Romano-British Towns Research Articles

In Search of Durovernum: New Studies of Roman Canterbury

The paper deals with the current state of research of Durovernum cantiacorum (Roman Canterbury). History of ancient Canterbury in many aspects remains unknown and unclear despite the decades of fruitful fieldwork. One of the reasons for this is an obscuring image of Durovernum that presents it as a typical Romano-British town, almost identical to other centers of provincial urbanism. The author suggests that a number of key points in history of Roman Canterbury needs to become objects for the critical re-thinking. In particular it is needed to investigate a context of the foundation of Iron Age settlement, to update our knowledge of the main phases of the urban development, to analyze the data that helps to reconstruct social history of Durovernum. Contemporary research of these topics (works by D. Holman, J. Weekes, L. Duffy and others) gives us hope that the appearance of a new, more detailed and nuanced history of Roman Canterbury will happen very soon.

Stable isotope and dental pathology evidence for diet in late Roman Winchester, England

We combine analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes and dental pathology to reconstruct diet in a population from late Roman Winchester. The study's aim was to compare isotopic and dental indicators of diet, and combine these with other archaeological evidence to provide a more complete picture of food-ways in a late Romano-British town. Mean δ13C and δ15N values indicate a diet based largely on terrestrial C3 resources, and comparison with faunal values suggests that meat and/or dairy products from domesticates likely contributed the bulk of dietary protein. Dental pathology points to a carbohydrate-rich diet. Considered together, the isotopic and dental pathology data suggest a predominantly plant-based diet, with moderate consumption of meat and/or secondary products. A second aim of the study was to compare the findings with the contemporaneous but distinct cemetery assemblage from Lankhills School, Winchester, to test the theory that diet may have differed between sub-populations of the late Roman town. The results suggest broad similarity in the diets of individuals interred in different cemetery areas.

Town Origins and Development in Early England, c. 400-950 A.D.

Preface Introduction Romano-British Towns (c.43-500 A.D.) Romano-British Towns: Case Studies Early Anglo-Saxon Towns: Continuity or Rebirth? (c.400-650 A.D.) The Age of Anglo-Saxon Emporia (c.600-850 A.D.) Continental Emporia and Their English Connections (c.600-900 A.D.) Anglo-Saxon Burghs: Mercia and Wessex (c.750-950 A.D.) Conclusion Selected Bibliography Maps and Figures Index

Finds from Roman Aldborough: A Catalogue of Small Finds from the Romano-British Town of Isurium Brigantum

Finds from Roman Aldborough: A Catalogue of Small Finds from the Romano-British Town of Isurium Brigantum

The Origins of Some Major Romano-British Towns

A combination of excavation and study of accurately surveyed street systems of some Romano-British towns enables a distinction to be drawn between those with newly planned layouts and those founded on the sites of military fortresses. The aims of this article are to summarise very briefly, mainly by means of plans, the evidence for both types and to demonstrate how planned street-layouts can be detected.

Property-Boundaries and the Sizes of Building-Plots in Roman Towns

Recent excavations in Romano-British towns have produced evidence that property-boundaries, once fixed, often persisted over long periods. St. Albans, Cirencester, Leicester, Winchester, and Gloucester have furnished examples, while the results of earlier excavations at Caerwent, Wroxeter and Caistor-by-Norwich can probably be interpreted along similar lines. European parallels may be cited from Augst, Kempten, Xanten and, possibly, Cologne. On those sites where modern excavation has taken place the property-boundaries appear to have been fixed at an early date in the history of their respective towns. It would be of great interest to establish on what basis the original distribution of building-plots was made, especially those sited on street-frontages close to town-centres, where building-land was at a premium and where a systematic allocation of property might be expected.

A Survey of Romano-British Town Defences of the Early and Middle Second Century

A Survey of Romano-British Town Defences of the Early and Middle Second Century

Roman Silchester: The Archaeology of a Romano-British Town. By George C. Boon.

<i>Roman Silchester: The Archaeology of a Romano-British Town</i>. By George C. Boon.

