The discovery of London’s amphitheatre in the 1980s ranks, along with the identification of a circus at Colchester in 2004, as the most exciting recent event in the study of entertainment buildings in Roman Britain. The breakthrough came with the emergence of the eastern entrance and the adjacent parts of the cavea and arena during building operations in Guildhall Yard in 1987–8. The site was fully examined in the 1990s, and the resulting information married with the evidence of earlier excavations in Gresham Street that had revealed – without their significance being realized – parts of the south-eastern margins of the building. Subsequently, in 1999, test pits were sunk in an area thought to have contained a southern entrance.

The results of this work are now reported in an exemplary monograph, the first of a pair covering respectively the Roman and post-Roman periods. The nucleus of the volume is the general archaeological analysis (Part 2), which traces the site’s development, phase by phase, from its pre-Roman topography to the abandonment and progressive dilapidation of the amphitheatre from the fourth century onwards. The picture that emerges – typical for most British amphitheatres but somewhat at variance with Tony Wilmott’s recent re-evaluation of the site at Chester – is of a timber-framed structure put up soon after ad 70 and modified in the 90s, followed by a major reconstruction with masonry foundations (but still apparently with a timber superstructure) in the 120s. Further repairs and alterations took place in the late second and third centuries. The evidence from which the sequence is deduced is complicated, but the authors’ exposition is admirably lucid and thorough. Copious illustrations, both coloured and half-tone, clarify the text. The only matter with which the reviewer would quibble – apart from the somewhat irritating use of the term ‘truncated’ to describe not just the cutting off of extremities but also the shaving of horizontal layers – is the failure of the otherwise excellent plans to indicate many of the numbers on which the text-descriptions of features are based.

There follows a series of discussions on thematic aspects, beginning with the reconstruction of the amphitheatre (in its timber and masonry forms) and of its natural and urban environment across the centuries. The evidence for its status and ownership are reviewed, as well as finds from Roman London that testify to an interest in the amphitheatre sports. Further discussions focus on an assemblage of fragments of seventeen samian vessels decorated with arena scenes – an assemblage unparalleled in other British amphitheatre excavations – and on a dump of cullet found outside the eastern entrance. This last discovery, given the exceptionally large amount of material and its diversity, is of major importance, and the essay on it demonstrates the potential value of recycled glass deposits for our understanding of the glassworking industry and its social background. Since fusible materials such as glass and bronze were extensively recycled, we can never think of finds of these materials from normal archaeological contexts as being representative of the full range of products in use at any given time.

Also of importance is the essay by Damian Goodburn on the timber from the amphitheatre, some of which is so well preserved as to retain the marks of the axes and saws used to shape it; these, together with the remains of joints, provide valuable insights into wood-preparation and carpentry techniques.

The area of the amphitheatre to have been examined is comparatively restricted, but the authors are to be congratulated on the amount of information that they have extracted. The dimensions of the arena in the masonry building are estimated on the basis of projections from known structural elements as 56.7m × 45.5m, comparable with Chester (57.9m × 48.7m) and Caerleon (56.08m × 41.6m) but bigger than Silchester (45.5m × 39.2m). The seating capacity is calculated, depending on the width of the cavea, as between 7,000 and 10,500. All the discussions on the form and status of the monument display commendable caution. Inter alia the authors debate the possibility of military, as opposed to civic or euergetistic, involvement in the amphitheatre’s construction and maintenance, but wisely conclude that the evidence is too flimsy to allow a decision one way or the other. On the reasons for the choice of location, they are rightly dubious about theories based on ‘continued differences in status between the districts to the east and west of the Walbrook or an attempt to develop public amenities as separate foci for the urban area’ and opt for ‘the pragmatic selection of available, unused land for building’. Here, however, one can add the further consideration that amphitheatres were often placed in peripheral areas of Roman settlements for reasons of crowd and traffic control.

One question to which they may not have the answer is why the amphitheatre, at odds with the street system, is oriented almost exactly due east–west. Their proposed explanation is that it results from ‘an apparent Roman preference for positioning an amphitheatre’s tribunalia … at the north or south compass points of the arena’ (p 98; cf 125). But this is not an explanation, it is simply an inevitable consequence (given that tribunalia were usually on the short axis anyway) of the orientation. A more plausible reason for the east–west layout was a desire to take maximum advantage of daylight hours.

The volume concludes with a selection of specialist appendices, covering a wide range of categories of objects and scientific analyses. But perhaps the most striking contribution is the account of the daunting technical and logistical problems that had to be overcome to preserve and exhibit the excavated remains in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery (pp 153–9). The historical importance of the amphitheatre justified these operations, but one cannot help but wonder what the anonymous builders of the original monument might have thought of it all. They would surely have been amazed that, nearly two millennia after their time, the much-damaged foundations of one entrance of what was essentially a utilitarian structure should have been accorded such lavish, loving and expensive attention.