This handsomely produced volume deals with aspects of Roman villas within Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior with two ‘outliers’ in Britannia and Germania Superior, the latter offering some substance to the title of ‘the Roman North’. It accrues from a research programme financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the output of a symposium held in NL-Vaals in 2008. Whereas the latter was divided into four sections, the book contains an introductory essay by the editors (1–44), covering 14 topics in 37 pages, followed by 15 papers in five sections: Studies of late Iron Age/Roman transition (3 papers); Essays on social reconstruction (4); Interpretation of mortuary evidence (2); Regional studies (4); and Studies on individual sites (2). Of these eleven were presented in Vaals, with four additional papers from W. De Clerq, J. Taylor and N. Roymans (2), one with M. Zandstra. Nine of the papers from Vaals are not included, reasons are lacking.
The editors give three (1f.) or four (ix) aims for the book: ‘a. to develop a synthesis on the emergence and development of Roman villa landscapes in the northern provinces; b. to formulate a cohesive body of theoretical concepts and ideas about the social, economic and cultural functioning of villas within the context of the Roman empire; c. to contribute to comparative research into villa landscapes and the phenomenon of regionality of Roman rural landscapes; d. to bring about methodological innovation by devising a classification of villa development trajectories, and to apply new geographical and cartographical techniques (including GIS) in the analysis of villa landscapes.’ Following their definition(s) of a villa and a non-villa (2f.), they also distinguish between villa and non-villa landscapes, the latter being ‘traditional settlements with post-built houses’ making up over 95 per cent of rural sites (3) and dating within the first to third centuries. The accompanying map (fig. 1) is flawed, e.g. the Eifel is predominantly a villa landscape (now M. Grünewald/S. Wenzel (eds), Römische Landnutzung in der Eifel – Neue Ausgrabungen und Forschungen, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Tagungen 16 (Regensburg, 2012)) and there are villas well north of the line reaching the Rhine at Dormagen demarcating their southern limit of a proposed large non-villa landscape. The editors correctly contrast the large number of excavated villas in recent decades with the small number of published sites or syntheses thereof. Besides villas being places of production and consumption, they regard them as the result of the élite's desire to display its higher material and social status (‘elite distinction’) and to stand out within that group (‘social competition’), be it through monumental buildings or forms of commemoration in the landscape (‘emulation’). Of major interest is the villas' social organisation (20–8) which they rightly conclude to be complex and heterogeneous within classes and regions. However, most of the book deals with the élites with little regard to others. The reviewer would have preferred this introduction to have been a summary article following the individual, detailed studies.
On these there is room here only for a few observations. C. Haselgrove (45–60) reiterates that Agache's settlement model of large villas in Picardy is not representative of the whole of northern France. Rescue excavations in the valley floors have produced many sites, whereas the slopes remain archaeologically largely untouched, thus causing a warped settlement pattern, which is anyway regionally more varied than previously assumed. Considerable regional variance is also found in D. Habermehl's area (61–82), which includes Lower Germany in a study of villa development as a living environment. Based upon 270 excavated sites he detects an increasing social asymmetry. South-East England is less well-represented by large villas, but, as J. Taylor points out (179–94), the many small villas along the Downs reflect a marked increase in agricultural productivity compared with the Late Iron Age. In northern Gaul élite competition is displayed by constructing axial villas with double courtyards emulating Italic urban architecture and representing a move to more permanent family seats in the countryside (Roymans/Habermehl, 83–105). Self-representation and identity of the élite are displayed in them erecting ostentatious funerary monuments, as demonstrated by L. Crowley (195–209) and J. Krier/P. Henrich (211–34). T. Derks' review of the epigraphic sources involving the administrative élite emphasises the close ties between the countryside and the towns (107–37).
N. Roymans continues his interest in veteran recruitment and rural settlement in the Rhineland with an overview of the evidence for auxiliary veterans in the first century (139–60). He reiterates his opinion of their importance as promulgators of a Roman identity in the countryside, but deals with a mostly non-villa region. Here again he connects seal-boxes with literacy, not money (cf. C. Andrews, Roman Seal-boxes in Britain, BAR 567 (Oxford, 2012)). With M. Zandstra, Roymans also looks at the evidence for slavery in villas (161–77), which may have been significant. They were unable to use a recent compilation on the subject: H. Heinen (ed.), Antike Sklaverei: Rückblick und Ausblick. Neue Beiträge zur Forschungsgeschichte und zur Erschließung der archäologischen Zeugnisse (Stuttgart, 2010).
Between W. de Clercq's work on a small, non-villa landscape at the northernmost edge of Gaul (235–57) and C. Schucany's overview of the villas in the Aare Valley in Switzerland (275–83), K. Jeneson evaluates the settlement pattern between Tongres and Cologne (259–73), whereby she makes a new GIS-based construction thereof. Overlapping this is W. Gaitzsch's review of the eastern half of the same area (285–99), in which small villas dominate. Individual studies of two well-known large axial villas at Reinheim (F. Sărăţeanu-Müller, 301–15) and Borg (B. Birkenhagen, 317–30) conclude the book.
Genuine mistakes are few: fig. 4 (17) is lacking a key, but this is obvious; superfluous is the repeat of fig. 5 (22) in fig. 1 (84).
This new compilation on villas is certainly biased towards the élite, but these were mostly the persons who had large villas built. Weak points are to be found, but also fresh approaches and ideas well-worth a look.
