During July and August 1990 several finds of Roman metalwork and other material were reported to the Milton Keynes Archaeology Unit by metal-detector-users searching on the line of the Fenny Stratford bypass, which was at that time being constructed to the south of Milton Keynes, close to the boundary of the scheduled area covering the site of the small Roman town of Magiovinium. Of particular note among these discoveries was the finding of three coarse-ware vessels containing quantities of copper-alloy coin blanks and pellets, and a pair of possible iron coin dies (PL. IA), reported to the Unit by the finder. After preliminary recording and some statistical analysis by Bob Zeepvat, samples of the coin blanks and pellets were chemically analysed by Matthew Ponting at the Institute of Archaeology, London, while conservation and cleaning of the dies, followed by chemical and physical tests, were undertaken by the Conservation and Scientific Research departments at the British Museum. This work was carried out by Janet Lang and Mike Cowell. The pottery was examined and reported on by Pauline Marney. The hoard remains the property of the landowners, Buckinghamshire County Council, and the initial stages of the watching-brief at Galley Lane were carried out by the Milton Keynes Unit on behalf of the Buckinghamshire County Museum.
In a work that contains a useful bibliography it is perhaps disconcerting to find a degree of selectivity applied in the citation of reference. While most references (quite rightly) refer to the NMR or Cambridge collections, at times, as cited in the case of Brackenrigg, more informative cover existed in other archives and this would have improved the final presentation. While such archives remain unpublished it is perhaps more questionable to find that published views of a site have on occasion not been cited e.g. Cawfields, Greenlee Lough in Hadrian's Wall from the Air (1976), 22, although the recognition of the camp at Chesters Pike is duly credited (op. cit, 23). On the other hand, there is much adventitious information about the context of sites that have previously not appeared fully in plan, e.g. on the Hereford border, the camps and forts at Wall, Water Eaton, Greenforge and the northern periphery of Wroxeter. On the northern frontier the partial incorporation of the Markham barrow cemetery (fig. 93, left) shows that there are many non-military features still to analyse in the environs of Haltwhistle Common. Finally, what of the overall historical perspective, the conjunction of size and sequential location that makes the analysis of camps in Scotland so intriguing and inevitable an exercise? These possibilities are deliberately eschewed, as the Foreword states that there is to be no attempt 'to place the camps in their historical setting nor in their military context in relation to the conquest or subjugation. .. of Britannia' (ix), an approach surely undermined by the stress on the importance of 'analytical field archaeology' on the same page. It is difficult not to agree some historical connection between the line of camps represented by Uffington, Perry Farm, Whittington, Rhyn Park (which at over 40 acres cannot be described as a vexillation fortress (166)), and then to Penrhos near Corwen. The aestiva of legionary size at Rhyn Park lies in England yet is omitted, although interestingly it revealed extensive internal and external cooking-ovens. What are we to say in summing up? The book under review is in a sense a victim of its own shackles, present-day county boundaries which, in particular, sunder Cumbria from Northumberland into separate compartments rather than an overall view of the Wall camps. Above all it would have benefited from key comparanda both between England and Wales, and more particularly with the many examples in Scotland. Such a work would have been a database for Roman Britain and essential reading; instead this finely illustrated but expensive volume sits within the straightjacket of its modern administrative conception. At some time in the future further developments in publication policy may see a chosen class of site benefit from the cooperation of all three Commissions.
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