It is a truism but also a reality that the Roman Empire was an agrarian empire. Even the luxurious cities of Asia Minor derived most of their riches directly and indirectly from the agrarian world. That was even truer of the north-western provinces and especially Roman Britain. The province had cities and towns, but to a Roman from the Mediterranean they would have seemed pathetic entities. A Londinium, let alone an Eboricum or a Viriconium, would fail to impress. The history of the province should be written most fully from the perspective of its countryside. However, to study Roman rural history one has to have full and reliable data. For instance, the complicated and prolonged debate on the structure and evolution of the late Republican Italian countryside has been hindered and distorted by the limitations of the relevant datasets.
The series of volumes under review here sets out to provide such an archaeologically based dataset for Roman Britain. The general editors, Fulford and Holbrook, deserve great credit for coordinating and bringing to fruition this complicated project in which a diverse team of experts has provided specialised studies. It is a formidable undertaking resulting in three handsome volumes, totalling 1,412 pages in all. The text is accompanied by an impressive series of maps, charts, graphs and other visuals. At times the detail is almost overwhelming, but it is the abundant yet ordered detail that makes this study so important. The project also resulted in a major online resource hosted by the Archaeological Data Service, which includes downloadable data related to the synthetic sections in the print volumes.
The mission of this research enterprise is to provide a comprehensive picture of the countryside in late pre-conquest and Roman Britain. The military zone centred on Hadrian's Wall receives only limited coverage, in part because, outside of the catchment areas of the forts, settlement was sparse and poor. Also the Wall zone has seen relatively little development-related archaeology and therefore its profile is rather different from the areas covered in these reports, which are predominantly based on the unpublished ‘grey literature’ derived from salvage excavations in advance of development. Also omitted for the most part are London and other towns, where the data might prove overwhelming, although they were powerful magnets that formed the rural areas adjacent to them.
What is innovative and important here is not what is omitted, but what is included. The authors and editors start their analyses with the information available in the considerable published literature, ranging from the antiquarian to the very recent, and advance from that formidable dataset into the mass of reports resulting from construction projects. Most of the latter is unpublished, and often buried in the Historic Environment Record. Such documentation is especially important for studies of the countryside, since roads, airports and housing developments tend more often to be built outside cities and towns. Finally, they have extensively and imaginatively used information derived from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), designed to record chance finds, especially by metal detectorists.
In these volumes, these varied and often complicated and opaque datasets have been moulded into a series of analyses and discussions designed to provide a carefully constructed and nuanced picture of the development of rural life in late Iron Age and Roman Britain. The study opens with the definition and description of the eight geographical/cultural regions, stretching from the south-east of Britain to Wales and the Marches, that frame and organise the multi-faceted discussions that follow. These utilise a typology of ‘rural building/settlement’ from ‘open farmsteads’ to ‘roadside settlements’ and vici that formed the structural components of the Romano-British countryside. The total is over 2,600 sites that highlight the settlement complexity of the Romano-British countryside.
The result is a range of detailed discussions of different aspects of rural life, paying due attention to structures and conglomerates large and small. The totality forces a rethinking of how the countryside functioned. The importance attributed to the ‘indigenous’ roadside settlements over the ‘imported’ villa makes clear the centrality of ‘the native’ as opposed to ‘the imported’ in rural Roman Britain. Other data affirm traditional judgements. The higher counts of sites in the south-east and south-central areas as opposed to the north and the west reaffirm divisions that have long been part of Romano-British studies, although they may also reflect differences in modern development in these zones.
Typological analyses then give way to more synthetic approaches in which each of the regions is analysed in terms of settlement types and settlement histories. The perspectives are varied. In the discussions of the ‘South’ and ‘Central Belt’ areas, regions rich in villas, every effort is made not just to describe villas, but to relate them to other settlement types and to roads. They become part of a full and diverse rural landscape whose components range from small ‘enclosed farmsteads’ to large ‘roadside settlements’.
Although the research is focused on the Roman period, efforts are made to identify continuities of rural settlement and landscape use from the late Iron Age onward. This is important, since so many of the structures and settlement systems, outside of the villas, had pre-Roman origins and continued in use during the Roman period. Less synthetically covered (although by no means totally neglected) is the impact of the end of direct Roman rule on the countryside, a topic of growing importance in Romano-British studies. Information about this transitional period is scattered throughout the reports and it would have been useful to have the authors and editors provide a more synthetic discussion of the end, as well as the beginning, of the Roman countryside of Britain.
