Nijmegen on the River Waal, tributary of the Rhine, is host to a complex sequence of military bases and civilian settlements of the Roman period. These two substantial volumes bring together a vast amount of information on the cemeteries of the town of Ulpia Noviomagus (Vol. 14) and the late fortified site of Valkhof (Vol. 15). In so doing the authors and contributors have performed a great service to the study of Roman funerary practice in the North-Western Empire; their work will provide scholars with considerable food for thought.

Vol. 14 focuses primarily on a cemetery zone excavated in 1981 and 1983, south of Ulpia Noviomagus, wherein lay the remains of four walled funerary enclosures of late first-century origin, probably lining a north–south road. There were further burials to the west, while others lay south of boundary ditches running across the site. The volume represents the publication of Koster's doctoral dissertation, but it adopts the structure one expects in a conventional site report. An introduction to the Ulpia Noviomagus settlement is followed by an account of the excavation which describes the enclosures and burials, 46 in total, all cremations, except for one infant inhumation. Some were very richly furnished with pottery vessels, metalwork, glass and more exotic items, including beautifully carved amber pieces. The meat of the volume comprises a catalogue of the burials and analysis of the finds, followed by a brief report on the human remains. Four concluding chapters discuss the development of the cemetery, the monumental burial complexes, the burial ritual and meaning of the grave goods, and, finally, the status and ethnicity of the deceased. As befits a doctoral thesis, these latter are more wide-ranging than one would usually expect in a site report which leads to a slight lack of focus on the excavation itself, but this is compensated for by a range of useful references from across the Western Empire.

Vol. 15 is concerned with inhumation cemeteries to the east (Cemetery OO) and west (Cemetery B) of the Valkhof, confidently claimed by the author as being founded by Constantine the Great in a.d. 313. Based on unfinished work by the late Professor Brunsting and by P. Zoetbrood, Steures has produced a report on 489 burials from OO and another 834 from B. They were excavated in 1975 and 1979–83, but the catalogues also include cemetery-related finds from both cemeteries dating back to the seventeenth century. Introductions to the two cemeteries are followed by the catalogues. The study of the human remains is very thorough, but as Nijmegen lies on very acid sandy natural deposits inimical to bone survival, the results are somewhat limited. The same cannot be said of the detailed analyses of the material culture from the graves. A short chapter on grave typology is followed by a longer one entitled ‘Interpretation’. A primary division is made into two periods: ‘Pottery periods 1 and 2’. The first is dated c. a.d. 313–355/367, which encompasses almost all the burials in Cemetery OO. Cemetery B, by contrast, remained in use until the mid-fifth century (more recent excavations have apparently extended the range to c. a.d. 500). One of the latest burials (465) is of a female, well-furnished with pottery, glass and metalwork. In a delightful turn of phrase S. allows himself the comment: ‘Every inch a Germanic lady, she may still have felt also every inch a Roman one.’ She is described as a ‘priestess’ of what is said to be a ‘pole idol’ depicted on three identical pendants; a rather better drawing than appears on p. 651 would have been useful to supplement the scholarly discussion.

Two themes discussed in both volumes concern the relationship of the burials to the social status and ethnicity of the deceased. Both relate to the question of how native communities, in this case the Batavians, changed and developed when absorbed by the Roman Empire. This is also very relevant for Romano-British studies where debate continues as to whether, to put it simply, it is the ‘Roman’ or the ‘British’ which was critical in determining the character of burial practice. As far as status is concerned, there can probably be little doubt that the burials described in Vol. 14 were of the native élite of Ulpia Noviomagus; however, the glib assumption ‘that there is a correlation between the social standing (social persona) of the deceased … and the amount of energy that is invested in the burial customs …’ should have been addressed more critically, especially in light of ethnographic studies which show that the relationship between burial practice and status of the deceased is usually very complex (e.g. P.J. Ucko, World Archaeology 1 (1969), 262–80). The same comment applies to Vol. 15 (410–19) where a highly mechanistic scoring system is introduced to relate grave goods to social status, from which it is concluded that Late Roman Noviomagus had ‘a strongly hierarchical society’. That may well have been the case, but there is no reason to suppose that this was expressed in burial practice as simplistically as is asserted here. Other topics might also have benefited from some firmer theoretical underpinning. In Vol. 14, for example, it is airily concluded on several occasions (e.g. 231) that the range of grave goods shows that people believed in a life after death, but it is not made clear why this should be so or what sort of ‘life’ the dead are supposed to have enjoyed.

Both volumes have been produced to a high standard with many excellent colour photographs. I also liked the imaginative reconstruction on the cover of Vol. 14 showing the enclosures with great stone monuments even though only the bases and a few architectural fragments were found. The finds drawings in Vol. 14 are good, but more variable in Vol. 15. The plans are adequate, but writing as someone coming ‘cold’ to Roman Nijmegen I might have wished greater imagination in showing exactly where its various components were located and where the cemeteries lay in relation to them and to the modern city. As one would expect in Dutch publications, the English is of a high standard and it seems appropriate to conclude by citing another of S.'s characterisations (Burial B704): ‘The grave chamber, the barrel-shaped bucket and the many glass vessels in the grave give a caddish social-climber impression of a Romanized Germanic man.’ I cannot remember a similarly colourful statement in a British cemetery report, but perhaps we should let our imaginations take wing from time to time!