shown signs of transportation here by water and reveals nothing specifically local.

Likewise, later
evidence of occupation, even since the arrival of the Romans, may lie next to the original banks
of the Brent but have been buried under centuries of silt. [43]

Roman Britain[edit]
Some of the earliest written references to the Thames (Latin: Tamesis) occur in Julius Caesar's
account of his second expedition to Britain in 54 BC,[44] when the Thames presented a major
obstacle and he encountered the Iron Age Belgic tribes the Catuvellauni and the Atrebates along
the river. The confluence of the Thames and Cherwell was the site of early settlements and the
River Cherwell marked the boundary between the Dobunni tribe to the west and
the Catuvellauni tribe to the east (these were pre-Roman Celtic tribes). In the late 1980s a
large Romano-British settlement was excavated on the edge of the village of Ashton Keynes in
Wiltshire.
Starting in AD 43, under the Emperor Claudius, the Romans occupied England and, recognising
the river's strategic and economic importance, built fortifications along the Thames valley
including a major camp at Dorchester. Cornhill and Ludgate Hill provided a defensible site near a
point on the river both deep enough for the era's ships and narrow enough to be
bridged; Londinium (London) grew up around the Walbrook on the north bank around the year
47. Boudica's Iceni razed the settlement in AD 60 or 61 but it was soon rebuilt and, following the
completion of its bridge, it grew to become the provincial capital of the island.
The next Roman bridges upstream were at Staines on the Devil's Highway between Londinium
and Calleva (Silchester). Boats could be swept up to it on the rising tide with no need for wind or
muscle power.