The Middle Bronze Age settlement complex of Black Patch, East Sussex, originally considered to represent the remains of a single phase 'nucleated village', is here reconsidered as representing the remains. of two chronologically distinct settlement units. The dangers inherent in overlooking sequence and assuming contemporaneity for all archaeological features revealed within the course of a single excavation, are outlined.

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A well-furnished, Late Iron Age Durotrigian burial was found in 2010 by a metal-detectorist at Langton Herring in Dorset. This report examines all aspects of the discovery, paying particular attention to the skeletal remains, a female aged 19-24, providing the most complete, osteobiographical study of an individual buried with a mirror assemblage from the European Iron Age. A combination of artefacts and radiocarbon dating gives a range for the burial of c. AD 25cal AD 53. The grave goods themselves are of exceptional interest, representing an accumulation of artefacts acquired from diverse sources, deposited at a time of major cultural and societal change in southern Britain. The results of a geophysical survey are also presented, together with a discussion of additional wellfurnished burials in the Durotrigian tribal tradition, which place the burial deposit within a wider social and landscape framework.

The lifesize bronze head of a male ( fig. 1) in the Weston Gallery of the British Museum is one of the most iconic artefacts of Roman Britain. Widely interpreted as a portrait of the emperor Claudius forcibly removed from a statue in or near the temple of Claudius at Colchester by British insurgents during the Boudiccan Revolt of A.D. 60/61, it has never been reported upon in detail, 1 and there has recently been some dispute as to both its identity and its significance. 2 In an attempt to produce an accurate record of the head whilst simultaneously addressing issues surrounding its identity, the nature of its decapitation and subsequent disposal, the artefact was subjected to a three-dimensional laser scan, the results of which are discussed here.

Two damaged, weathered marble portraits, both discovered in the 1780s at opposite ends of Roman Britain, one at Bosham in West Sussex, the other at Hawkshaw in Peeblesshire, are here re-examined and identified as portraits of the emperor Trajan. The Bosham head is interpreted as a post-mortem image of the deified Trajan set up at the margins of Chichester Harbour, probably during the visit to Britain by the emperor Hadrian in the early a.d. 120s. The Hawkshaw portrait of Trajan appears to have been refashioned from a likeness of Domitian and may originally have been part of a monument created to celebrate and commemorate the total conquest of Britain, in the early a.d. 80s, which was decapitated and buried during a period of unrest on the northern frontier.