Archaeol Wales 32

Recent archaeological work in Monmouth has provided evidence for the location of the Roman and Norman defences and for a possible pre-Norman structure which may also be defensive.

Excavations in advance of building within an Iron Age hillfort revealed a round hut and a four-post structure, interpreted as a food storage building.

Report on the partial excavation of a cropmark ring-ditch. It is dated by analogy to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. A range of similar sites is covered in the discussion.

Excavation in advance of construction work revealed a series of prehistoric pits and later features. Romano-British evidence indicates a scattered civil settlement possibly associated with a fort. This settlement appears to have developed along a roadway. Three Romano-British cremations were recorded and a possible mausoleum structure identified. A small inhumation cemetery of twelve graves is of post-Roman or early medieval date; the alignment of these is thought to suggest a Christian context. There are reports by Alex Gibson `Prehistoric pottery' (24), Kenneth Brassil `Lithics' (24--5), Wendy J Owen, P V Webster, Brenda Dickinson & Kay Hartley `Roman pottery' (25--7), Janet Webster `Bronze' (27--8), Wendy Owen `Iron' (28) and `Worked stone' (29), Paul Courtney `Medieval pottery' (30), and J L Wilkinson `Skeletal remains' (30--1).

A statement rebutting some recent work which has questioned the evidence for Bronze Age mining activity. It is accepted that, whilst the scale of prehistoric metal mining may have been overestimated, there is good evidence for small-scale, possibly seasonal, copper mining.

This project attempts to obtain an overview of all the samian from Caerleon on a site by site basis. The aim is to compile a total, if outline, catalogue of all samian by site, form, decoration and source. As a result it is hoped to identify chronological or functional differences between sites. Tentative results include the identification of patterns generated by cyclical trends of building and deposition in the Roman period and varying patterns in samian importation.