As the title suggests this volume covers a lot of ground, not only describing a wide and varied range of items over a very long time span but also considering what they can tell us of the nature of the settlement from which they came. The small finds comprise principally objects of metal (including coins and jettons), worked stone, bone, antler, shale, glass and pipeclay and the waste material resulting from their manufacture. While seeming a rather ‘tall order’, a glance at the principal authors and contributors lends reassurance that one is in safe hands, though whose heart does not sink on reading the words ‘this volume was more than twenty years in the making’? The work on the finds recovered from the western suburb and much of the northern was completed as far back as the 1980s. Other reports were compiled in the early 1990s and the opportunities for substantial revisions and updates to be made to the individual contributions were limited. The inexplicably long gestation period that has frequently bedevilled ambitious projects of this sort has resulted in their rarity now and will, no doubt, result in their extinction, and we will all be the poorer for it.

The volume opens with a useful introduction, outlining the development of the settlement through time and summarising the excavations from which the finds derive. The objects are then considered by functional category, the method used by Nina Crummy in her similar treatment of the Roman small finds from Colchester back in 1983 and almost universally employed since to the benefit of all. Part 2 considers the finds of Roman date; objects recovered from graves are included within the individual functional categories, so the necessary concordance of grave finds is appended. Part 3 describes the Saxon, medieval and post-medieval finds. All objects are catalogued, so that quantification of differing object types is readily accessible; many are illustrated by good quality line-drawings and a smaller number are photographed. All the information necessary to allow other researchers to incorporate the data confidently into their own particular areas of interest is presented here. Not a mean achievement when one considers the difficulties often encountered while negotiating the editorial stage of so many reports. The volume concludes with a synthesis and discussion, an ambitious aim in the light of the range of material under consideration. This section compares first the Roman and then the later finds from the suburbs with those from excavations within the city walls. Wider issues, such as the supply of raw materials and food stuffs and aspects of the economy and trade links, are also considered and it is useful that pottery production and supply is included to help provide the full picture.

While one might disagree with a small number of the object identifications or their dating, surely that is all part of the fun when flicking through a book of this sort when engaged in a bit of ‘parallel spotting’. No method is without its shortcomings and one resulted from the separation of grave goods from individual burials into differing functional categories. Adopting this format has resulted in the separation of a late Roman bone comb from its purpose-built, bone-inlaid wooden box, for example, though cross-referencing in the text has avoided the separation resulting in divorce.

Published in paperback this may appear at first glance rather more unassuming than the earlier Winchester volumes, but make no mistake this is no light weight in other respects, and is a similarly scholarly piece of work. This is a well-written and well-researched work that, taken together with the finds published from the city previously, provides a detailed record of material culture spanning two thousand years.