The Reorganization of the Defences of Romano-British Towns in the Fourth Century

The Reorganization of the Defences of Romano-British Towns in the Fourth Century

Canterbury Excavations, 1944–8

On 1 June 1942, occurred the German air-raid which destroyed about one-fifth of the old part of the City of Canterbury. It was soon realized that a unique opportunity existed of discovering something of the archaeological past of the city before rebuilding again concealed the wide areas now exposed.It was not only an opportunity but a duty ; for modern rebuilding, with its deep foundations, would be bound to destroy a very large part of whatever evidence had survived until the present. The Canterbury Excavations Committee was accordingly formed by the initiative of the local Archaeological Society, and excavations under a supervisor lent by the Ministry of Works began in August 1944, and have continued three times a year up to the present.Canterbury is one of the few Romano-British towns where there are good grounds for supposing a continuity of occupation through the Dark Ages. Thus though there was little to hint at any pre-Roman occupation, from the Roman, Saxon, and Medieval periods much was to be expected. Yet such a prediction has not turned out wholly true. On the one hand evidence for a pre-Roman Belgic settlement is accumulating ; but little of Saxon date has been found, and the circumstances of the excavations have limited the extent of the medieval discoveries.The town could not be investigated purely as an archaeological problem, digging on sites which seemed promising and following out the plan as on an open site like Silchester or Verulam. There was a double call. Rebuilding was ever imminent, and the first sites to be rebuilt were likely to be along the main street-frontages. Attention was necessarily devoted first to them.

The Early Plan and Town Houses of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum)

The 1938–9 excavations at Calleva, of which Mrs Aylwin Cotton's report has recently appeared (1), show how much more can be learnt about a Romano-British town when modern scientific excavation technique is used to supplement the efforts of earlier antiquaries. George Fox, St. John Hope and Mill Stephenson (to whom all honour) achieved the complete plan, labouring from 1890–1908 each year for months at a time at the total excavation of the hundred acres within the city walls. Now Mrs Cotton by selective excavation and a study of stratigraphy has built up the outline chronology so urgently required : thus we have now both a Map and a Time-Chart for this city. Mrs Cotton's report shows that the original Roman city extended up to the outer earthwork, hitherto thought to be of pre-Roman construction, covering an area of some 230 acres (2), and that the walls with a slightly earlier bank behind them are a contraction of the latter half of the 2nd century A.D. (3) The evidence was clear ; the metal of the streets and layers of dark occupation soil of Hadrian-Antonine date continued under the bank (4)) and the streets continued on the same alignment in the space between the wall and outer earthwork (5). Of the street plan Mrs Cotton observes (6) inter alia that the chessboard ‘ is singularly rectangular ’ and that ‘ it did not exist, at any rate in its later form when the Bath Building in Insula XXXIII was built about the reign of Nero ’. It was these two comments and their footnotes that sent me searching the shelf with Archaeologia ranged heavily along it, and that prompted this article.

Verulamium Again

The excavation of Verulamium in the years 1930–4 originated in a coincidence of archaeological need and local opportunity. The former, at this late date, needs no elaboration; the latter, it may be recalled, lay in the acquisition, by the Borough of St. Albans, of the southern half of the walled site, now known to have taken shape in the second century A.D. A central area within the new Corporation property accordingly remained for three years the main focus of the excavations, supplemented by an intensive examination of the town-defences, including two wall-towers and three gateways, of which two lay on property retained by Lord Verulam.Archaeologically, the problem confronting the excavators was twofold: to establish (for the first time) the outlines of the economic history of a major Romano-British town deep-set in the 'lowland zone'; and to determine the relationship, topographically and culturally, of the successive Belgic and Roman settlements. It was a familiar fact that Verulamium had held an important royal mint at the beginning of the first century A.D., and, whether the term municipium applied by Tacitus to the town in A.D. 61 be taken at face-value or no, the chance of observing the growth of a first-class Roman city out of a first-class pre-Roman one was unsurpassed on any other site. It was, therefore, essential that the exploration of a part of the Roman city should be accompanied by a systematic search for its predecessor.

Further exploration of the Site of the Romano-British town of Magna (Kenchester)

Further exploration of the Site of the Romano-British town of Magna (Kenchester)

Research Items

A ROMAN FORTIFIED HOUSE NEAR CARDIFF.—In the Journal of Roman Studies (vol. xi. Part i), Mr. R. E. M. Wheeler gives an elaborate account of a fortified Roman villa, about two miles west of the west bank of the river Ely, at the point where that river, though still tidal, first becomes fordable. He concludes that about A.D. 300 this work felLjnto line with the general defensive and offensive activities of the period. At a time when Romano-British towns seem to have built or strengthened their walls as the Welsh tribesmen did, it is not unnatural that a private householder should have followed the same example on a smaller scale. It is indeed rather matter for remark that other examples of domestic fortification in the late Roman period have been so rarely observed or recorded. The closest analogy is perhaps the partially excavated house and baths within the Castle Dykes near Ripon.