Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/358

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK evidence an occupation before rather than after a.d. 300. Nor do any general considerations require us to assume that Burgh Castle was supported by subsidiary posts at Caister or Reedham or anywhere else. The other forts of the Saxon Shore stood each by itself, alone, and Burgh Castle would naturally be like the rest. No doubt the absence of out- posts may have constituted a weakness in the defences of the Shore, but that weakness is significant. The Saxon Shore represented what the government was able to do, not what it may have wished to do, in the direction of protecting south-eastern Britain. We are liable to conceal the true position of the Roman military power in the fourth century if we fill up its deficiencies with specious theorizing. Should future dis- coveries some day demonstrate that Reedham and Caister were fourth- century forts, we shall of course raise a little our conception of the strength of the coast defences. Meanwhile we may perhaps venture to think that the Wash and the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk were not altogether ill-protected. The two great gateways to the interior, the door of the Wash and the door of Yarmouth, were at any rate guarded, and the part that lay undefended, the coast for many miles east and west of Cromer, was neither easy to land upon nor contiguous to rich and attractive districts. In this detail, as in others, we recognize that the Romano-British life in Norfolk was poor and scanty. 7. Miscellaneous Hitherto we have dealt with some form or other of settled life in Roman Norfolk. We have been obliged to doubt in several cases what form of settled life our remains represent, but in every case the facts or alleged facts have seemed to indicate permanence and regular occupation. There remain to be noticed many scattered finds, coins, urns, objects in metal, and much else which we cannot fix to any definite place in the Romano-British civilization of Norfolk. Many, perhaps most of these, are in all probability due to mere chance and isolated circumstances : some may be so imperfectly known that we miss their real meaning. Such objects do not and cannot materially assist our conceptions of Roman Norfolk. Hoards of coins or of bronze ornaments, for instance, tell us very little if they stand alone. Hoards of coins have their own value for the students of political economy, since they often reveal secrets in the history of the Roman currency. But they do not so often illustrate the occupation or character of the districts in which they are found. Some- times they occur in the close vicinity of dwellings, buried — for instance — in a back garden which the owner had constantly under his eye. But they occur no less often in places remote from any known Romano-British habitation : they have been lost or purposely hidden in a secluded and unfrequented spot. We shall therefore summarize all such sporadic and accidental remains in the alphabetical list with which this article con- cludes, and we shall perforce include in that list some discoveries which, if we knew them better, we might not perhaps call accidental. But one or two of these sporadic finds merit a fuller notice than an 306