Students of the Roman fort at Maryport, Cumbria, have plenty to mull over following the publication of two landmark fieldwork programmes examining aspects of its extramural settlement. The first ran from 2011–15 and was led by Haynes and Wilmott. This project focused on a collection of 17 altars found in 1870, buried in pits at the highest point in the Maryport landscape. Intriguingly, as Vitruvius suggests that high ground is appropriate for worshipping Jupiter, most of these altars are dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. They date to the second century a.d. and document several commanding officers and units. These altars have played a prominent role in studies of Roman ritual practice, with Peter Wenham arguing in 1939 that they were erected on an annual basis, at which point the preceding year's altar would have been ritually buried. Although doubts about this interpretation eventually crept in – especially following the late Peter Hill's 1997 observation that the stones had been exposed to the elements for a lengthy spell – attempts to re-evaluate the altars have been hamstrung by a shortage of detailed information concerning their context. To address this, Haynes and Wilmott examined both the original find-spot and surviving documentation, as well as a complex of nearby masonry structures where two further altars were found in 1880.

While that fieldwork focused on a truly exceptional element of Maryport's archaeology, a second programme, running from 2013 to 2014, tackled a facet that was overtly ordinary but equally poorly understood. The Roman Maryport Settlement project was undertaken by Oxford Archaeology North (OAN) and directed by Zant alongside Jeremy Bradley (2013) and then Paul Dunn (2014). It sought to capitalise on and test the geophysical survey of Maryport undertaken by TimeScape Surveys from 2000 to 2004, which exposed the extent and complexity of the extramural settlement. This included a series of plots, seemingly primarily containing strip buildings, running for approximately 350 m along a road heading north-east from the fort. Although some of the more utilitarian buildings in the settlement had been examined in the nineteenth century, much remained uncertain about their chronological development and appearance, as well as the nature of activity within them. To overcome this, the OAN team targeted a seemingly representative building plot visible on the geophysical survey at the heart of the settlement.

Naturally, having two different teams working in the same broad area of a site and then publishing separate site reports in successive years raises the risk of either redundant repetition of effort or jarring differences in findings that pass unaddressed. Happily, both teams clearly had a solid understanding of the other's results, allowing areas of overlap and difference to be acknowledged and explored. Readers will gain most from tackling the two volumes back-to-back, with their complementary nature exemplified by Haynes and Wilmott referring those seeking a more detailed overview of other archaeological investigations nearby to Zant's excellent treatment. Even so, there is scope to compare and contrast the views of the two teams on some of the opaque issues surrounding Maryport. One of these is the thorny question of whether unpublished investigations south of the visible fort in the 2000s found traces of a timber precursor. For Zant (p. 9), the evidence ‘seems equivocal’, while Haynes and Wilmott feel the features ‘probably come from a late-first-century fort’ (p. 1).

If there was an earlier fort and extramural settlement nearby, it did not extend to the areas examined by the two teams north and north-east of the visible fort. Both projects encountered traces of possible or certain prehistoric activity – including a small pit containing saddle-quern fragments and Beaker pottery, an undated roundhouse and a possible field system – but the earliest Roman activity seems to belong to the Hadrianic period. This is when the first strip building was constructed on the plot examined by the OAN team. What had appeared to be a single plot, on the basis of the geophysics, turned out to be portions of three different plots. Focusing on one of the buildings allowed the trench to be extended to expose the building's backlot. This decision paid off admirably, with the exposure of an intriguing group of pits, interpreted as features such as a well and cisterns. Excavation also revealed that the stone strip building visible on the geophysics was only the latest in a series of structures to occupy the plot. The earliest, Hadrianic, building was timber, and this was replaced by a second timber structure in the mid-second century. The latter went out of use around the end of the century, when, as suggested by dark soils, it became an unoccupied landholding used for refuse disposal. Another strip building was founded c. 230, this time with stone elements, before being finally abandoned c. 270. This last date is a good match with the period when various other extramural settlements disappeared, from both the northern frontier zone and continental Europe.

