Abstract
AbstractThe English Landscape and Identities project (EngLaId), which ran from 2011 to 2016 (ERC grant number 269797), was designed to take a long-term perspective on English archaeology from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BCE) to the Domesday survey (1086 CE). It was a legacy data project that collated an immense number of records of English archaeology from a large number of different public and academic sources. Within this mountain of material, the Roman period (43 to 410/411 CE) stood out as being particularly fecund, accounting for 40% of the data (by record count) coming from only 15% of the total timespan of the project. This paper examines the ways in which the EngLaId project approached the modelling and analysis of its data for Roman England. We focus here on the three themes of demography, subsistence economy and transportation. Overall, EngLaId provides an interesting contrast to the possibilities and limitations of the other projects presented in this volume because of its large spatiotemporal scale and its (thus necessary) broad-brush approaches to data analysis and modelling. It is also this large spatiotemporal scale that helps situate the Roman period within a much longer span of history, making evident what was unique to this time period and what was constant across multiple periods.
Highlights
It was in essence a legacy data project that collected a very large amount of material on the archaeology of England covering the timespan from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BCE) to the Domesday survey of 1086 CE
The team gathered a database of over 900,000 records of archaeological sites from a large number of sources. These included almost all of the local government/national park-based Historic Environment Records (HERs), Historic England (HE), the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and a number of other smaller datasets collated by individuals or other bodies
The English Landscape and Identities project (EngLaId) project was not designed with a Roman-centred research agenda, but it was clear that no matter what question was asked of the longue durée of English history, the Roman period had a significant contribution to its archaeological appearance
Summary
The team gathered various ancillary datasets including the results of HE’s National Mapping Programme, the grey literature library held by the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), and HE’s Index of Excavations ( curated by the ADS). This mass of material was complex and rich in detail but was mostly rather high level: in other words, the data could describe English archaeology at the scale of sites and landscapes but could answer few questions on an intra-site or contextual basis, due to lack of consistent recording of archaeology at greater levels of detail than the site. One must set limits to any analysis and using the bounds of modern-day England allowed a reasonable degree of consistency to exist across most of the original data sources gathered, as almost all of the bodies
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
