The Roman settlement at Faverdale, near Darlington, was discovered as part of development control fieldwork. In many ways the site itself is unremarkable, evolving as it did from a Late Iron Age settlement into what was probably a small villa complex. However, its location, in County Durham to the north of the River Tees, means its significance is magnified as it adds to the small but growing corpus of north-eastern English villas, including Quarry Farm, Ingleby Barwick (Teesside), Dalton-on-Tees, Old Durham (Co. Durham), and Leeming Bar (North Yorks.). It is no longer possible to simplistically contrast a civilian zone where villas are found with a northern military zone where they are absent. While one might quibble about where these sites lie on a scale of ‘villaness’ (and the title of the volume is remarkably coy in this respect), we can at least consign them to the Reecian category of ‘things called Villas’.

Originating as a Late Iron Age polyfocal site, in the second century a.d. there was a major change when a large rectangular enclosure was placed on a raised spur of land. Atlhough much of the interior of this enclosure seems to have been scoured by later ploughing, a small stone bath-house with a hypocaust and painted wall-plaster did survive on its southern edges. This phase was relatively short-lived and the site was cleared reverting to fields in the fourth century. In this respect it contrasts with Quarry Farm, which continued to be occupied well into the late fourth or possibly the early fifth century.

It seems fair to suppose that, as at Old Durham, a probable villa building that accompanied the bath-house has now disappeared. It is possible that in the case of Old Durham and Faverdale even the foundations of a stone-built main building had been completely destroyed, but a wooden building is perhaps more likely. The relative lack of evidence for ceramic tiles anywhere except in the immediate vicinity of the bath building at Faverdale does seem to suggest the lack of a stone-built main block.

This is a good, if traditionally laid out, report with solid specialist discussions, including, not surprisingly given its rarity in a northern context, considerable emphasis given to the wall-plaster. J. Gerrard's discussion of the native and Roman ceramics is also worth singling out. He highlights the presence of Late Hand-made Ware vessels. Essentially native-produced wares mimicking a range of Roman forms, this tradition continues into the second century and is clearly more than a brief initial response to the appearance of Roman ceramics. Rather than being replaced in the assemblages by more distinctly Roman wares, their continued use has interesting implications for the ‘creolisation’ of Roman material culture in this part of the northern frontier zone. The environmental material is particularly useful, with the insect assemblage and pollen analysis enhancing our understanding of the wider development of the County Durham landscape in the earlier first millennium.

There are minor issues one might quibble with, for example, the confidence with which the three stone-lined graves excavated are dated to the Late Iron Age, but generally the individual reports and Proctor's thorough and thoughtful overview are circumspect and theoretically aware.

A final aspect worthy of comment is the significance of the fact that the site was discovered as part of the development control process, with extensive geophysics and large-scale strip and record techniques significantly enhancing its identification and investigation. The impact of over two decades of development-led archaeology is a significant one. In essence, in the North-East of England, PPG16, PPS5 and now the NPPF have imposed a radically different sampling strategy on the archaeological resource, shifting the emphasis away from both military sites and native sites in areas where cropmarks are well preserved. It is notable that Quarry Farm, Ingleby Barwick and Faverdale produced very few cropmarks, particularly of the stone buildings, and that their extent was only revealed through geophysical survey. It can only be hoped that commercial archaeology continues to throw up sites such as Faverdale, which help to throw a spanner into our often over-simplistic models of the frontier zone, and that they can then be reported in such solid and thoughtful publications as this report.