Determining a chronology for activity in this plot – the boundaries of which appear to have remained broadly fixed throughout its lifespan – is a valuable addition to our knowledge about the site. Although, as the excavators acknowledge, we cannot yet know how representative this single well-dated example from Maryport is, the absence of fourth-century material from the more widely spaced test pits would fit with more than just this plot being abandoned c. 270. At the same time, a few sherds datable to c. 270–350 and 280–350 were found in the upper fills of some backlot pits, and perhaps hint at a little slightly later activity. Other elements of these pits are also of interest. Zant convincingly identifies a group of three beakers, part of a face pot and a ‘model’ cauldron in one pit as ‘conceivably relating either to the “commissioning” of the feature … or to its “closure”’. It is perhaps possible to go further here, as other pits contained fragments of querns, which were seemingly sometimes associated with opening or closure deposits elsewhere in Roman and pre-Roman Britain (and further afield). Additional evidence for ‘personal forms of religious observance’ was also encountered during the excavations (p. 146), with the full set perhaps suggestive of a rich medley of local, continental and more classical traditions.

Haynes and Wilmott's team, meanwhile, laid bare ritual activity on a monumental scale. Examination of the masonry buildings discovered in 1880 revealed a remarkable cult centre. One of these stone structures appears to have been a circular temple (with a timber porch) that was Hadrianic or Antonine in origin, making it contemporary with at least some of the altars later buried in pits. Radiocarbon dates suggest that after the mid-third century a rectangular masonry building was built beside the circular one, sharing the same alignment as its porch. This new edifice can now be identified confidently as ‘the most north-westerly classical-style temple in the ancient world so far discovered’ (p. 209). To this complex can also be added an apparent entrance building and the base for a possible Jupiter column. Whether the buried altars also once stood here seems more doubtful, as cobbling contemporary with the rectangular temple made no allowance for their presence, at a time when the altars could not yet have entered the earth.

Among the many fascinating aspects of this complex, two stand out. The first is that the rectangular temple and cobbling suggest that the cult site was embellished within a decade or two of the strip building (and perhaps residential activity in the extramural settlement more widely) being abandoned. Indeed, Haynes favours the circular and rectangular temples enduring as cult centres into the fourth century. The second is that the temples were aligned with both the high ground where the altars were ultimately buried and sunrise on the summer solstice. While understandably cautious about pushing this latter matter, Haynes provides a fascinating discussion of various cases of apparent solar influence on architecture in the Roman world. Perhaps more could be made here of Miranda Aldhouse-Green's work on the occurrence of an apparent solar symbol in the form of a wheel emblem, which has been linked to the cult of a Celtic deity, who was sometimes associated with Jupiter. This device probably arrived on the frontier with auxiliaries from the Continent (or their descendants) and occasionally appears on Jupiter altars, including on the back of one found in the Maryport pits (RIB 827; there is also a fine example on the bolster of RIB 816). As the temples simultaneously face the high ground appropriate to Jupiter worship and the summer solstice sunrise, this might, wholly speculatively, be taken as an elegant visual juxtaposition akin to that seen on the altar.

As for the altars, could they once have been raised on that high ground, where they were destined to be buried? The team argue against this, on the basis that a curvilinear ditch that post-dates the altars but pre-dates their burial is hard to reconcile with their presence as a standing group. Somewhere else in the vicinity, along the ridge of high ground, is now the favoured option. Another intriguing discovery nearby was a curious concentration of inhumation graves, probably dating to well before the end of the fourth century. If the original position of the altars remains elusive though, re-examining the pits produced astonishing results. Rather than the altars being buried with all due reverence, it turned out they were simply used as packing for timber posts supporting monumental and enigmatic structures erected during the twilight of Roman control. What were they? Various possibilities are carefully weighed, including a church (‘tempting’) and, the team's personal preference, an example of the medieval modular building tradition, which also occurs in late Roman Britain. Ultimately, though, no perfect parallels currently appear to be known, and Haynes notes that ‘we remain open to alternative hypotheses’ (p. 220).

All told, then, these two projects have produced impressive findings, with a significance that reaches far beyond Maryport. The two reports are of the high standard that you would expect from teams led by such accomplished and experienced archaeologists and also boast a wealth of insightful specialist reports. This injection of new knowledge should be celebrated, not least for enriching immensely understanding of the results of antiquarian work at the site.