| Abstract: |
Special issue bringing together excavation and research findings in the Roman town of Wroxeter, Viroconium Cornoviorum. The work reported in the issue is in addition to that undertaken on the Baths insula. One focus of work was the defences, and four excavations across the second-century town rampart and its fourth-century additional wall form the first part of the volume. In addition to the town defences, the legionary fortress, whose plan dictated the later urban layout, was examined at its northeast corner. A major part of the volume is the report on an excavation conducted in the 1970s on the west side of Watling Street fronting the forum portico and across from the baths. The interpretation of the data allows a detailed sequence of events to be suggested starting with the fortress via praetoria on the south side of the forum insula. In the early town phase, two successive drains were found preceding the forum gutter excavated in the 1920s and these suggest a previously unsuspected forum building predating that in the Hadrianic period. Wall foundations and floors of Roman buildings were located piecemeal in three separate excavations, but of great interest was the finding of areas kept clear of domestic occupations devoted to the town's water supply and to industrial activity. The known aqueduct on the east side of the town was traced in part within the town, and alongside it within the town a large pit which may have been intended as a settling tank. In the south of the town a section across Watling Street showed a 2m depth of metalling largely dating to the second century. On the west side was evidence of glassworking in the mid- to late-second century represented by cullet, production waste, and glassworking tools. Other evidence of industrial activity came from the Bell Brook valley on the north side of the town where the products of a mortarium kiln were collected. On the north side of the baths insula a clay and cobble foundation was found cut into the road, similar in character to a fifth-century structure found on the southern frontage of the insula. Other texts in the volume give an account of the finding in the 1820s of a mosaic floor. The contemporary drawing, relocated in the 1990s after having been lost, allows the mosaic to be analysed in detail, and the corpus of known mosaics from Wroxeter has been summarised. There is also a report on the finding by geophysical survey of a road and gate through the defences in the area of the mortarium kiln, which may have been the original route of Watling Street to the west before it was diverted through the town. A substantial part of the volume is made up of specialist contributions, in particular on material from the glassworking area and on the samian pottery. A discussion section looks at the findings in the light of current knowledge of the Roman town, and the volume ends with an overview of Wroxeter's archaeology and its association with the archaeological careers of Graham Webster, Philip Barker and John Houghton. Includes French and German summaries, and separately authored contributions on |
