floor of this treasure chamber was covered with a thick bed of clay six inches deep lying on cobbles and flags. Two tiles were embedded in the clay with the upper stone of a much worn quern. Below the clay were found the neck and handle of an amphora bearing the stamp SER·B.[1]
The only other objects which came to light in the excavation of these rooms were a well-preserved fibula,[2] and—from the room on the north side (7)—a number of fragments of thin bronze which had formed part of a cuirass.[3] But in the excavation of the courtyards of the Principia were found some sixteen coins, a number of fragments of pottery, among which were pieces of early decorated bowls of Terra Sigillata, many small bronze objects such as fibulae, mountings of girdles, and hanging ornaments, as well as playing 'men' of bone and of vitreous paste Under the colonnade of the outer court on the north side lay a considerable quantity of grain.
General Impression
The impression left by many visits during the progress of the work was that the buildings at Newstead, as might have been expected in an outpost planted beyond the permanent frontiers of the empire, showed little of refinement in their construction, and that the masonry had not much of that massive solidity that is so apparent at Corbridge. In dealing with the fortifications attention has already been drawn to the evidence of change. Similar evidences were writ large in the buildings, and in none of these more clearly than in the Principia. Those furnished by the moving of the pillars of the outer courtyard, and by the addition of the long hall over the street in front, have already been dealt with. It remains to speak of the wall dividing the outer from the inner courts.
The Dividing Wall
This did not appear to have formed part of the original plan of the building. It was two and a half feet thick, but its cobble foundation lay on disturbed soil—a layer of clay five inches thick, mixed in places with charcoal, and having one foot of gravel below—the whole suggesting an earlier floor level. On the other hand, the pillar bases lying within the inner court were founded on the subsoil, the foundations being of river cobbles and two feet deep. Now the existence of a cross wall separating the outer from the inner court of the Principia is a common enough feature of Roman forts, as, for example, at Housesteads. But in some forts, which may be dated approximately to the end of the first century, there is no trace of anything of the kind. Thus at Wiesbaden, built about the year A.D. 83, we have but a single courtyard with an
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