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hut which contained a hoard of coins, buried in haste by a maker of 'minims'-small copies of the official coinage. A thorough discussion by Mr. G. C. Boon shows that counterfeiting stopped at Coygan in 282 or a year or two later. From this he goes on to consider the production of minims in Britain as a whole, showing that it must have ceased soon after the death of Probus. This discussion is a landmark in the correlation of archaeological and numismatic evidence. Dr. Wainwright is meticulous in relating the new evidence from Coygan to its wider archaeological context. To take one item only: his account of Demetia under Roman rule is first class. We may hope that it will soon be superseded, for it demonstrates clearly how very little fieldwork has been done in the area, and it should serve as a springboard for further research. If Coygan Camp did no more than that, it would be amply justified; but the basic content of the volume is going to be important for many years to come. MICHAEL G. JARRETT Cardiff THE MAKING OF EARLY ENGLAND. By D. P. Kirby. Batsford, 1967. Pp. 320. 45s. This book, well illustrated and with a select bibliography covering twenty pages, embraces the whole of the Anglo-Saxon period. Dr. Kirby portrays the Anglo-Saxons as real people who faced the hardships of disease, malnutrition and sometimes starvation, whose menfolk knew the realities of the battlefield, however much their poets might glorify war, and whose women had once treasured the brooches buried in their graves. It is one of the merits of his book that he sees these people going about their daily affairs in a country of which parts at least are still recognisably both theirs and ours. He frequently reminds his readers of the limitations of the evidence, he refrains from speculation on the whereabouts of lost place-names, he is cautious on such controversial topics as land tenure and military service, and he rightly refuses to look at rural society in over-simplified terms of free and unfree. He departs radically, and not altogether convincingly, from the traditional chronology of the invasion period and his dismissal of Bede's evidence on some points touching Northumbrian chronology seems high-handed. Where he might have questioned the orthodox view about the royal writing-office, he remains conservative.