This book is entirely dependent on the painstaking work over many years of archaeologists, conservationists, photographers, curators, epigraphers and many more. My first thanks, therefore, must go to all those responsible for their discovery and publication. The Bloomberg Tablets were excavated by the Museum of London Archaeology, with the support of Bloomberg LP. The tablets were photographed by Andy Chopping and drawn, transcribed, translated and interpreted by Roger S. O. Tomlin. They are on display in the London Mithraeum at the Bloomberg building and in the London Museum.

The Vindolanda Tablets continue to be excavated by the Vindolanda Trust, led initially by Robin and Patricia Birley, subsequently by Anthony and Heide Birley, and currently by Andrew and Barbara Birley; they were photographed in infra-red originally by Alison Rutherford and since by many others. They have been transcribed, translated and interpreted by Alan Bowman and David Thomas with contributions by J. N. Adams (Tab. Vindol. II and III), John Pearce (Tab. Vindol. III), and Roger S. O. Tomlin (Tab. Vindol. IV). They are displayed imaginatively in Vindolanda and in the British Museum.

The Uley Tablets were excavated by The Committee for Rescue Archaeology in Avon, Gloucestershire and Somerset, later renamed the Western Archaeological Trust, and subsequently by the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit. The tablets were conserved and unrolled by Simon Dove of the Department of Prehistoric and Romano British Antiquities of the British Museum. They have been drawn, transcribed, translated and interpreted by Roger Tomlin, who published them initially in The Uley Shrines: Excavation of a Ritual Complex, one-by-one in Britannia, the journal of The Roman Society, and completely in The Uley Tablets. They are on display in the British Museum, and described in displays at the Museum in the Park, Stroud.

Since 2019, the Bloomberg Tablets and the Vindolanda Tablets have been available to all on the web site, “Roman Inscriptions of Britain,” created by Scott Vanderbilt and part of the LatinNow project. I have delighted in the photographs of the original tablets and the links to the British Museum Online Collecction’s greater range of photographs; and I have drawn extensively on the full commentary and notes that accompany each tablet. I look forward to the publication of the Uley Tablets on RIB. Displays of the tablets themselves have caught my imagination. My thanks go to Roger Tomlin for his encouragement and permission to use his work so extensively.

Second, my thanks must go to those who made this research possible, especially to the Kirby Laing Foundation who funded the PhD on which this book is based, and to my supervisor, Professor Philip Esler, Portland Chair in New Testament Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. His encouragement, guidance and support has been invaluable throughout. Thank you to Professor Greg Woolf, Leon Levy Director of New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies and to Professor Peter Oakes, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, and other readers for their helpful guidance and support in revising my PhD thesis in readiness for publication. Thank you to all at Wipf and Stock for their guidance and support. Thank you to Chris Jones-Jenkins for preparing the Map and to Phil Cleaves for adapting it for this book.