These three multi-author volumes present an ambitious and wide-ranging description, analysis and interpretation of rural settlement, economy and society in late pre-Roman Iron Age (LPRIA) and Roman-period Britain (England and Wales). The analytical, data-rich volumes are a result of a collaborative project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and Historic England, undertaken by the University of Reading (led by Professor Michael Fulford) and Cotswold Archaeology (led by Neil Holbrook). The project database was created after a comprehensive review and selection of so-called ‘grey literature’ (unpublished reports) of development-driven archaeological work, which is infrequently consulted by those writing for academic audiences (see L. Wallace, The Origin of Roman London (2014) for an exception from an urban context), but which, since the introduction of PPG16 in 1990, constitutes some 90 per cent of archaeological interventions (see also M. Fulford and N. Holbrook, The Antiquaries Journal 91 (2011), 323–45, and cf. R. Bradley et al., The Later Prehistory of North-West Europe: The Evidence of Development-Led Fieldwork (2015)).
Major syntheses of rural settlement in Roman-period Britain are few in number, becoming rapidly outdated, generally founded solely on published or research-orientated sites and overwhelmingly dedicated to ‘villa’ studies, creating an illusion of the insignificance of lower-status inhabitants, agriculture, industry, belief and burial. These volumes not only address such issues, but they also provide a context within which to compare, assess and understand selective, thematic, regional and/or material-based studies. Along with the online database, which has received more than 35,000 digital visits since it was launched (hosted by the Archaeological Data Service: https://doi.org/10.5284/1030449), these volumes fill a major gap in the national-level synthesis of rural activity in Roman-period Britain.
The authors have set the ‘farm’ at the centre of the settlement analysis, a major advance that builds on J. Taylor's national survey (An Atlas of Roman Rural Settlement in England (2007)), and which addresses the imbalance in published research between the small number of architectural complexes with the most visible evidence (i.e. ‘villas’) and other rural site-types. Moreover, the synthesis and analysis of not only architecture, but also botanical and faunal remains, small finds and coins from both published sources and grey literature on a national scale are unprecedented; the significance of this dataset can hardly be overstated. This dataset does not include all the sites with Roman-period evidence (cf. the 28,000+ sites identified by Taylor), but the two can be used together along with the Portable Antiquities Scheme database, National Mapping Programme results (Historic England) and the results of the English Landscapes and Identities Project (Oxford) to provide a nearly complete picture of the data for rural Roman Britain.
The methodologies applied to the overall project and to the specific material datasets are clearly described in the first chapters and, with greater specificity, within the introductions of subsequent chapters. Eight regions created by grouping data with notable similarities and a typology of settlements are used throughout the three volumes as the bases for broad comparisons. Approximately 2,500 settlements are included from 3,600 ‘site’ records, including sites excavated by antiquarians and researchers, in addition to contracted units. Late pre-Roman Iron Age (LPRIA) through late Roman evidence is included in the analysis, and earlier/later remains on the same sites are noted in the database.
In the inclusion of sites and the creation of a database, the authors have been, by necessity, selective. Watching-briefs and small-scale interventions that produced no plans are omitted; geophysical surveys, LiDAR and aerial photographic analyses are included only when part of a larger excavation project. Unless a structure was associated, no hoards, metal-detecting or surface-collection surveys are included, although comparisons to and additional data from significant published studies are presented (e.g. coins: P. Walton, Rethinking Roman Britain: Coinage and Archaeology (2012)). Infrequent omissions may also be discovered, e.g. the aisled building and bath-house at Lodge Farm, North Warnborough, Odiham, Hants. (Scheduled Monument 1001879), which is omitted from the online database and distribution maps in the published volumes, although discussed in the text itself. Those with specific area knowledge will notice gaps and empty areas that should not be read as ‘real’ absence.
Characteristics of buildings, enclosures, trackways/roads, burials, structured deposition, faunal and botanical remains, human osteological evidence, basic pottery data, personal adornment, coins, pottery and other selected finds (with site-level lists/quantities available on the online database) have been detailed for each site. Material categories that structure much of the text along with online finds lists will aid specialists, although there are no catalogues and no context-level data were recorded. Together, all these methodological choices allow the authors to address certain themes (settlement patterns, agricultural economy, belief, etc.) through analysis of site-level evidence, which constitute the structure and foci of each volume.
