Like Britain, the Germanies were frontier provinces. For this reason, there has long been a dialogue between the army/frontiers specialists of Britain and their counterparts in Germany. The civil and trans-frontier aspects of Germany are generally much less well known in this country. This handbook offers an indispensable, thoroughly referenced resource for anglophone scholars, critically summarising literature that, even if German is read, is hard to obtain in this country. The 19 contributions are all written by researchers on the ground in Germany. They open doors to the latest discoveries and thoughts on just about every aspect. James and Krmnicek are to be congratulated on an initiative that will be of enduring use and significance.
Roman Germany here means those parts of the Roman provinces – and barbaricum – now in the modern Federal Republic. There is a distinct north-western slant – southern Germany (Raetia and Noricum in provincial terms) gets short shrift. In parts I–IV we have narratives of conquest, provincial development, crisis, disintegration and transformation into post-Roman kingdoms; descriptions of the pre-Roman Iron Age situation, urban and rural landscape development, the limes (defended frontier) and specific categories of cultural material or practice (pottery; coinage; religion; literacy; art). Two look at battle sites, Kalkriese (the Varusschlacht? They are not so sure) and Harzhorn (fought in c. 236, 170 km beyond the limes!). Three look at the Germans beyond the frontier and their relation to the empire. Finally, there is a brief history of the subject, suggesting current strengths and weaknesses.
What is strikingly different from Roman Britain? In much of Upper Germany and Raetia the immediately pre-Roman population is invisible, in places explicitly said not to exist – villas are sometimes described as colonising ‘empty’ areas. In Britain, in contrast, we have a sharp picture of a dense LPRIA landscape, and from Haverfield to Millett the Britons have been seen as contributing as much to Roman Britain as the Romans. A stated explanation for the difference in Germany is disruption and depopulation of La Tène settlement by Caesar's campaigns, followed by Roman directed settlement of German groups here and there. A British archaeologist will instinctively wonder whether the settlements of an immediately pre-Roman population have yet to be widely recognised archaeologically. Compare the difficulty of finding those other Germans, the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, whose settlements are simply less detectable than Iron Age ones. But if local people had a role in provincial development, it is hard to see: there is a persistent pattern for Roman towns in Germany to spring out of abandoned military bases, suggestive of a state-directed process on the old Webster–Frere model in Britain. At the remarkable Augustan site at Waldgirmes, urban foundation was clearly a Roman, not indigenous, initiative.
A second obvious difference lies in the events of the mid third century, when the limes beyond Rhine and Danube was abandoned. The essays reflect current thinking that sees this not as a sudden catastrophe precipitated by a single invasion, but a transition due to complex events: in the lost agri decumates, coin finds and cemeteries show continued connections with the empire. Nevertheless, in British terms this was the equivalent of Hadrian's Wall being evacuated and everything north of the Severn–Trent line becoming a no-man's land secured by client warlords with a drastically reduced ‘Roman’ population. Even west of the Rhine, life was ruptured. Of the two coloniae of Lower Germany, Cologne survived, much reduced, but Xanten was gradually abandoned.
A final difference is that many of the German archaeologists whose work is represented here excavate and study both Roman and indigenous or Germanic material. The term ‘Roman provincial archaeologist’ embraces all. Commendably, there is not the same gulf between Iron Age and Roman specialities that persists (though increasingly bridged) in Britain.
The chapters on the Germans in barbaricum present exciting new perspectives. The consensus here is that there was no acculturation, even close to the frontier, and regular trade only in limited specific situations. Imports were used selectively to reinforce elite status, as Fraser Hunter has argued for Britain north of Hadrian's Wall. Nevertheless, under the influence of Rome faraway societies developed technologies, social configurations, and eventually armies which overwhelmed the imperial frontiers.
Part V offers a series of reviews of the German essays from Dutch, French, British and North American perspectives. Roymans and Reddé both suggest that more could be done to model how the rural landscapes described in this book worked, socially and economically. In contrast, the North American (Kiernan) convincingly discredits the stereotype of German archaeology as lacking critical analysis and theory. In a last German word, Fischer laments a lack of synthesis (of the Atlas of Roman Britain type) and hopes that the present book will revive interest in the German provinces among British scholars.
So it should. The only disappointment is the poor reproduction of the illustrations (e.g. map on p. 172, practically illegible), not the fault of the illustrators themselves, and disgraceful in a book costing £110. Despite this, the volume is a vital tool for all archaeologists of the north-western provinces.
