This new volume examines the potential for studying long-term similarities in political and administrative regions, based on the assumption that such units were ‘superimposed upon underlying community-based socio-economic spheres of interaction that were far more stable’ (p. 11). In doing so, it examines a formidable range of archaeological evidence, encompassing the Iron Age, Roman and early medieval periods. Although the title refers to the English landscape, the book focuses on eastern England, covering the historic counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex.
The author suggests that from the early Iron Age onwards, communities started to develop common identities on a regional scale, their boundaries in part defined by areas of poorer agricultural land that were more sparsely settled. Rippon defines three regions: East Anglia, the South East Midlands and the North Thames basin, the last of which he argues shows a consistent division into two halves in terms of its cultural history. The boundaries between these regions became more defined in the late Iron Age with the emergence of relatively stable kingdoms, the extent of which is suggested to be reflected in a range of material culture (with considerable focus on coins and pottery) and settlement type. Rippon argues that these boundaries persisted into the early Roman period, with the liminal zones marked by concentrations of temples and pottery production.
In relation to the Roman period, Rippon notes that previous attempts to define the civitates have been strongly influenced by A.L.F. Rivet and have paid little attention to the natural landscape, which he suggests should be examined along with sites suggestive of liminal locations (such as temples) and regional variations in settlement patterns, architectural styles and material culture. It is suggested that the distribution of urban and religious sites provides a spatial patterning that indicates that territorial identities established during the Iron Age continued into the Roman period. The hypothesis is sometimes persuasive, although there is an occasional sense that Rippon selects his evidence to reinforce it. Figs 4.8 and 4.9, for example, depicting rural temples against topography and Iron Age coin distribution, appear to be rather partial, missing probable rural temples at Hockwold and Walsingham but including temples at the small towns of Harlow and Great Chesterford (which fall in Rippon's putative border zones).
In chapter 5, on villas and the land-owning élite, Rippon suggests that villas were not passive reflections of wealth but expressions of identity (p. 150), further maintaining that subtle differences in the villa landscapes of the region suggest that the four-way division in community identities identified for the Iron Age was still discernible in the Roman period. His definition of a villa is more restrictive than that employed by some other studies, rejecting, for example, the complex at Great Holts Farm because of its lack of masonry construction.
Chapter 6 on Roman material culture feels rather unbalanced, with less than three pages devoted to items of personal adornment that one might reasonably expect deserve consideration in discussion of regional identities. Indeed, Rippon later repeats the well-worn trope of the Iceni as ‘conservative’, arguably reflecting his focus on villas, towns and pottery, and relative neglect of the rich corpus of portable material culture from the region. The major part of the chapter is devoted to ceramics, which Rippon suggests indicate particular patterns of circulation, with East Anglian pottery, for example, seldom moving outside the region (a pattern that is intriguingly later repeated with Middle Saxon Ipswich ware).
From this point the narrative moves into the post-Roman period and the relationship between the boundaries of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Rippon's four regions. The appearance of grubenhäuser, a term that the author argues should be used to indicate an ‘alien form of architecture’, is associated here with an incoming population. The absence of grubenhäuser and cemeteries from certain regions (e.g. between the Mardyke and Lea rivers) is suggested to represent possible surviving British enclaves. Regional identities of Angles and Saxons are suggested to follow similar boundaries to those of the Iron Age, although it is argued that they arose anew in the later fifth and sixth centuries, based on new identities rather than on identities based around the immigrants' orgins.
While I remain unconvinced by some of its claims, this is an ambitious and fascinating book that deserves to be read. As well as setting out a stimulating and contentious argument, it provides a valuable synthesis of a wide range of data, including some that will be unfamiliar to many, with Rippon's regional focus demonstrating the significance of some important but less celebrated sites like Harlow and Great Chesterford. With its multi-period focus and its wide-ranging coverage of a huge variety of evidence, it reminds us of the potential rewards of escaping disciplinary silos.
