ARCHAEOLOGIA CAMBRENSIS Cylchgrawn Cymdeithas Hynafiaethau Cyrmu The Journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association. VOL. 168 (2019)

Small-scale assessment work for site management and conservation purposes has been undertaken on a number of first-century Roman military sites in the Walton Basin, Radnorshire, including Walton marching camps II–III, field ovens in the top of a Bronze Age round barrow adjacent to Hindwell marching camp I, on the putative Hindwell marching camp II, the annexes and extramural settlement associated with the Hindwell Roman fort, and a possible third- to fourth-century settlement site near Four Stones Buildings. Intriguing interrelationships between these Roman military sites and the major complex of large Neolithic ceremonial sites which underlie them are explored.

The Ty’n-y-Coed earthworks, also known as the Dinas Powys ‘Southern Banks’, lie 140m to the south of the important early medieval promontory fort known as Dinas Powys and were trial trenched by Geoff Wainwright in the late 1950s as part of Leslie Alcock’s excavation campaign. The Southern Banks were central to Alcock’s interpretation of the main defences of the promontory as being a Norman period ringwork built by a native Welsh prince. This interpretation has been shown to be incorrect and the nature of the Southern Banks has become a significant issue for the understanding of Dinas Powys. As part of a reassessment of the Dinas Powys complex excavation and survey were undertaken on the Southern Banks between 2011 and 2014. The earthworks consists of two separate banks and ditches (Bank A and Bank B), which appear to be incomplete. Limited evidence was recovered in the new excavations, but the fieldwork has added significantly to our understanding of the date and function of the earthworks, and their relationship with the adjacent promontory fort. Bank B is interpreted as a univallate L-shaped settlement enclosure occupied during the Late Iron Age and potentially into the early Romano-British period. Sherds of an almost complete Glastonbury Ware bowl were recovered from the primary fill of the ditch, and are likely to represent the deliberate deposition of a significant vessel. The evidence for the date and function of Bank A is considerably weaker, and interpretation more ambiguous. It is suggested that part of the monument appears to be early medieval in date and is tentatively interpreted as an unfinished settlement enclosure.

The late thirteenth- to early fourteenth-century Caernarfon Castle and its associated townscape in Gwynedd, North Wales, has been the subject of detailed academic historical, archaeological and architectural scrutiny for considerable time. This paper presents a fresh interpretation for this widely studied Edwardian castle based on a broader temporal and spatial research approach. Interdisciplinary and comparative study re-examines the fortification’s architecture in the light of tangible traces of Caernarfon’s pre-medieval fortified and elite settlement, as well as the intangible memory represented in the late twelfth-century Romance legend of Breudwyt Maxen Wledic (‘The Dream of Mascen Wledig’). It is proposed that King Edward I and Queen Eleanor de Castile intentionally incorporated rather than obliterated these visible memories, thus ensuring the display of a further prominent layer of lordly and lady power as a symbol of legitimacy through continuity. With a particular focus on the Queen’s Gate, this paper introduces the new interpretation of a royal designed landscape beyond the walls of Caernarfon’s town, arguing that King Edward and Queen Eleanor deliberately combined symbolic elements of Roman heritage and Arthurian-type Romance along an ancient route way below Queen’s Gate. The paper concludes that Edward’s and Eleanor’s castle and private landscape was intended to reflect the persistent memory of Caernarfon’s powerful male and female ancestors.

Through an examination of aspects of the late medieval iconography of the Passion of Jesus Christ that is to be found in both the Passion Plays and the work of visual artists working in stained glass, wood, stone and mural painting, both in Wales and England, and elsewhere in western Europe, particularly in Brittany, this essay seeks to demonstrate the close relationship which existed between the various art forms, and how all drew out the message of Salvation that was both explicit and implicit in the Christian gospel narratives, and the literature which derived from them. It illustrates that in the iconography of the Passion, the surviving examples from Wales demonstrate that the devotional and liturgical life of Christians here was fully in accord with that to be found elsewhere in Catholic western Europe in the later Middle Ages.