This article considers the evidence of newly discovered inscriptions from Antiochia ad Cragum in western Rough Cilicia and proposes two distinct observations: one, the city had an additional civic name different from that which is most commonly known; and two, the emperor Hadrian and Sabina may have visited the city and region during their journey from Egypt to Athens in 131 CE.
The report on the Castle Copse villa covers relatively limited excavations conducted in 1983-86. The site lies in northeast Wiltshire, close to Savernake Forest and to the important late Roman defended town of Cunetio (Mildenhall), for which see now M. Corney, Britannia 28 (1997), 337-50. Four main areas (sectors) were opened but in only two of them was excavation carried down to natural. The report on the stratigraphy and finds occupies pp. 75-358, with exhaustive appendices and lists of contexts on pp. 402-507. In its essentials the excavation revealed first-century A.D. post-Conquest features sealed at the end of the second or early in the third century by a terracing operation. On the gravel and clay platform this created was a succession of timber structures and eventually an aisled building, probably with a second building at right-angles to it. A complete rebuilding of the aisled structure took place late in the third or early in the fourth century and there were various alterations during the fourth and perhaps the early fifth centuries involving first the aggrandisement of the two structures with hypocausts and later mosaics, and later developments reversing this. Of particular interest were fragmentary walls belonging to very late, though not closely dated, buildings within the courtyard of the villa. The report is difficult to use. In particular the format, approximately A5, has meant the reproduction of plans at far too small a scale; this reviewer had to use a magnifying glass to read some of the few labels provided. 'State Plans', showing all features revealed at the end of each season's excavation, should not have appeared in the final published report. Feature numbers which are given scrupulously in the text are missing from both the state plans and phase plans and not even room numbers appear there. It proved a distinct strain to locate individual features and often impossible to check their interrelationship. Only four sections are included and these also lack labelling or numbering. The important gravel/clay terracing level probably appears on one of them, but it is difficult to be sure. The villa excavation was incorporated into a 'project', purportedly to examine the relationship between the villa, the Iron Age hillfort at Chisbury and a Saxon centre at Great Bedwyn. The length of the book is therefore extended by chapters concerned with these other periods. They may in themselves be useful but since no excavation was conducted at the Iron Age and Saxon sites to supplement the existing rather meagre knowledge of them, and since the chronology of the settlement at the site of the villa is only partially understood, these chapters take on the character of'padding'. In summary, although there is much of value in the report, there is also much that is superfluous and too many lists that should have been relegated to an archive. Most unfortunately it does not provide a user-friendly presentation of the evidence on which the conclusions are based. While there had been limited interference on the si...
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