This book presents the results from the fieldwalking survey, evaluation and subsequent excavation of one of Britain's most northerly Roman villas, lying on a terrace just south of the river Tees. Roman villas have had their fair share of archaeological investigation over the years, though resultant publications have not always been forthcoming; the site's geographical rarity further serves to highlight its national significance.

As an excavation monograph born out of developer-funded archaeology the book follows a well-trodden format. An introduction sets out the context of the investigations and the surrounding landscape, and includes detailed accounts of the fieldwalking and evaluation stages, which took place in 1997–2000. This is particularly important in this case as the main winged-corridor villa building was subsequently preserved in situ within an area of public open space, with a single evaluation trench being the only direct intervention. The excavations, carried out in 2003–4, focused upon the periphery of the main villa building (chs 2 and 3). Pre-villa evidence was fairly scant, limited to elements of Bronze Age and probable later Iron Age settlements, after which there was a hiatus in occupation until the villa building and an associated enclosure complex were established in the late second century a.d. Concentrating excavations upon the peripheral parts of the complex rather than just the main building has enabled the wider social and economic aspects of the villa to be much better understood. These outer zones encompassed a small, two-roomed bath-house/caldarium, several other masonry and timber buildings (including one with an in-situ millstone) and an enclosure system that was consistently modified, containing ovens (some associated with metalworking), corn-driers, burials and paved surfaces. In the late fourth to early fifth century a substantial ditched enclosure was built around the main villa building, with Anglo-Saxon occupation seemingly attesting to a rare example of continuity in the region.

The specialist data are contained within chs 4 and 5; all separate reports are well presented and illustrated, with useful discussions and quantifications. The relatively meagre quantity of objects compared with well-excavated villa sites in southern Britain is notable, although this is typical of other Roman rural settlement sites in the surrounding region and is suggested to reflect a deliberate cultural choice. However, notable finds were recovered, including a very fine gilt bronze crossbow brooch found in a pit with Anglo-Saxon pottery, intaglio finger-rings, copper-alloy vessels, a stylus, millstones and a scythe fragment — all attesting in some degree to the relative richness of life within the villa complex and providing evidence for agricultural innovation and potential centralisation. The faunal remains are unfortunately fairly minimal due at least partly to issues of preservation, though reports on the charred plant remains and pollen provide a rich backdrop, indicating intensive crop processing and the cultivation of heavier clay soils within a largely open landscape.

A very welcome and somewhat more unusual addition to an excavation report comes with the general overview of the finds assemblage presented in ch. 6. This includes a useful discussion of site taphonomic processes as well as accounts of the villa economy and social practices of the inhabitants, all well presented within the wider regional context. Further discussion of the villa's evolution, morphology and structural features follows in ch. 7, along with conjectural assessments of possible villa ownership — was it that of a retired or serving soldier/official, or perhaps a member of the local ‘tribal aristocracy’ who had associations with the military supply network?

Overall this monograph poses more questions than it can answer, but then that should be the case with all well-excavated and reported archaeological sites. It is an extremely important addition to a growing corpus of published Iron Age and Roman settlements in the North-East region in recent years, along with the likes of Faverdale (Proctor, 2012), Pegswood Moor (Proctor, 2009) and various sites on the Northumberland Coastal Plain (Hodgson et al., 2013). Together with recent syntheses of the region (e.g. S.J. Sherlock, Late Prehistoric Settlement in the Tees Valley and North-East England (2012)), these are helping to completely re-invigorate our understanding of life in the frontier zone.