Mosaics in Britannia

Contents

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

About the Author

Stephen R. Cosh DLitt FSA is an independent archaeological writer and illustrator specialising in the Roman period. He worked for over thirty-five years with his colleague, David S. Neal, on the research, production and publication of the five-volume corpus of Romano-British mosaics, completed in 2024. He has contributed specialist reports on the mosaics from several sites, including Chedworth, Low Ham, Dewlish and Colliton Park, Dorchester, and the building report for the large villa complex at Eccles, Kent. He has also written articles on a variety of archaeological aspects of Roman Britain in addition to those concerning mosaics, appearing in the proceedings of several county archaeological societies, Britannia, Antiquaries Journal, Mosaic, the Association for Roman Archaeology (ARA) publications, among others. For many years he was secretary, editor and later vice-chairman of ASPROM (the Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics).

Reviews

‘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