Petuaria revisited: searching for Brough-on-Humber’s lost Roman theatre

Located around 12 miles west of Hull, Brough-on-Humber is traditionally associated with Roman Petuaria, a settlement listed in Ptolemy’s 2nd-century AD Geographia. During the Iron Age, it lay within the territory of the Parisi, a people associated with the distinctive square barrow burials and chariot burials of the Arras Culture (see CA 363), and it has been suggested that the settlement became a civitas, or tribal capital, after the Roman conquest, although this interpretation is not uncontroversial. Nonetheless, Brough enjoys an indisputably prominent spot on what was the main Roman road to Eboracum (York, c.30 miles to the north), and on the Humber Estuary, which could have provided an