ABSTRACT
Canterbury ought to have been among the first, if not the first, civitas capital to emerge in Britain. Despite the lack of knowledge of the earliest buildings in the town centre, Canterbury, as now seems to be the case with most civitas capitals, did not develop on a large scale until the late first and early second centuries. Not enough is yet known about the true position, the precise boundaries or the history of the forum, for it to be closely dated. One of the main problems relating to the preBoudiccan town is the forum or possible lack of one. It is suggested that the insula occupied by the Flavian forum was subdivided by a through-street in the Claudian town, and that a more modest forum and basilica was situated in the north-eastern of the two insulae so formed. But in 1972 builders' excavations were observed near the eastern comer of this postulated insula where the Flavian basilica was built.