Changing patterns of artefact use in different settlement types are carefully documented, enhanced by information obtained through the PAS. Information derived from environmental archaeology and especially floral and faunal studies is cited and used throughout. A focused case study of the Cambridge Fen Edge provides the opportunity for more detailed analyses, especially in reconstructing landscape usage. While it is clear that the Romans never transformed the countryside of rural Britain in the way they did a region like Picardy, still the modifications made were real and complex.
In an overall judgement on these thoughtfully conceived regional studies I would raise concern about two important omissions: the Wall zone and the London catchment area. The authors and editors rightly argue that the two were so large and complex, and raise so many distinctive issues that they would dominate the study. However, it is clear that in different ways they had major impacts on rural Roman Britain. A synthetic section assessing their impact on shaping rural Roman Britain would have been useful.
That said, we must be grateful for the detailed and thoughtful presentations that are provided. The many graphs and other visuals, which become ‘texts’ in themselves, provide synthetic overviews, which can then be explored in the written texts. The authors and editors are clear and imaginative in their presentations, yet are always honest in acknowledging the limits of the evidence.
Although a detailed summary or critique is not possible in this review, it is interesting that some generalisations going back to Francis Haverfield remain at least partially valid. However, the massing of new information and emphasis on the indigenous over the Roman create a picture of an enormously complex rural world. This is especially true for areas like Wales and the North.
Volume 2 (The Rural Economy of Roman Britain), concentrates on the detailed analysis of the different categories of evidence that shaped the generalised picture presented in volume 1. A detailed consideration of plant resources reconstructs the geography and chronology of plant usages, crop ecology and harvest management. The archaeology of agrarian processes like corn drying, storing and malting is discussed. Given the known importance of animal products in the provincial rural economy and the centrality of faunal analysis in Romano-British archaeology, this section is rich in detail. Donkeys and mules alone generate two packed pages of data. Not all is detail, however, as the very useful chapters on ‘agricultural strategies’ and rural craft production show.
The Romano-British economy had a high level of local autonomy. However, it was linked at various levels to the wider provincial and imperial economies. This is best illustrated by the coin finds, which receive detailed considerations. Here the data obtained through the PAS are important and another instance of the interwoven worlds of amateur and professional that has been one of the historic strengths of Romano-British archaeology. Here the south-east/north-west divide is very striking, with a considerable coin presence at a range of sites and eras in the south-east and a sparse scatter in the north-west. The ceramic evidence is too complex to review, but there seems to be a considerable disjunction between the markets in the cities and towns, and those in the countryside.
The first part of volume 3 (Life and Death in the Countryside of Roman Britain) is focused on ‘society’ in the rural world. It is varied and somewhat amorphous. A category like personal appearance allows for a detailed discussion of brooches, strengthened again by PAS data. Other sections, like that on literacy, are understandably brief, for the range of site types providing evidence is limited. There follows a detailed return to animal husbandry with more emphasis on animal usage. Here non-food mammals, like horses, dogs and cats, come into play, as do wild animals in relation to activities like hunting. In good English tradition, a badger and quantities of oysters make their appearance.
Slightly awkwardly, the badger and the oysters are followed by religion and death. Considerations of death involve a detailed discussion of mortuary rituals and human remains. However, since the sacred was so central to Roman-British rural life, an earlier discussion, relating the practices of religion, landscape and settlement, would seem more appropriate. Still, the analysis of the evidence is detailed and comprehensive. At times, such as in the case of Roman Bath, more context would be useful.
Death appropriately takes up the last part of the study, with detailed discussion and comprehensive analysis of physical remains. Various forms of interment are reviewed, with special interest shown in such unusual manifestations as decapitation. Especially informative are the discussions of infant/neonatal burials. The section ends with considerations of palaeopathology and some generalised demographic observations. There is also a set of detailed tables documenting diseases and pathologies in the various study regions
In conclusion, I wish to emphasise again the overarching importance of this study. This is the first time, to my scholarly knowledge, that the bewildering complexities of a Roman provincial countryside have been presented with this level of informative detail. It represents a fine combination of a rich archaeological tradition and the best that modern archaeological theory and practice can provide. It sets a standard toward which all archaeologists working on the Roman countryside should aspire.
