Mosaics in Britannia
By (author) Stephen R. Cosh
Paperback (Published)
(March 2026)
ISBN: 9781805832331
7.99 x 10.91 inches
Price: $42.00
In stock
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
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