The Roman road network was largely an official creation and one of its functions was to service the cursus publicus. Thus, small roadline settlements are often hypothesized to be the sites of the mansiones and mutatios that this system used. But, if so, nothing like a regular system of such official ‘hotels’ and horse changing stations can be detected on all roads. Focusing on the road network in the broad area around Londinium, this talk will try to explore what that might be telling us about how the cursus publicus used the Roman road network.

he English Landscapes and Identities project (EngLaId) was funded by the European Research Council and ran in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford between 2011 and 2016, under the aegis of Chris Gosden. Chris Green and Tyler Franconi were postdoctoral researchers on the project, respectively representing expertise in spatial analysis and in the Roman period. EngLaId examined England in the period between 1500 BC and the Domesday survey of AD 1086, but within this period the Roman period was unique in its level of internal (and international) connectivity due to the creation of the extensive network of Roman roads.

This talk will present methods applied by the EngLaId team for modelling movement, and their interpretations. These included information on the nature of the terrain, contrasting also movement by land and by water. We also used the densities and distribution of archaeological evidence as a proxy for land use and movement. In addition, we included place name evidence for the early medieval period and the little we have from the Romano-British period. The results of our models were compared with possible routes on land and water for various periods to throw light on patterns of movement and impediments to connections between areas.

For centuries, a series of enigmatic camps that line the road between Scotch Corner and Carlisle have fascinated antiquarians and archaeologists. Four of these camps are now known, each having substantial defences and an extraordinary number of entrances (Rey Cross has eleven), and they have long been suspected to have played some part in Rome’s actions against Venutius and the Brigantes in the early Flavian period. But what exactly  was their role, why were they built in such a non-standard form, and who built them?

Since 1984, a photograph had intrigued archaeologists. It seemed to show a triple ditched, rectangular enclosure with rounded corners. This would be a typical shape for a Roman fort but during subsequent fieldwalking of ploughsoil nothing Roman was found.

In 2019, National Trust volunteers carried out a geophysical survey which confirmed the lines of the enclosure’s ditches. Covid delayed a planned excavation but eventually, in June 2021, three trenches were excavated by National Trust archaeologists. This talk will describe what was found during the excavation and will begin to examine the potential routeways that may once have linked this site to others within the Devon landscape.