The volumes are organised by three themes: settlement (Volume 1), economy (Volume 2) and ‘life and death’ (Volume 3). Only a small proportion of readers will read the combined 1,140 pages from beginning to end, and a description of the contents and a brief note on navigating the volumes are therefore warranted here. The first quarter of Volume 1 introduces the project dataset and site-selection methodology (ch. 1) and describes first a settlement typology (ch. 2) followed by the character of the architecture represented (ch. 3). The following 309 pages present the data, settlement patterns, architecture, roads and a brief description of ‘the social and economic basis of settlements’ in the eight regions, each following the same structure, facilitating comparison (chs 4–11). The volume concludes with a discussion of regional variation and change over time, complemented by brief reflections on demographics and urban-rural relationships (ch. 12).
Volume 2, after a brief introduction (ch. 1), is divided into a first half focused on agriculture and a second half on other production, industry and trade. The first half of the volume covers botanical remains and arable farming (ch. 2), faunal remains and pastoral farming (ch. 3), and a combination of both botanical and faunal evidence to consider agricultural strategy (ch. 4), while material and resource exploitation and the production of objects (ch. 5), coin use and relationships to markets (ch. 6), and pottery production, trade, use and the movement of goods (ch. 7) comprise the second. It concludes with a chapter summarising the volume's interpretations and reflecting on some of the core themes from the first two volumes (ch. 8).
Following a short introduction (ch. 1), Volume 3 then analyses patterns in personal adornment (ch. 2), styles of living, lighting, bathing, eating and drinking, recreation, and literacy using architecture and small finds (ch. 3), farming identities and the significance of dogs, horses, cats, and introduced and wild animals through faunal remains (ch. 4), religion and ritual of the LPRIA and Roman period through architecture and material culture (ch. 5), rituals of death and the treatment of the deceased (ch. 6), demographics, regional variation, paleopathology and the treatments of different age/sex groups through human osteological remains (ch. 7), and concludes with a short essay on identity, diversity, connectivity, mobility and status that draws on the preceding chapters (ch. 8).
Copious graphs illustrate the data and support the analyses and interpretations. Distribution maps are consistently presented, although their detail and size make them perhaps less than clear at times. Site- and building-plans and finds drawings support the text, but by no means constitute comprehensive illustration. An extraordinarily useful aspect of the online database, however, is that it does provide scanned plans for every site. The choices the authors have made for the most part reflect the strengths of site-level data, while the database they have created allows for more detailed and in-depth research in the future.
Significant themes and research questions are addressed across all three volumes. As the dataset spans the LPRIA to the fifth century a.d., the authors are able to contribute significantly to the study of social and economic change and continuities over time. Identity is explored in each volume as well, but with greater depth of detail in Volume 3. Urban-rural relationships are frequently discussed, but across several sections. The role of the military in driving change appears in each of the regional analyses in the first volume, while the economy, burial ritual, animals and other activities in the vici of military sites are analysed in sections of the following two volumes. Regional diversity is frequently addressed because the data have been grouped into the eight project regions, although some readers might find this limiting — for example, the countryside surrounding certain urban and military centres is divided (e.g. Verulamium, Lincoln, Colchester, Castleford and Catterick) and analyses of each body of evidence are split across multiple sections (e.g. settlement types).
These volumes have laid the groundwork for future research, and many opportunities for building on the results are apparent: for example, through an exploration of the social significance, regional patterning and site-type associations of food and drink (developing on ‘What was Eaten and Drunk?’, Vol. 2, and the four-page ‘Food and Drink’ section of Vol. 3, ch. 3); analysis of temporality and of older sites, objects and monuments (e.g. the ‘past in the past’); spatial analyses, such as those of visibility or cost-surfaces; the social construction of space and ‘place’ and the experience of different agents ‘being’ in and moving through the landscape; the role of groups and communities in the construction of landscape, and so forth. The relationship between casual loss, discard, hoards, votive deposits and settlement could be explored through combining the results of this project with those from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (since this dataset covers areas that are typically built upon during development following excavation, whereas the PAS focuses on currently open areas); a comparison of the limitations and restrictions of the two datasets would also be illuminating. Analysis of multilinear change and continuity, assessing the data spanning the generation on either side of the usually undetectable invasion of a.d. 43, would make an important contribution to debates on imperialism and social change. Discursive essays on social significance, meaning, agency and other theory-driven topics will likely follow in the wake of this major synthesis.
The authors have fundamentally advanced the research, study and teaching of Roman Britain and of rural settlement, and the significance of this project will continue to increase, not least through comparison with the results of the other major recent study of rural western Roman provinces, the RurLand project (e.g. M. Reddé, Gallia Rustica I: Les campagnes du nord-est de la Gaule, de la fin de l’âge du fer à l'Antiquité tardive (2018)). For the foreseeable future, publications on rural settlement, industry, agriculture, economy, religion and burial in Roman-period Britain will need to be situated in comparison to these volumes and the accompanying database. Study of the province will undoubtedly now shift towards the vast majority of the population who did not live in cities.
