Regional syntheses have become more common recently in archaeology. This could be due to matters of practice, notably English Heritage's regional research agendas, or to changing theoretical perspectives, for example the post-processualist desire to replace ‘grand narratives’ with studies of diverse social trajectories. Describing such trajectories comes with challenges, however, not least the need to combine, in a single, coherent narrative, disparate sources of evidence such as landscape research projects, commercial fieldwork disseminated only via ‘grey literature’, and specific investigations of particular types of site or classes of evidence. Yorkshire is blessed with more than its fair share of such difficult evidence and these two authors — one born and bred: Peter Halkon (H.), the other a long-since adopted son: Patrick Ottaway (O.) — are to be congratulated on confronting this task.
The two books differ in chronological and geographical spread: H. embraces Bronze Age to Roman periods but only across East Yorkshire; O. covers all the Ridings but with a Roman-only focus. Yet they have much in common, sometimes even down to the illustrations they use, and are therefore discussed together below. Such accounts can be judged on two grounds: do they present a convincing description of the evidence? And do they take understanding forward as a result? Here, the answer to the first question is a resounding ‘Yes’. The response to the second must be more qualified.
Each starts with a discussion of the history of investigation in the region from antiquarian observation onwards; of geological setting, with its implications for diversity of social activity in the past and of site visibility in the present; and of their own theoretical foundations. The first two elements are necessary and uncontroversial. On underlying perspectives, however, both authors acknowledge recent developments in social theory but are then avowedly conventional in their own positions.
Thus H. knows there is much debate over categories such as ‘the Parisi’ and ‘the Arras culture’, yet bats away recent critiques with a simple, unargued statement that this tribal unit ‘must be relevant’ to archaeological interpretation. This leads to some questionable conclusions. An ‘East Yorkshire identity’ is thought evident from the Late Bronze Age, yet landscape development at the time is very similar to what is seen elsewhere (it is only in the Middle Iron Age that distinctive burials occur here). After the Roman period, sixth-century Deira is said to have recreated this identity, seemingly showing its tenacity.
For his part, O. accepts that ‘Romanisation’ must comprise a two-way process and that, to best interpret patterning in our archaeological evidence, we should step beyond culture-historical perspectives dictated by documentary and epigraphic sources. What he wishes to replace this framework with is, however, far less clear. Indeed, in what follows (for example with chapters divided between Hadrian, Severus and Constantine), he seems bound by the same strictures. When some trends, for example developments in pottery production, landscape organisation or burial practices, do not fit these chronological divisions, evidence gets shoe-horned in anyway. This not only makes for some repetition but, more importantly, obscures significant changes of gear in broader social development from the early third century (below).
The picture of Iron Age Yorkshire that emerges, albeit with considerable differences between east and west, is of an increasingly complex society in which land enclosure allows intensified exploitation, notably in the form of ‘ladder settlements’ on the Wolds, employing mixed agriculture focused on sheep and crop processing, the latter using rotary querns over earlier beehive equivalents. The roundhouses in which people lived are seen by both authors in purely practical terms — space divided by function, doorways positioned to maximise sunlight, surrounding ditches to drain wet areas. Each notes some specialist manufacture, most obviously the large-scale iron production around the Foulness Valley which H. has researched in considerable detail. It is this, perhaps, which explains the emergence of occasional élite cart burials amongst the well-known square-ditched ‘Arras’ burials here. The west of the region is not lacking in social complexity either, as implied by the large site at Stanwick, conventionally linked to the political and military history of the region at the point when Rome moved north of the Humber.
The process of conquest is covered in mostly conventional terms. The militaristic bow-wave that resulted from having legions on your doorstep in the decades after a.d. 43 may be reflected in sword-bearing chalk figurines on the Wolds (H.), but also involved trade with southern Britain across the Humber via Redcliff. This was followed by formal conquest later in the first century a.d. using invasion forts at Brough and Hayton. York was always intended to be the main focus of Roman power in the North, expressed, O. suggests, by its very early stone walls. Weights and measures at Castleford show economic involvement of the state nearby, perhaps also the context in which moulds for metal objects were employed at this settlement. Lead exported via Brough (H.) was, presumably, officially-sanctioned, while samian tablewares and amphorae arrived in the opposite direction. For O., administered procurement was at play here.
The extremely interesting, early manufacture of glass objects at Coppergate, York (O.) may also have official origins, but could alternatively result from a new economic actor: the Iron Age entrepreneur. Roads, forts and towns not only spread military and administrative power but generated economic openings which natives ignored at their peril. Some seized such opportunities by setting up roadside settlements (H.) and one pottery producer, Varrus, is ‘an enterprising individual’ acting in a proto-capitalist economy (O.). In such ways, Yorkshire farmers overcame their ‘innate conservatism’ to eventually ‘see themselves as Roman’ (O.).
Landscapes beyond Roman infrastructure are then described in this framework. The absence of villas near York, possibly due to control of its territorium, contrasts with the hinterlands of Malton and Brough. This last zone includes the only probably early Yorkshire villa, at Welton, which may house the owner of a nearby quarry. In countless settlements beyond, natives now adopted Roman life-styles, using disc querns for crop processing and raising bigger cows (although not new breeds, and still used for traction before being killed for meat — clearly, there were limits on how much urban markets could dictate to their hinterlands).
What is most striking here is (i) diversity of response to Rome: some western areas remained undeveloped throughout (O.); and (ii) delayed impact: growth is mostly evident only from the third century (H.). Even the latter ‘success’ seems short-lived, with ditches backfilled during the fourth century. Production of good-quality Crambeck wares may be the one economic bright spot, its output spreading far to the north and west (though rarely south of the Humber — an ‘administered’ distribution?).
Impacts on religion and burial practice are also mixed. H. speculates about links between the gods and iron production but imported religions such as ‘eastern cults’ are confined to York, a place where legionaries with African origins may have influenced pottery supplies. Equally, although the general move from cremation to inhumation is evident, there is considerable overlap: cremations occur in Yorkshire well into the third century, if not beyond.
When discussing the end of Roman Yorkshire, both authors again fall back on established approaches. Thus the barbarian conspiracy explains the signal stations on the Yorkshire coast, a system now extended by O. across to Stainmore. The late refortification of Brough (H.) would add a coastal fort into that scheme, whilst O. also suggests that the ‘Anglian’ tower in York belongs to this period. Anglo-Saxon ‘invasions’, seemingly evident at Welton villa, then result in burials beside a Roman road at Sancton and on the margins of York, at Heworth and The Mount.
Yet re-use of burial grounds is not continuity of settlement or landscape exploitation, and all has not been well beneath the surface for some time. Metalworking is evident under York Minster before the fifth century, for example, occupying the very centre of monumental power: the earlier system had already decayed. Hence gradual deterioration, not Germanic conquest, is favoured by H. For O. a lack of military demand meant reduced surplus, and hence economic failure: ‘the impoverishment of the elite and in turn, the population as a whole’ (my emphasis).
At the outset, O. sets his face against deploying ‘value judgements from our times’ in looking at Yorkshire's Roman archaeology, such approaches being ‘not really amenable to serious argument’. Yet the top-down view of Romanisation adopted by both authors — locals responding to Roman markets and allowing wealth to trickle-down, until the legions depart — falls foul of exactly this ‘sin’. This is only one interpretative approach, and the voluminous evidence that both authors have searched out so assiduously and articulated so clearly might at least be allowed ‘another way of seeing’.
