The decennial Pilgrimage of Hadrian’s Wall is an act of veneration for the most-substantial Roman monument in Britain, and the outstanding frontier-work of the Roman Empire. Professionals and amateurs mingle, travel the Wall, and hear and discuss the latest discoveries. It is a highly convivial occasion. A book is issued, charting the previous decade’s research. Following the pattern of the 1999 book, the most recent (2019) publication, edited by Rob Collins and Matt Symonds, is the essential means of keeping up with what is new on the Wall

This book is a welcome addition to the existing large corpus of material on the establishment and development of the plantation of Ulster by settlers from England and Scotland in the early years of the 17th century.

A visit to Winchester’s cathedral and City Museum offers a chance to explore the ecclesiastical life and early days of this historic Hampshire city, as Lucia Marchini finds out.

This new volume tells the fascinating story of a hoard of 17,660 Roman coins discovered during an archaeological excavation in Bath city centre in 2007 (see CA 278). Although it is not one of the largest hoards to be found from Roman Britain, its careful recovery and subsequent micro-excavation at the British Museum mean that it is now one of its most interesting.

This teaching resource is a companion to 2019’s The First Foresters (see CA 350), which focuses on the Neolithic occupants of Scotland’s woodlands. Into the Wildwoods delves further back in time, introducing the hunter-gatherers of the later Mesolithic (c.5800-4000 BC) in a way that will engage 8- to 12-year-olds, while also incorporating ideas about the natural world around them.

Readers of CA may recall a feature entitled ‘Charting the Roads’, in which John Poulter and Rob Entwistle argued for the existence of long-distance alignments established soon after the Roman invasion, alignments which were subsequently adopted in part by the road planners. In this new work, Entwistle explores this thesis further, with numerous maps and diagrams.

Like its predecessors, this new book in the ‘50 Finds’ series presents a range of carefully selected artefacts in a well-illustrated, brief volume, which highlights the way in which the material record vividly reflects life in the past. With the Roman period represented by more finds than any other in the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database, the authors have chosen a wide variety of both exceptional and everyday objects that reflect the interactions between Roman and Iron Age cultures in Britain.

This detailed analysis of one of the most important Augustinian priories with its associated hospital in medieval England is the product of an extremely large and long-running archaeological excavation in the Spitalfields area.

I can strongly recommend this handsomely produced monograph to all those archaeologists with an interest in the early medieval period, a period that is seeing new research that is changing our understanding of settlement in Scotland at this time. This report brings together the results of a research project on the enigmatic Pitcarmick-type buildings of highland Perthshire.

The clothes worn by archaeologists on site provide a vivid record not only of how the discipline has evolved over time, but of the personal experiences of people working in this field. An exhibition currently running at National Trust Sutton Hoo documents some of these sartorial snapshots. Carly Hilts went along to find out more.