The archaeological evidence, on the other hand, is definite and consistent, and perhaps deserves fuller notice than it has yet received.

It illuminates, not only the material civilization, but also the language and to some extent even the institutions of Roman Britain, and supplies, though imperfectly, the facts which our legal and philological arguments do not yield.
I need not here insert a sketch of Roman Britain.

But I may call attention to three of its features which are not seldom overlooked.

In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish the two halves of the province, the one the northern and western uplands occupied only by troops, and the other the eastern and southern lowlands which contained nothing but purely civilian life.[1] The two are marked off, not in law but in practical fact, almost as fully as if one had been _domi_ and the other _militiae_.

We shall not seek for traces of Romanization in the military area.