Forward from the Romans; the Cotswolds again.doc (original) (raw)
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The Cotswolds: Problems of Roman Rural Settlement
The Cotswolds, in western central Britain, form an area of agricultural production but the balance between different forms of farming have changed over the centuries. The changes in the Roman period can be investigated, and those changes may help understanding of Roman rural archaeology on other areas
In this survey of continuity I am concerned more to ask questions than to provide answers. The reason for this is the remarkably tangled state of present studies of the period and the processes which bridge the gap between the clearly defined Roman province of Britannia in the second century a.d. and the English Middle Ages up to the eleventh century. I assume that when a field of study consistently fails to provide reasonable answers to questions, it is the fault of the questions rather than the evidence available; hence my concern to spend time over the questions to be asked.
FERNÁNDEZ-GÖTZ, M.; Cowley, D.; Hamilton, D.; Hardwick, I. and McDonald, S. (2022): Beyond Walls: Reassessing Iron Age and Roman Encounters in Northern Britain. Antiquity 96(388): 1021-1029.
Northern Britain is one of a few areas in Western Europe over which the Roman Empire did not establish full control. In order to reassess the impact of Rome in this northernmost frontier, the new Leverhulme-funded project "Beyond Walls" is analysing the long-term transformation of settlement patterns in an area extending from south of Hadrian's Wall to north of the Antonine Wall. The results of a pilot study around Burnswark hillfort demonstrate the potential of such a landscape-based approach.
The paper seeks to find the proper, or at least current role of theory in Roman archaeology. It sets up a project to study the settlement pattern of Roman Britain from purely material sources and tries to investigate the presence or need for theory in each of the successive steps of the project. A division is found between the gathering of observations and their manipulation, which can be relatively explicit and the interpretation of the observations which has to have an an element of theory and subjectivity. Three basic questions arise from this title. Which theories? To which areas of Roman archaeology should they be applied? What is the purpose of such application?
Excavation of an early Roman settlement at Lay Wood, Devizes, Wiltshire, 2016
Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 2020
Excavation of an area of about 2ha in advance of housing development revealed a zone of intensive occupation dating from about the middle of the 1st century AD to the end of the 2nd century AD, with prehistoric activity indicated by redeposited flintwork. The Roman features were primarily field boundaries and associated trackways and enclosures, and included a probable circular building and cremation burials. The sequence of development was complex and many features had been repeatedly redug. The early Roman occupation lay about 400m from a probable Roman villa building which was partly examined during an evaluation of the wider site and subsequently preserved in situ.