ABSTRACT
Fourth-century Britain affords us a huge body of evidence of many disparate types, and from which many different views of the island can be written. Britain’s appearances in the histories and the official documents of the fourth century are sporadic and not particularly informative; in the literary sources the diocese appears something of a backwater. But to the archaeologist the fourth century can be seen as the golden age of Roman Britain because of the sheer number of sites of all types occupied and the quantity of finds from those sites. It will be our concern here to examine the various sources of evidence both for their potential and for their shortcomings. From these we may try to construct a picture of late Roman Britain and its place in the wider Roman world.
