This monograph synthesises currently available evidence for funerary practice relating to the fort at Roman Lancaster. Its focus lies on sites excavated between 1995 and 2005 south of the extramural settlement along the road towards Chester. As well as contributing to the documentation of death rituals among garrison communities in northern Britain, the report publishes a striking funerary portrait on which the Treveran cavalryman Insus gallops triumphant, his right fist gripping the severed head of his defeated foe by the hair (now published as RIB 3185).

The first two chapters introduce Roman Lancaster and record earlier finds of Roman tombs and funerary monuments, a slim harvest, compromised by the difficulty of attributing a Roman or earlier prehistoric date to poorly-documented cremation deposits, but sufficient to suggest cemetery areas. An appendix considers the probable funerary sculptures from a monument on Burrow Hills, 3.5 km south of the town.

Less than 250 m separated the four small-scale excavations reported in chs 3 and 4, which may have sampled either separate sections of a single roadside cemetery or individual burial clusters. Twenty-three burials or related features of second- to fourth-century date were recorded, as well as a first-century enclosure of possible funerary purpose at the Streamline Garage site. Most cremation-related features contained small quantities of cremated bone (a maximum of 407 g), sometimes mixed with charcoal, burnt animal bone and sherds as well as nails and hobnails. Since urns were only used in a minority of cases, the definitive identification of such features as burials or deposits of pyre debris is not always possible. Inhumation burials were identified from the size and shape of cut features and the occasional presence of grave goods, unburnt human bone having being destroyed by the acid soils. Insus' sandstone stele was found within a ditched enclosure by the Roman road on the Arla Foods depot site, with its broken-off base still in situ in its pit setting. Consideration of this stele and its significance for the disposition of cavalry units in northern Britain takes up the lion's share of ch. 4, though the lack of illustration of analogous memorials makes S. Bull's Triumphant Rider. The Lancaster Roman Cavalry Tombstone (2008) a useful (and for Britain comprehensive) reference point for comparanda. The case for the Insus stele as cenotaph is overstated. The epitaph, for which an expanded text might have been supplied, contains some anomalous characteristics, for example omitting years of service or age at death, but makes no reference to death on campaign or burial elsewhere. The closing formula cannot be relevant, since damage makes its restoration hypothetical. Nor is the absence of an associated burial conclusive, since it may have been made in a less prominent part of the enclosure.

The final chapter (5) considers the implications of the study for the topography of Roman Lancaster and shows that the rituals documented at the site resemble those known from other northern frontier sites. The poverty of associated material culture serves further to underscore the anomalous character of the generously-furnished pyres and tombs of third-century Brougham. In this and the preceding chapter the authors argue that the Insus stele was re-erected decades after being originally set up, with an associated post-built structure that either helped to raise it or protected it from the elements. Space precludes detailed discussion of this argument but some comment can be made. The use of the non-abbreviated version of the Dis Manibus formula and Insus' unit, the ala Augusta, suggest but do not prove a later first- or early second-century date for its erection and other characteristics of image and text do not preclude a date compatible with the possible later second-century date of the pit-setting (112) in which the broken base stood. This also contains among the stone packing an inscribed fragment from a different memorial and the adjacent earlier pit-setting (18) may therefore have accommodated a different tombstone than that of Insus. Nonetheless the evocative iconography, which has received most attention, should not eclipse the interest of this contextual information, since this is one of the very few occasions in Britain where the findspot of an inscription both closely relates to its original setting and is precisely documented. It illuminates the potential complexity of a funerary monument's biography as well as the way in which memorials engaged audiences through their placing.