These two volumes offer contrasting approaches to the reporting of late Iron Age and Roman rural settlement at sites less than 20 km apart. The differences start with ones of scale, the Milton Keynes site comprising just over 2 ha of excavation in three fairly closely adjacent areas, while at Biddenham Loop the excavated areas covered 18 ha which, in combination with the evidence from aerial photographs, geophysical survey, fieldwalking and extensive evaluation trenching, fully justify the reference to landscape in the volume title. This latter is a multi-period report, the late Iron Age and Roman components being discussed in the synthesis on pp. 45–68 and described (with their attendant finds) on pp. 195–287.

The evidence of the non-intrusive work is used to complement that from the excavations to build up a picture of a developing pattern of small farmsteads within the area defined by the eponymous loop of the river Great Ouse. There were as many as seven discrete farmsteads in the full Roman period (243, but only six on p. 68), from 350–800 m apart, although only two were examined by excavation. All but one of them were thought to succeed roughly comparable units of late Iron Age to early Roman date, but the latter were typically within single enclosures of irregular form; the middle Roman sites were distinguished from them in comprising ‘groups of enclosures often attached to a trackway’ (243). Such evidence as there is suggests that activity in the fourth century was on a very reduced scale, and while it is not certain that this applies to the unexcavated as well as the excavated farmsteads, it seems very likely. The farmsteads appear to have been consistently of relatively low status; structural evidence was scarce and, where present, mainly related to roundhouses. Small quantities of tile are likely to have been recycled from elsewhere for use in ovens and comparable structures (a point made more clearly for Monkston, p. 55).

The work at Monkston Park also followed evaluation of a larger area, but here there is less sense that the wider picture was really considered. The use of ‘Landscape’ and ‘Becoming Roman’ in the report title seems more like a nod to current trends than a real indication of content. In contrast to Biddenham, roughly rectangular enclosures formed part of this landscape from the late Iron Age and were more widespread in the early Roman period, here dated c. a.d. 50–150, although some elements of these field-systems are barely comprehensible (e.g. 32–3). Well-defined trackways, running approximately parallel to the river Ouzel, appear as an important characteristic of the middle Roman period, as at Biddenham. Again the evidence for buildings is elusive. Agricultural features include ditched enclosures interpreted as being for stock, and two ‘corn driers’, of which only one is illustrated. A metalled surface within the same enclosure as these structures is described as a threshing-floor without further justification — for while the associated finds included quern fragments ‘from the threshing floor area’ they also included scrap and corroded iron ‘possibly related to the function of the surface’ (45). A nearby cobbled surface was probably associated with metalworking. Such evidence was effectively absent at Biddenham, instead ‘industry’ there was represented by two small pottery kilns of first-century date.

The overall occupation sequence may have lasted longer at Monkston than at Biddenham, perhaps continuing to the end of the fourth century. Despite such differences, there are significant points of similarity between the two sites beyond those already mentioned. In both cases, small cremation cemeteries were an element of the late Iron Age–early Roman landscape. The presentation of the Monkston cemetery evidence, some 18 burials, is markedly superior to that of the other aspects of the site; the groups are well-catalogued and illustrated and the drawings of graves and grave goods are combined, whereas they are, less helpfully, separated in the Biddenham volume. Striking individual finds include a single example of a circular iron ?knife blade from both Biddenham and Monkston. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the scale of the work there, small discrete burial groups, including occasional early Roman inhumations, were also encountered at Biddenham, as well as a more compact cemetery of some 16 graves associated with one of the farmsteads. Another common feature was the presence of a ‘shrine’, in the form of a small square-ish structure with no other obvious interpretation. At Biddenham this was an isolated post-built structure with a surrounding gully assigned to the late Iron Age to early Roman phase. The Monkston structure, with a poorly preserved stone sill wall, was closely adjacent to other features of the middle Roman period but had associated deposits indicating use up to the end of the Roman period. Its interpretation as a shrine is appropriately tentative.

These are both highly synthesised reports, but in Becoming Roman the process is extreme. The presentation of the data is much more summary than for Biddenham, itself hardly an indulgent text. Becoming Roman has no feature sections and interventions in excavated features are not located on the plans; feature dimensions are not given nor are fills even mentioned, let alone described. A characteristic of both reports is that successive phase plans are presented with no reference to earlier and later phases, while there are no overall feature plans. The Biddenham plans do, however, have grid co-ordinates, whereas this information is conspicuously absent from all the Monkston drawings. Finds reporting is also compressed; ‘small finds’ are treated selectively in both volumes, and illustration of pottery, with the exception of the grave-related material in both cases, consists solely of 28 pieces in the Biddenham report, including the material from the two pottery kilns. The specialist appendices on building material and pottery in the Monkston report do not even give the quantities of the material in question. The pottery report uses three pages, mostly listing fabrics and vessel forms with concordances (but without quantification), and then ends, with dreadful irony, immediately after listing the quantification methods used. This may represent an editorial howler rather than the intention of the specialist, but if so it is only one, albeit the most obvious, of many inadequacies. In sum, both these volumes contribute to our understanding of the rural settlement of a region which is increasingly well-served by publication but, with the notable exception of the reporting of the Monkston cemetery, the Biddenham volume presents a more informative and considered view of the landscape which its authors have set out to study.