JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Man.

We were always greatly helped by Jack Ward of March and by the late W. L. Hanchant who was Curator of Wisbech Museum and a tireless scholar of local history; while to the present Curator of Wisbech Museum, Rosalinda Hardiman, special thanks are due for providing both information and objects for study and for sorting out the records. I am also especially indebted to the Fenland Field Officer, David Hall, who has been more than generous in making available information and maps of the results of his outstanding work of ground-survey; and I would like to pay special tribute to Catherine Johns who, apart from writing a significant proportion of this paper, has aided its preparation in every possible way. My thanks are also due to the British Museum for providing the facilities to produce this paper and to John Wilkes for expert editorial guidance. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the special debt to my father, formerly Headmaster of March Grammar School, and to my mother, who suffered but still encouraged the archaeological work described in this paper.

Batavians and the Roman Conquest of Britain* By M. W. C. HASSALL T ACITUS'S account of the Claudian invasion of Britain and the campaigns that followed it down to the year 47 is unfortunately lost, 1 and historians have to be content with Dio, who gives the only consecutive account, 2 supplemented by scattered references in other sources. This short note is an attempt to extract a few more fragments of information from these literary sources and in particular it concerns the part played by Rome's Batavian auxiliaries. The first definite evidence we have that Batavians were stationed in Britain comes from Tacitus who, in describing the preparations made by Nero for an expedition against the Albani of the Caucasus, says that units were withdrawn from several provinces including Britain, and from his later narrative it is clear that these included legion XIV and eight cohorts of Batavians who were attached to it.3 The date is 67. However, there is strong reason to suppose that there were Batavians serving in Britain before this date, indeed from the invasion of 43 onwards. This is an inference derived from the known methods of fighting employed by the Batavians, and the descriptions of auxiliaries in action in Britain given by Tacitus and Dio. It was the proud boast and peculiar skill of the Batavians, that they could swim rivers fully armed, the cavalry still retaining control over their horses. This skill they had exhibited in the campaign of Germanicus against Arminius in attempting to cross the Ems4 and were later to show in crossing the Po during the civil wars of 69.5 Batavian cavalry could cross great rivers like the Rhine 6 and Danube7 under arms and without breaking ranks. Accordingly the KEATO 1 who during the invasion of 43 crossed the Medway and later the Thames in the face of strong enemy opposition to form a bridge-head for the army of Aulus Plautius 8 are usually identified with Batavians. The term KEATOI is not a * I would like to thank a number of colleagues and friends for reading this note in typescript and making valuable suggestions. 1 The initial stage of the conquest probably came at the end of Annals, ix, subsequent events down to 47 in the first half of Annals, xi.

