This article comparatively examines expertise and policy-making related to school maturity in postwar Czechoslovakia and Poland. Through an analysis of published sources and archival material, it traces the intensive development of pedagogical and psychological expertise about school maturity from the early 1960s onward and examines how that development influenced the policies introduced in both countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using the concept of the expertise as a network as our analytical lens, we show that despite considerable differences in education systems and particular features of expertise in the two countries, pedagogical expertise affected policies in a very similar way through intensive networking, leading to the introduction of measures such as preparatory departments and compensatory classes in Czechoslovakia and early enrollment in Poland. We argue that educational policy-making in post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia and Poland was largely expert-driven. Nevertheless, there were limitations on the experts’ influence, as not all the proposed changes were introduced.

Through archival research, this article examines the relationship between the UK government, UK banks and the Bank of England during the development of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) sovereign debt crisis in Poland, Romania and Hungary. UK banks played a key role in the development of East–West relations during the Cold War through actively developing business ties with CEE countries. This article reveals that the UK government saw these relationships as a means to further its foreign policy goals towards the region and strengthen East–West European political and economic ties, which it sought to encourage through the use of export credit guarantees. It also illustrates how these foreign policy goals were the motivation for the UK government to encourage continued lending to Poland, Romania and Hungary during the outbreak of the CEE sovereign debt crisis through the Bank of England in its role as an intermediary between the government and banks. The article contributes to the underexplored role of export credit agencies, specifically the UK’s Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD), in the development of the sovereign debt crisis and demonstrates how UK banks helped finance the UK’s foreign policy toward CEE during the Cold War with the support and encouragement of the UK government.

A small group of late Roman ‘spoon-shaped’ objects with weapon terminals and a westerly distribution add to the growing evidence of ‘regionality’ in material culture within Roman Britain. While their function remains uncertain, the presence of weapon-shaped terminals can be seen alongside the increasing numbers of model objects recorded from the province.

This article examines how the American psychologist David McClelland advocated a quasi-colonial interventionist view to social science, shaped by his understanding of scientific progress, economic development, and social change. In the 1960s, he saw real-world experiments as a means both to test his theories and to generate knowledge efficiently and quickly—all with the ultimate aim of improving the human condition. While his primary focus was knowledge production rather than social transformation, his dual roles as professor and consultant carried an interventionist dimension, grounded in the belief that psychological measuring instruments could serve as tools for psychological training. By reconstructing this stance and the interstitial space McClelland created between academia and consultancy, I aim to show that his drive to intervene—exemplified by his company’s work in Curaçao—stemmed less from a pre-scientific conviction than from a distinctive mode of scientific practice.

The proliferation of fortification in north-western Europe during Late Antiquity marks an important shift from the first to early third centuries. The fortified cities and military installations were joined by new fortified towns and rural and hilltop defences. While these defences have been extensively studied, there has been little engagement with this transformation at a statistical level. This article provides an overview of defence in the region using data collected across northeastern Gaul and the provinces of Germania Secunda and Germania Prima. It will highlight biases, distributions and key variations in the dataset and demonstrate regional variations in defence on a large scale.

This article reexamines the relationship between Jeremy Bentham and Edward Gibbon Wakefield through the lens of one of Bentham’s last projects, “Colonization Company Proposal” (1831), and his support for Wakefield’s scheme of “systematic colonization.” Their intellectual encounter explains how key Benthamite principles were integrated into Wakefield’s influential vision, with lasting effects. While famous for opposing the penal colony in New South Wales, Bentham was persuaded by Wakefield’s principles of commodifying Indigenous land as the basis for restricting landownership in order to compel labor, foster civilization, and fund emigration. Bentham’s distinctive perspective emerges from a comparison of his commentary with the body of work published by the Wakefieldians between mid-1829 and 1831. In turn, after Bentham’s death in June 1832, Wakefield drew heavily from his ideas. Bentham’s and Wakefield’s shared investment in the entwined discourses of penal reform and systematic colonization legitimized Britain’s imperial reorientation toward colonization.

As the leading journal for studies of Roman Britain for over 50 years, Britannia has proved a successful publishing outlet for papers that have arisen from the UK developer-funded archaeology sector. This level of interest should encourage the sector to submit more papers to Britannia, but it could also encourage influential journals to improve inclusivity in the publishing traditions of the sector, which are discussed in terms of a widespread failure to acknowledge intellectual property and expertise and to encourage wider involvement in analysis and publishing. The authors use three case studies from their own areas of work to illustrate current problems surrounding authorship, leadership and gendered practice. We then propose ways in which these issues could be tackled.

This article combines approaches from critical place-name studies and the ‘imperial turn’ to examine the perception of Vilnius and the so-called Northwestern Region as Russian ‘national territory’ rather than merely an imperial possession. In the second half of the nineteenth century, to counter the significant Polish influence, the tsarist elite intensified the ‘imperialization’ of Vilnius’ cityscape more than in other borderland towns. Meanwhile, the local public, lacking any real influence over place-naming, lived in an alternative reality and continued using old names. The case of Vilnius illustrates the empire’s systematic but largely failed efforts to intervene into subjects’ lives.

Intramural adult human remains, whether articulated or disarticulated, from Roman towns in Britain are uncommon. There is evidence for some remains to have been deliberately curated and/or treated post mortem in a particular way before final deposition. This paper focuses on the disarticulated human remains from late Iron Age and Roman Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), noting the parts of the skeleton represented, their contexts, and whether there is evidence for curation or treatment post mortem. Twenty-one examples have been radiocarbon dated, enabling an assessment of changes in spatial patterning over time. An early and a late cluster are identified. The results from Silchester follow a review of comparable evidence from the major towns of Roman Britain. This reveals a broad similarity in patterning between Silchester and the Romano-British countryside. There are several urban parallels for Silchester’s late cluster, but only London for the early grouping.

Satellite imagery in north-west Wirral shows a cropmark, plausibly representing the partial circuit of a Roman camp. On Wirral — that peninsula flanked by the rivers Mersey and Dee — the northern coast of which provided the only seaboard of the Cornovii tribe, Roman military sites are unknown. However, a fort has been posited 7 km to the north-north-west at Meols and a camp in its hinterland would not be unreasonable. This feature is therefore potentially significant and warrants description.

The article introduces the special issue by mapping the field of pertinent scholarship and situating the articles with regard to the special angles and contributions they have to offer. As our five articles present case studies from Bulgaria and the GDR, both state socialist countries and their health care systems are portrayed here to provide context. The introduction locates each of the contributions and the overarching aims of the special issue within current scholarly discussions and demonstrates the issue’s innovative potential.

Recent excavations on the A14 Cambridge-to-Huntingdon Road Improvement Scheme have revealed that pottery-making was an important aspect of the economies of early Roman rural communities living in the densely settled landscape of southern Cambridgeshire, UK. This paper discusses the seven known ‘Lower Ouse Valley’ pottery-making sites as reflective of local rural economy and social interaction, highlighting the different scales at which there is evidence for social networks being in play in the constitution of this newly discovered pottery industry. It is argued that the density of rural settlement in this area helped facilitate the emergence of a coherent but informally defined ceramic tradition, embodied as a system of technical knowledge shared predominantly between neighbours and as features of non-specialised social interactions.