No abstract

Recent theoretical debate combined with a greater attention to the nature of individual deposits in the archaeological record has focused on the nature of ritual behaviour, its material correlates and its significance as social practice. In southern Britain a particular focus for this debate has been presented by the study of ‘special deposits’ and the structured (ritual) deposition of archaeological deposits from the Iron Age. Cunliffe's review and interpretation of an extensive range of evidence from the hillfort of Danebury, Hampshire, can be set in the context of Hill's penetrating regional study of ritual in the Iron Age of Wessex. For the former, ‘special deposits’ or ‘structured deposition’ have been seen as the evidence of propitiatory rites, particularly to ensure fertility; for the latter, they are seen as a defining reflection of the ‘mediation, transformation and classification of people, animals, spaces and things’.

20 40 60 80 100 % SEDBBI early RB late RB all period site date-range FIG. I. Machine-contoured map of the distribution of SEDBB i in SouthWest Britain (quantitative data from Appendix I; quantitative information from Appendix II). (a) Summary of character of quantified sites, (b) Sample size (sherd number), (c) Percentage of SEDBB I in samples, (d) Summary of approximate date-range of sites.

The large tracts of estuarine alluvium which border the Severn Estuary (FIG. I) and inner Bristol Channel have never been the subject of systematic archaeological enquiry. Now largely reclaimed and known as levels, the greatest of these tracts are the Somerset Levels, on the English side, and the Wentlooge and Caldicot levels between Cardiff and R. Wye on the Welsh shore. Smaller areas of reclaimed wetland range upriver as far as Gloucester. The manner and extent to which these wetlands entered into the economy particularly in the Roman period has hitherto been assessed only in the form of speculations or inferences from circumstantial evidence, in contrast to the firmness of our understanding, based on buildings as well as artefacts, concerning military activities, settlement, and daily life on the surrounding slopes and hills beyond tidal influence.

Mosaics represent one of the best known art forms in the Roman world. Their geometric patterns and designs, their figurative images, and their development through time have been extensively studied, and corpora have been assembled for certain provinces of the Empire. In Britain, the study of the surviving mosaics has led to the identification of certain late Roman ‘schools’ (stylistic groupings) of mosaics on the basis of shared stylistic attributes. Now it will be possible to place this work in a fuller context as the long-awaited corpus of all Roman mosaics known from Britain begins to appear. However, whereas the late mosaics undoubtedly show considerable regional distinctness, the position of the earliest work that pioneered the form in Britain is far less clear, perhaps because mosaics of the first and early second century A.D. are fewer and have excited much less interest.