Britons and Saxons on the Eastern Boundary of the Civitas Durotrigum. Bruce Eagles writes: For the purposes of civil administration, Roman Britain was divided into civitates. Generally, these territories were based upon existing tribal areas whose boundaries are difficult to ascertain and which in any case had often been subject to change through conquest in the period prior to the Roman invasion. Furthermore, it has been suggested that, immediately after the Roman conquest, adjustments could have been imposed by Roman officials to suit the administrative needs of Rome.47 This may well have been the co text for the creation of, for example, the civitas Belgarum, which is unlikely to have been a single pre-existing tribal territory. Such changes may have been made in the context of the transfer of local, again probably tribal, units, which became pagi, between one civitas and another, at least where appropriate. It has long been an academic commo place in France that the medieval dioceses, and their constituent pagi, were the direct territorial successors of the Roman civitates.48 However, both the civitates themselves, and the pagi, were often subject to boundary changes over the centuries.49 In order to demonstrate continuity between the ancient and medieval limits of any one particular civitas, therefore, it is necessary to u dertake a precise archaeological, historical, toponymical, and topographical survey of its bou ds. A recent study of this kind has been made by Professors Bernard and Roland Delmaire of the civitas Atrebatum i northern Gaul.50 They have been able to show that its limits are almost identical wit those of the bishopric of Arras, and this in an area very close to the limes, which, one might have thought, would have been subject to severe disruption from the third century A.D. onwards.51 In Britai , it has been argued elsewhere52 that southern Wiltshire lay within the western part of the civitas Belgarum, which was administered from Winchester (Venta Belgarum). The western limits of the civitas, it has been suggested, reached as far as Selwood, which divided it from t e northern part of t e civitas Durotrigum and, possibly, the Dobunni; the ancient boundary is today reflected in the county division between Wiltshire and Somerset (FIG. 5). Dorset also belonged to the civitas Durotrigum, which may at some date have been divided between the probable original capital, Dorc ester (Durnovaria), and a new one for the nort ern area, probably at Ilchester (Lindinis), whose former, unknown, status was thereby enha ced; other civitates are also thought to have been subdivided.53 Although, to date, it as proved difficult to reconstruct the boundaries of these Roman units of selfgovernment, there are hints of them at certain places. For some time prior to the Roman conquest, Durotrigan influence, as seen particularly through settlements associated with multiple ditch systems, pottery styles, a d coinage, is oticeably well established in south Wiltshire as far as the Wylye and the southern fringe of Salisbury Plain. These distinctive settlement groups, mostly concentrated on Grovely Ridge west of Salisbury, appear to be a very late Iron Age Durotrigan expansion i to the Salisbury area.54 It is suggested that easterly parts of the boundary of the civitas Durotrigum were based upon identifiable former tribal arrangements as follows. In the Roman period it can be argued that part of the eastern limit of the canton of the Durotriges is likely to have followed the line of Bokerley Dyke, whic today lies on the county boundary between Dorset and Hampshire (FIG. 5). Recent work has shown that there had been a boundary on the Bokerley line since, probably, the middle Bro ze Age. Its latest, unfinished and only partially built-up, phase, when the Roman road known as Ackling Dyke was at first blocked and then re-opened, may well date to the immediate post-Roma period.55 At Woodyates, where Ackling Dyke passes through the Bokerley line, Pitt-Rivers' excavations in 1892 discovered a substantial Romano-British settlement.56 Immediately to the north of the
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Aug 1, 2009
Chris Ourand 
Open Access