would suffice. It is probable that both were erected in the second, or possibly third, occupation, but that with the restriction of area marked by the erection of the reducing wall, the northern building was dismantled, to be again rebuilt when the size of the fort was once more increased. It is easy to understand why the south building should have been selected for retention. It would lie nearer to cultivated ground, and to the highway that linked the garrison to civilisation and to Rome.
Abandonment of the Clavicula-shaped Ditches
In dealing with the excavation of a large area, particularly under pressure of a consciousness that ploughing or sowing await the filling in of long open trenches, it is only too easy to pass over slight indications which may lead to the discovery of valuable pieces of information; and thus two important traces of change were only discovered towards the end of the digging. At the west gate of the fort an arm of the great ditch, in outline resembling an everted clavicula, had been, as already mentioned, thrown across so as to cover it. It was apparent that before the final abandonment of the fort this arm had been filled in, for the strong cobble foundations of a road were found to be carried across it. The pottery which it yielded was all of an early type. It thus looks as if the second period of the occupation of Newstead had taken place at a relatively early date, one not far removed from the invasion of Agricola, while the entire absence of later pottery suggests that the overlapping ditch had not been open for any great length of time. No similar ditch was found in front of the east gate, but then the gateway was covered by the prolongation of the outer ditches overlapping one another. It had also the further defence of the looping together of the ditches on the south side of the road and the diagonal palisade drawn across the entrance. The same form of defence observed on the west was, however, found in front both of the north gate and of the south gate, and here also it had been filled up, and was crossed by the road entering at the south end of the later Via Quintana, the original Via Principalis. The earlier gate of the south annex was similarly protected. We have thus evidence that before the reduction in the size of the fort the fortifications of the second period underwent an important alteration inasmuch as the overlapping ditches in front of the north, south, and west gates were filled up. The traces of the road in front of the east gate were too slight to make it possible to prove that at the same time the ends of the ditches overlapping the gate were filled up and the palisade across the roadway abandoned, but it is probable
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