This present article, appearing in the centennial year of the Roman Society, celebrates also the quadragesimal issue of Britannia. The journal — Britannia — was established because of the need for a new outlet for publication, resulting partly from the increase over some years in the number of excavations, especially ‘rescue’ excavations of sites being destroyed by development works and supported by public finance; there was also increasing public interest in the subject, itself aroused through the media, particularly television.
It was in 1968 that the Council of the Society began discussions about the issue of a second journal which should be devoted to ‘Romano-British and kindred studies’. In consequence Volume 1 of Britannia appeared in 1970. The editor (S.S.F.) was greatly assisted in its organisation by Martin Frederiksen, the editor of the Journal of Roman Studies, and by Frank Lepper, chairman of the Society’s Editorial Committee, while the Committee itself was enlarged by addition to its membership of Barry Cunliffe, Brian Hartley, Leo Rivet, and Graham Webster. Just over £2,900 had been raised in grants towards publication, which included the generous gift of £500 from I.D. Margary.
The increase in numbers of Romano-British sites being reported on is illustrated by figures quoted in the Editorial of Vol. 1. In the summaries of discovery hitherto published annually in JRS, entries had increased from 61 in 1950 to 151 in 1968 and among these, important discoveries worthy of full publication in Britannia (had it existed) had grown from 20 in 1950 to 38 in 1968. During the same period the cost of publication had been rising astronomically, gravely reducing the ability of local or county societies, which had long played a leading role in archaeological publication, to shoulder the burden in the future.
From the beginning Britannia aimed to publish not only material and subjects related to the province itself, but also what are described on its title page as ‘kindred studies’: that is, those dealing with the Late Iron Age, the wider Roman Empire, and also the immediate post-Roman period.
The table below illustrates how far this wider aim has been successful, catalogued under successive decades of volumes.
Studies relating to the Roman army and of the Imperial coinage account for the high total of the ‘wider Empire’, but this also includes one paper on Roman Dacia, one on Ancient Artillery, and several relating to Roman Gaul.
Even before the appearance of Britannia, there were alternative lodgings for papers on Roman Britain, notably Antiquity, whose dynamic founder-editor, O.G.S. Crawford, a pioneer in many aspects of the subject, created a publication where new ideas, discoveries and theories could be put forward at frequent intervals. Britannia itself can be seen to have continued some of Crawford’s aims, as well as those transmitted directly from JRS. For some border-areas with earlier and later periods, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society and Medieval Archaeology already existed. Papers of importance were also from time to time published in the Antiquaries Journal and the Archaeological Journal.
As demand for publication space has grown, new journals have appeared, such as the Oxford Journal of Archaeology in 1982, with some generally shorter papers on Roman Britain, and the Journal of Roman Archaeology in 1988. The latter may partly account for the decrease in ‘wider Empire’ papers in the last two decades of Britannia. Certainly, apart from some notes and numerous book reviews on Roman Britain, JRA has, until very recently, tended to address topics more concerned with the Empire beyond Britain.
Volumes 1 and 2 of Britannia each contained 347 pages, and the pages did not rise above 400 until Vol. 7, after which 15 volumes fall into the 400–499 category. Nine volumes have exceeded 500 pages, but such high figures have been achieved only with the aid of generous grants from external sources, principally in support of excavation reports. Such grants, of course, have also supported contributions in the shorter volumes.
This size-versus-cost exercise was grappled with by successive Editors. In Vol. 30 (1999), M.G. Fulford commented that ten per cent of papers in Britannia in 1994–8 were final publications of post-PPG fieldwork. In Vol. 36 (2005) A.S. Esmonde Cleary signalled that this nettle had been grasped, saying that because of the length and complexity of modern excavation reports, they would ‘henceforth not normally be considered for publication in the journal unless they are: (a) of national importance [in a Roman context?!]; and (b) short.’
The changing world of archaeology is reflected in A.S. Esmonde Cleary’s editorial in Vol. 38 (2007). There are increasing numbers of people working in the field and many more results than in 1970, but these facts have to be placed alongside the absolute financial obligations to those controlling the purse-strings. Hence much fundamental research work still remains, as it was in 1970, a matter for dedicated personal interest outside remunerated employment. Papers, such as Brian Hartley’s ‘The Roman occupation of Scotland: the evidence of samian ware’ (Vol. 3), are still an outcome of scholarship outside a highly-simplified credit-and-debit-view of the academic world.
Technological innovation and the passage of time have changed what, looking back to 1969, seems almost a ‘cottage industry’; for example, some contributors used to an earlier era of cheap typesetting had to be persuaded that correction of galley proofs really mattered — leaving your second thoughts to page-proof was outlawed! A few authors would submit sketch drawings which had to be re-drawn by editorial personnel to be at all publishable. The annual site reports often involved correspondence with excavators; editing to tighten up and clarify where required was followed by typing-up the hand-written scripts for the printer. The indexes for the volume were produced on paper slips and hand sorted and proof-marked for the printer. Computers have enormously speeded up some of these processes, together with more individuals shouldering the burden.
There have been changes in presentation: from Vol. 33 (2002) plates have been incorporated into the text; from Vol. 36 (2005) the format of the volume has been reduced. Perhaps more far-reaching, from Vol. 33 (2002) on-line consultation of Britannia became possible and a CD-ROM version became available.
The annual reports on recent discoveries including epigraphic material, taken up from 1921 by JRS from the Archaeological Journal, were naturally taken into Britannia. As commented by L.J.F. Keppie (in Vol. 35 (2004)), Britannia Vol. 1 had an annual report for 1969 of 48 pages: 38 pages of sites (141) and 11 pages of inscriptions (53 items); Vol. 35 (2004) included 64 pages of sites (246) and 15 pages of inscriptions (28). The last volume considered here, Vol. 40 (2009), had 112 pages for sites and inscriptions: 61 pages of sites (198), 51 pages of inscriptions (111). From Vol. 35 (2004) the Portable Antiquities Scheme results have been an invaluable new source on artefacts, with 18 pages and 22 objects described in that year and by Vol. 40 (2009), 32 pages and 28 objects described.
Papers on Britain by foreign scholars (e.g. one by D. Baatz on Ancient Artillery) have always been an essential component of the journal. A lesson in careful scrutiny of provincial material for Britons was provided by Jules Bogaers in Britannia 10, who spotted that eighteenth-century scholars had backed the wrong horse over RIB 91. To support his conclusions, the inscription was for the first time photographed in detail by a group from Oxford.
Some papers involved editorial personnel in more than desk-work. When Derek Allen embarked on an examination of Cunobelin’s gold for Britannia 6, it was discovered that substantial preliminary work on the actual objects (including both precious metals and electrotypes) was needed to pave his way. And when Donald Atkinson’s work at Caistor by Norwich was being written up for Vol. 2, the pottery archive had to be dealt with first; for arcane logistical reasons this involved a midnight session with a toothbrush to render the samian acceptable to the specialists. Overall, the enormous variety of tasks to be performed in those days of un-specialization provided a very wide range of interest and satisfaction for those involved.
