the presence of non-locals and foreigners, using archaeology, texts and ethnography. It also explores how the natural forces which underlay the use of agricultural land and regional variation in agricultural practice impacted upon the size, health and nutrition of the population. The Romano-British Peasant leads the way towards a greater understanding of ordinary men and women and their role in the history and landscape of Roman Britain. This title has been nominated for the 2014 Current Archaeology Best Book Award.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. Roman Britain is a critical area of research within the provinces of the Roman empire. Within the last 15-20 years, the study of Roman Britain has been transformed through an enormous amount of new and interesting work which is not reflected in the main stream literature.