A recent study by Scott (1991) on the conjunction of infant burial and agricultural processes, and Pearce's work (2001) on the association of infants with boundaries and ditches during the Romano-British period, have highlighted possible symbolic behaviours relating to newborn infants. This paper considers another strand of infant burial practice -the association of neonates with domestic structures and specifi c features within them, including hearths, doorways and hypocausts. Through examination of the placement of the infant within its immediate environment and the material culture represented with this type of burial, possible symbolic concepts embodied in the presence of the infant can be bett er understood.

Despite an increasing interest in social identity, the topic of gender identity remains under-theorized within Romano-British archaeology: gender categories are often assumed to be fixed and unchanging within the archaeological literature on the province. However, the concept of gender is complex and is impacted on by other aspects of social identity such as age, status, and ethnicity. This chapter provides an overview of the development of gender as a subject in the archaeological record of Roman Britain and explores the problems and potential of how gender is approached in present scholarship through four key areas: burial evidence, dress and adornment, economic activity, and family roles.

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as thin-section petrography; all observations appear to have been made from hand-specimens using little more than a hand lens. Nevertheless, the author is clearly in his element, his wealth of experience as a commercial pottery specialist evident in his presentation of detailed and thorough accounts of the industries being described. The work is at its most thought provoking in its use of scale and the system used to structure the industrial groupings. The grog-tempered ware tradition at the highest level covers much of southeastern England, below which are the Industrial Groups, which are themselves each made up of a number of groups proposedand in some cases demonstratedto be the products of discrete producers using their own fabrics and forms. This provides a complete picture of the tradition from the smallest perceptible scale right up to the level of a super-regional community of practice, and contributes greatly to the potential future utility of the work. The two discussion chapters deal respectively with the nature and development of the late Roman grog-tempered ware tradition (ch. 6), and the end of Roman pottery production in Britain (ch. 7). Much is covered in these 18 pages. Ch. 6.1 considers the scale of industry in the various regions, concluding that the majority of production was undertaken at household level, with some evidence for workshop-level production and possible itinerance in western Kent. Following this (ch. 6.2) is a discussion of the reasons for a revival of what is essentially Iron Age technology in the late Roman period. This is structured around three chronological phases, beginning with the period to A.D. 270. Attention is focused on the survival of Iron Age potting in East Sussex and the effective expansion of the East Sussex tradition into other areas owing to economic upheaval in the third and fourth centuries. These economic themes carry over into ch. 7, which covers the fortunes of pottery industries in general during the fourth and fifth centuries. This is done on a region-by-region basis that is largely divorced from the localised structure used to discuss the grog-tempered ware industries. Intriguingly, little mention is made of the pink grog-tempered wares of the southern Midlands, which one would have thought were worth, at the very least, a passing mention in a work on this subject. To conclude: despite its inelegant title and some issues with editing and presentation, this volume is a well-executed study of a very interesting late Roman industry and an update that has been a long time coming. It is important to remember that a work such as this is not the end-point for research into a particular kind of artefact, but is now best used as a handbook for further research into late Roman industry and technology. Pottery specialists will welcome it for its emphasis on characterisation and for its synthetic value, but it will also be of broader interest to those concerned with the late Roman period in general and, in particular, with the complex interactions surrounding the d...

Age is more than just a fundamental part of an individual’s personal identity; it is one of the basic building blocks upon which societies are organized. A life-course approach allows us to investigate how age was utilized as an organizational category by identifying the key age stages that were considered socially important and when transitional points were reached that represent a new life phase. This chapter addresses how age identity, as represented in the burial record, can be identified in Roman Britain; it discusses how the evidence for the four visible age stages can be understood and explores the multiplicity of life courses that existed within different regional contexts of the province.