This book draws on recently excavated data, mostly derived from developer-funded excavations, from a number of late Iron Age and Roman settlements within an area more or less corresponding to a right-angled triangle where London and Colchester, the major towns of the study area, are at either end of the hypotenuse and a few sites around Cambridge form the right angle, with an ultimate northern limit defined by sites at the southern edge of the Cambridgeshire Fenland, some 100 km to the north of London. The majority of the sites are in Essex, with the remainder ranging into Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. The chronological range of the study extends from the first century b.c. to the end of the second century a.d. Five questions shaped the research which underpins this study (xix): how did access to resources and the evidence of specialist consumption differ across the settlement landscape? How comparable are the artefactual signatures of different types of settlement? To what extent does the evidence of different patterns of consumption support or challenge classifications of settlement character? How can observed differences in patterns of production and consumption within the landscape be explained in terms of changing economic and social forces? What significance can be given to urbanisation as a factor in such explanatory models?
To address these questions the authors drew on other specialists' analyses of four categories of evidence: coins (Curteis), pottery (Doherty), registered finds or ‘small finds’ (Wardle, Clifford), and faunal remains (Ayton). Sample size is a consistent problem except for the major urban sites and the very large rural sites such as Stansted, Essex and the Cambridgeshire sites. In some cases fresh analysis of material was undertaken. In their conclusions the authors plead for ‘consistent and compatible approaches to the recording of assemblages within the region’ (252). Their methodology, which takes this integrative approach to a range of artefactual and faunal evidence, is innovative and forward-looking.
Extrapolating out from their sample of two major towns, the authors conclude that their study offers little support for the idea that towns served as market centres, rather that rural surplus flowed towards them in an asymmetrical relationship as a result of tribute, rent and taxation, with little reciprocal exchange. ‘The cities of Roman Britain stood apart: they appear as alien places of government where the exercise of power made exaggerated call on available resources’ (xviii, 250).
In reaching their conclusions the authors acknowledge considerable difficulties in finding representative sites and associated assemblages which covered their time period. In fact the study drew on only 39 late Iron Age and early Roman settlements and of these, only nine featured in all the specialist analyses undertaken. Of these, and excluding the two towns, five are nucleated settlements on the road network, two ‘higher-status rural’ and three ‘lower-status rural sites’. Although a variety of approaches can be taken to defining urban hinterlands, let us consider sites which lay within 25 km of the two major towns, i.e. about one day's travel to or from a town. Settlements meeting some or all of the criteria used in the analyses accounted for only one, a lower-status rural settlement, within an arc of 25 km to the north and east of the centre of London and only nine sites located within 25 km of Colchester/Sheepen, the majority lying on or close to the roads leading south-west to London and west towards Braughing and Verulamium. Four of these, all nucleated settlements on the road network, were used in all analyses. Only one of the sites in the Colchester hinterland was classed as a lower-status rural settlement. The remaining 27 settlements, almost three quarters of the sample (excluding Colchester and London), are located further than 25 km from either town, some more than 100 km away. What relationship, if any, might these latter settlements be expected to have with either town?
Although this study does not measure up to its ambitious aims, it is a very interesting and bold attempt to make sense of a small sample of the mass of new data deriving from developer-funded archaeology since the implementation of PPG 16 in 1990. Others will surely look to this study before embarking on similar surveys of other regions of Britain. Before so doing, it is vital that further consideration be given towards the underpinning theory relating to social and economic behaviour in Roman Britain and its relationship with the archaeological record. How do we test it to identify different forms of land ownership, rent and taxation, or distinguish between ‘market’ or ‘command economy’, some of the themes discussed in the opening and closing chapters? What did drive the changes which are observed in the archaeological record?