Plots 3 and 5 respectively) were excavated immediately west and east (FIG. 4) of the possible bath-house site, 8 and immediately south of the known fortlet. 9 The earliest feature was an Iron-Age type four-post structure of side 25 m on Plot 3. On Plot 5 (FIG. 5) the earliest feature was a pair of east-west military ditches which may be part of an auxiliary fort of Flavian date. Outside these was a north-south cobbled road, much disturbed, a slate-lined cistern (perhaps associated with the baths), an oven and parts of two stake-built structures. Recent activity had destroyed the relationship of the ditches to other features. The fort was apparently replaced by the fortlet (on a new alignment) in the late Trajanic period. A timber range with four or more rooms was erected, having wall-trenches carrying upright stakes. Two furnaces or smithinghearths and the large stone-lined pit were associated. The pit was 2 m deep with an arched inlet in the unlined end and a partially-preserved timber floor. It was used until c. 110-30. The building is thought to have been a fabrica and the pit used for tanning. The area was then levelled, the fort ditches finally filled with baths debris, and a stone structure c. 105 by 5 m built on the south side of the fabrica. A roughlymade road ran from east to west to the north of this structure; the road was also found in Plot 3, where a post-and sleeper-built structure c. 4 5 by 75 m lay on its south side. Occupation ceased in the early Hadrianic period. 10 (2) Llanfor (SH 938361): aerial reconnaissance 11 has revealed a fort near the confluence of the Dee and the Tryweryn and near the east end of Bala Lake, on a river terrace 2-3 m above the flood-plain. The rampart is visible as a low mound, now spread to c. 13 m wide. The area is c. 3 3 ha (just over 8 acres) over the ramparts. Parch-marks show three ditches and internal timber buildings including a granary and barrack-block. 12 (3) Pennal fort (SH 705001): aerial observation revealed a road running (probably from the south gate) towards a presumed ford across the river Dovey near Llugwy (712996). 13 Another road left the north gate, north-westwards towards Pennal village. The porta principalis dextra thus lies directly beneath the modern farm building and the principia faced west. The parch-marks indicated this to be of stone, but other internal buildings of timber. Northwest of the west gate was seen the bath-house, apparently of reihentyp plan. 14 MONTGOMERYSHIRE [POWYS] Forden Gaer (SO 208989): survey and excavation 15 150 m south of the fort, on the north bank of the Severn, has produced evidence of second-and third-century occupation, including a building with stone-footed walls, roofing tiles of local shale and a clay floor in which was a pit 1 5 m deep and 1 m in diameter. Iron slag and dross was noted in the latest levels and first-century pottery and other foundations to the west. The road south from the fort was not located. 8 Britannia vi (1975), 222 n. 3, now built over. 9 V. E. Nash-Williams, The Roman frontier in Wales...

T HE recognition by R. E. M. Wheeler in 1920 that the massive Norman keep at Colchester encapsulated the podium of the Temple of Claudius stimulated Dr P. G. Laver, his collaborator in an earlier study of the colonia, 1 to excavate in and around the keep during the 1920's and 30's. Some of the results were published by the late Rex Hull in Roman Colchester (1958). At the time of Hulj's death in 1976, the writer was preparing the drawings to accompany a paper 2 which included a summary report by Hull on the excavations undertaken within and south of the keep by Laver, assisted by E. J. Rudsdale, in 1931-3. Subsequently much additional information about these excavations came to light in Colchester Museum. This raised a number of important questions, which led in 1977 to one of Laver's trenches in the sub-crypt being reopened and extended, and the cutting of a trench in front of the keep. Mrs B. R. K. Niblett (nee Dunnett) also made available the results of her excavations on the west side of the Temple precinct in 1964 and 1969. The evidence from these sources relevant to the history of the site in the Roman period is presented here; and in conjunction with previously published material has been used as the basis of a re-appraisal of its development, summarized in TABLE I. A similar study of the post-Roman history of the site has recently appeared. 3 Much of the discussion is necessarily speculative, being intended primarily to advance hypotheses which may be tested in future excavations and by further analysis of the surviving structures. *My thanks are due to David Clarke, curator of Colchester and Essex Museum, and his staff, for their assistance in making available the records and finds in their charge, for arranging the excavations in 1977, and for their forebearance over the inconvenience which stemmed from them; to the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, Department of the Environment, for permission to excavate in the Castle Park, which is a scheduled Ancient Monument, and for their willingness to fund those parts of this report which relate to grant-aided rescue excavations; to Justine Bayley of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory and John Evans of the NorthEast London Polytechnic for their work on various aspects of ancient technology which arose from the project, and for their reports included here; to the other contributors of specific studies whose names appear at the head of this paper, and also to Dr R. M. Luff, R. Reece and H. Toller; Dr and Mrs W. J. Rodwell, for their help with the 1977 excavation and their comments on a draft of this paper; to John Callaghan, our draughtsman, then employed under a STEP scheme to assist in the publication of backlog excavations; and last but not least, to Philip Crummy, Director of the Colchester Archaeological Trust, for his assistance in making available his own observations on the temple and castle, and his help in general to one who is a mere interloper in the archaeology of Colchester. 1 'Roman Colchester', JRS ix (1919), 139-69. 2 'Colchester Castle: some unpubl...