Mosaics in Britannia

This book surveys Romano-British mosaics—their craft, design, themes, and role within buildings. It highlights their literary sophistication and social significance, traces their late Roman decline, and follows their rediscovery, challenging assumptions that Britain was a cultural backwater.

Mosaics in Britannia provides an authoritative overview of Romano-British mosaics, including how they were made and maintained, how the craft was organised, the geometric designs and the subject matter, source and significance of the figured pavements. Also considered is the mosaics’ place within the buildings they adorned, and what they tell us about the social dynamics of the residence and baths. The book ends with the fate of mosaics in the late Roman period and thereafter, including their recording upon rediscovery and their display. Although Romano-British pictorial mosaics seldom attain the artistic brilliance of those around the Mediterranean, they often have sophisticated content. Several demonstrate a good knowledge of classical literature, arguably more so than most other provinces, which is perhaps surprising to those who have assumed that Roman Britain was a backwater at the extreme edge of the Roman Empire.

List of Figures

Author’s note

Chapter One: Introduction   

Chapter Two: Manufacture

Chapter Three: Schemes, patterns and motifs

Chapter Four: First- to third-century mosaics

Chapter Five: Fourth-century Groups

Chapter Six: Figured mosaics

Chapter Seven: Mythological stories and literature

Chapter Eight: Sports and leisure    

Chapter Nine: Paganism, Christianity and superstition

Chapter Ten: Mosaics in principal rooms

Chapter Eleven: Baths and the Porticus

Chapter Twelve: Mosaics in aisled buildings

Chapter Thirteen: Maintenance, repair and alterations

Chapter Fourteen: Mosaics and the end of Roman Britain

Chapter Fifteen: How mosaics were recorded

Chapter Sixteen: Mosaics on display

Bibliography

Index

• By (author) Stephen R. Cosh

‘Stephen Cosh, together with his colleague Dr David Neal, are the authors of a truly monumental and authoritative five-volume survey of all the Roman mosaics of Britain… In this book, Cosh distils his vast learning to produce an ideal handbook to the subject in 16 chapters whose contents include the manufacture of mosaics and the construction of geometric patterns… Cosh’s handbook will surely remain the key introduction to the Roman British mosaics into the foreseeable future, and Archaeopress is to be congratulated for maintaining the quality of the parent corpus.’ – Martin Henig (2026): Current Archaeology issue 437

—