In writing my first Editorial for Britannia, I am acutely aware of the challenge of living up to the achievements of my immediate predecessor in the role and, indeed, of all of the distinguished archaeologists who have curated this journal from its founding in 1970. Since taking over from Will Bowden at the beginning of this year, it has been an enjoyable journey to get to grips with the hidden levers of the publication, and while there is much more for me to learn, I hope that the present volume has something of interest for all of our diverse readership, thanks to the incredible range of authors who have been submitting their work to the journal.
We have a cross-section through all periods and many key themes in the archaeology of Roman Britain, from questions about early forts and technological innovations, through diverse aspects of ritual and religion, literacy and healthcare, measurement systems, conflict, and landscape transformation. One particularly strong theme emerging from several papers is the connectivity of Roman Britain within the Roman world, and the many different forms this could take. The paper which opens the volume, deriving from early stages of the AHRC-funded Roman Britannia: Mobility and Society project, gives a broad overview of the evidence for this as manifest in population movements of various types and scales, and then we have very specific illustrations of this from material as diverse as the extraordinary Berlanga Cup, which gives us our cover image, and a kohl bottle from York. The purse assemblage from Oudenburg also relates to an interesting late Roman practice, from one of the shore forts most closely connected to the south-eastern frontier of Roman Britain. Alongside these geographical encounters that the Roman Empire encouraged, one way or another, we also have evidence of some of the temporal encounters that people from Roman Britain made with the distant past, in the shape of an ichthyosaur fossil from Colchester. For once, the question which is the bane of archaeologists everywhere — ‘have you found any fossils?’ — would not be out of place.
I am enormously grateful to all of the authors for their contributions, and to the referees who have reviewed each paper, the compilers of the sections of ‘Roman Britain in 20XX’, all of the book reviewers, and to the Editorial Committee, especially Will Bowden, Hella Eckardt and Nick Hodgson, for making the transition into the role of Editor very smooth. The journal could not be produced without the hard work of Anne Chippindale, Fiona Haarer, and Jamie McIntyre and colleagues at C.U.P. I am very much looking forward to continuing this role into the future.
Obituaries
The last year has sadly seen the loss of a number of important figures who have contributed to Roman archaeology in the UK.
Roy Friendship-Taylor was best-known for running the long-term excavations at Piddington Roman villa, for the Upper Nene Archaeology Society, and was an active figure in numerous national archaeological institutions, including the Roman Finds Group and the Study Group for Roman Pottery.
Roger Ling, Emeritus Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Manchester, was a leading international figure in the scholarship of Roman art and architecture, and worked extensively both on Pompeii and Roman Italy, and on the mosaics of Roman Britain.
Andrew Poulter, Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham, was a specialist in the archaeology of late antiquity, particularly in the Balkans, where his excavations at sites such as Nicopolis and Dichin produced not only highly significant results, but also trained many students who would go on to work on other parts of the Roman world.
David Thomas, Emeritus Professor at Durham University, was a distinguished scholar of palaeography and papyrology, and a Fellow of the British Academy, who published extensively on Hellenistic and Roman Egypt as well as on the Vindolanda writing tablets, as co-author with Alan Bowman.
