Tackling the question of style, iconography and design in civic stone archways and religious sanctuaries in the North-West provinces over 200 hundred years may at first seem a daunting almost monumental challenge. However, this very well written and thoroughly researched body of work by Stacey McGowen for her D.Phil. at Oxford reads as a refreshing and much needed re-examination of some well-known provincial sculptural groups.

Until now studies of sculpture from the North-West Provinces have either focused on individual monuments at provincial centres (ten alone for example at Roman Bath) or formed a regional corpus for part of an individual province (e.g. CSIR; Espérandieu). What is more the sculpture from these provinces remains under-studied because of its poor state of preservation and/or presumed substandard carving when compared with the Mediterranean provinces, specifically Rome. Indeed in a related area of research a similar fate has befallen the geological characterisation studies of sculptured stone from this region due no doubt to the assumed inferiority of limestone against marble. This is thankfully in the process of being readdressed.

What this research does is redress the balance by raising the profile of sculptured stone from this region. Via a thoroughly researched and considered introduction, a representative group of North-West provincial civic and religious sculptural stone (16 examples) — from Britannia, Gallia Belgica, Germania Inferior, Germania Superior, Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Narbonensis and Alpes Cottiae — was examined and their stylistic, iconographic and design attributes compared as a group. Comparison was also made with sculptured stone from other datasets (funerary monuments) or regions (Eastern and North African provinces).

The dataset in ch. 2 is assessed chronologically beginning with a group of four first-century triumphal arches from the south of the region together with one outlier, the Nero-Flavian Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath. The study then moves into the second century and the profusion of religious sanctuaries in Gaul, such as the hugely impressive Sanctuary of Hercules at Deneuvre, and finally into the late second to early third century with a mixture of arches and temples such as the Monumental Arch and Temple of Mithras from London, both of which form an important component in the forthcoming CSIR volume for London and South-East England. Ultimately the core 16 sites under discussion reflect shifting responses to the use of stone sculpture for civic and sacred commemoration at different times and by different groups of people. The shift from triumphal and victory iconography to a second-century focus on Greco-Roman mythology in the sculpture would suggest a part of the population, ‘the local élite’, were very much in tune with mythological traditions of Rome and Greece at this time. Indeed, this change is very much reflected in ch. 4 and McG.'s iconographic study of the mythological figures from the third-century London Arch, displaying scenes of growth and abundance — Felicitas Temporum — rather than military valour or virtus as in the iconography of the earlier triumphal arches.

It is also in ch. 4 that fresh ideas on design in stone sculpture really begin to take shape, incorporating approaches of modern-day graphic designers such as The Direct Approach, Repetition and The Visual Barrage into how these monuments may have impacted, along with the iconography, upon the viewer and how the local élite would have wanted to impress: the aim was to attract attention. Style (ch. 3) on the other hand does not seem to have been of paramount importance, although the monuments under investigation were high-quality schematic carvings. McG.'s understanding of material type and supply in the North-West provinces is adequate for this multi-provincial study. Inevitably there are going to be gaps, neglecting, for example, to mention the impact of stone supply from the northern French coast (Caen stone; Marquise oolite) and the Paris Basin (Calcaire Grossier).

However, this is a very interesting piece of research and McG.'s full grasp of the subject matter becomes all the more apparent when she brings in studies from comparative datasets (funerary monuments; Eastern and North African provinces). The reassessment of the iconography from the Temple of Mithras and the London Arch neatly complements existing and forthcoming studies of these monuments. In provinces without a pre-existing tradition of working stone as fine sculpture, this important research demonstrates the unique character of carving from this part of the Empire. In tandem with stone characterisation studies we are now just beginning to understand what the full impact of limestone carving was in these provinces.