Our visit to the excavation of a Roman fort on a hill near Coventry was of more than archaeological interest. The year's dig had been a fruitful one and had assembled evidence of a permanent military camp much larger than had at first been conjectured. We were greeted on the site by a group of excavators, some of them filling in a trench that had yielded an almost complete pot the day before, others enjoying the last-day luxury of a cigarette in the sun, but all happy to explain and talk about their work. If we had not already known it, nothing would have suggested that this was a party of prisoners from the nearby prison. This is not the first time that prison labour has been used in work of this kind, but here the experiment, now two years old, has proved outstandingly satisfactory. From the archaeologists' point of view, prisoners provide a steady force of disciplined labour throughout the entire season, men to whom it is a serious day's work, and not the rather carefree holiday job that it tends to be for the .amateur archaeologist. Newcomers are comparatively few, and can soon be initiated by those already trained in the work. Prisoners may also be more accustomed to heavy work like shovelling and carting soil than the majority of students, and they also form. a fair cross-section of the population and can furnish men whose special skills make them valuable as surveyors, draughtsmen of pottery restorers. When Coventry's Keeper of Archaeology went to the prison to appeal for help, he was received cautiously by the men, but when the importance of the work was fully understood, far more volunteers were forthcoming than could actually be employed. When they got to work on the site, and their efforts produced pottery and building foundations in what until last year had been an ordinary field, their enthusiasm grew till they would sometimes work through their lunch hour and tea break, and even carry on in the rain rather than sit it out in the hut. This was undoubtedly because the work was not only strenuous but absorbing, and called for considerable intelligence. The men worked always under professional supervision, but as the season went on they needed less guidance and knew when an expert should be summoned. Disciplinary problems were negligible, the men were carefully selected for their good conduct and working on a party like this was too valuable a privilege to be thrown away. The Keeper of Archaeology said that this was by far the most satisfactory form. of labour that he had ever had, and that it had produced results, in quantity and quality, that could not have been achieved by any other means. A turf and timber fort built near the Roman highway through the middle of England in the first century AD had been excavated over an area of 14,000 square feet, and a se ction of turf rampart and palisade fully reconstructed by methods identical to those employed by the Roman army. The restoration of the Roman fort is being financed by Coventry Corporation as part of a plan to create a leisure amenity area. To this project prisoners have contributed work which otherwise would not have been performed and which benefits the whole community. The visit to the excavation site was______