The publication of the first edition of this book in 1990 marked a significant development in the study of Roman Britain, as previous studies, such as Frere’s Britannia (Reference Frere1967) and Salway’s Roman Britain (Reference Salway1981), presented the history of the Roman conquest and occupation as a chronological narrative, placing considerable emphasis on documentary evidence. In the first edition of their books, both Frere and Salway tended to use archaeological data to supplement their narratives, although they included much more archaeological data in their revised editions (Frere Reference Frere1991; Salway Reference Salway1993). Millett’s first edition differed from previous studies by making archaeological data his central focus and adopting a thematic approach, discussing diverse aspects of material culture during the Roman occupation. This approach revealed two things about Roman Britain that had previously not been obvious. First, the huge volume and complexity of the available evidence; second, that the impact of Romanisation (defined as the adoption of Roman material culture, language and technology by the indigenous population) was very extensive and had influenced almost every aspect of daily life. In fairness, both Frere and Salway discussed the process of ‘Romanization’, but this concept was not central to their narratives.
The impression is that Romanisation, or the process of ‘becoming Roman’ involved worshipping new gods, using imperial weights and measures, living in a Roman-style house, visiting such amenities as the bathhouse and the amphitheatre, possibly being bilingual, and cooking and eating differently. Archaeologically, the large number of finds of bones and metal hairpins used by women and girls to secure and decorate their hair like Roman women is one example of how far-reaching the adoption of certain aspects of Roman culture was (Cool Reference Cool1990).
The cumulative effect of all these changes on the indigenous culture was transformational, which raises the question of how the process of Romanisation happened. There are two obvious ways for this change to have taken place: coercion or choice. Martin Millett, in the first edition of his book, proposed a non-interventionist model for cultural change in Roman Britain.
The book under review has a new introduction in which Millett discusses how his views on Romanisation have changed since he completed the original text in 1988. The author admits that he now avoids the term ‘Romanization’ because of its perceived connection with British imperialism and the implication that Roman culture was superior to that of the conquered peoples. In this he reflects current trends; the concept of Romanisation has fallen out of fashion. Attempts have been made to find new ways of assessing the cultural identities of the population, such as through regional studies (Hill Reference Hill, James and Millet2001). Millett thinks that we need to adopt a different terminology to explain the cultural changes that occurred during the Roman occupation and believes now that he underestimated the impact of the military. We also need to consider more closely how Britain was integrated into the Roman world. The province was relatively remote from the heart of the empire and completely dependent on maritime communications.
Whether the inhabitants of Britannia regarded themselves as Romans or Britons was a theme of the book’s first edition, with Millett arguing that ‘by the end of the second century, although a backwater of the Empire, Britain had become a Romanized province’ (Millett Reference Millett1990, 127). This is debatable, the degree of Romanisation varied regionally and was most pronounced in the new urban communities established by the Romans. We tend to think that the ruthless suppression of native rebellions would have created a clear contemporary perception of who was Roman and who was not, but what about the serving and settled auxiliaries from other provinces? How would they and their families have identified themselves? The impression is that, while most of the people in the new urban communities would have been indigenous, some people had migrated from other provinces in search of new opportunities. Roman citizenship clearly mattered to some people, hence the production of sheet metal military diplomas conferring citizenship on provincial inhabitants as a reward for their service as auxiliary troops. One diploma from Dacia, dated to ad 106, was granted to a British infantryman, ‘Marcus Ulpius Novantioc, son of Adcobrovatus, from Leicester’, who served in the first Cohort of Britons (Ireland Reference Ireland1996, 231).
Since the first edition of this book was published, the study of Roman Britain has been transformed by a number of factors that Millett briefly discusses in his new introduction, and which merit further consideration. First, the data has been greatly augmented by developer-funded fieldwork and recording by the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Second, analytical and scientific tools are providing insights into kinship and descent from human remains, as well as revealing geographical origins and dietary patterns. Petrological analysis of ceramics has improved, and it is now possible to determine where the different types of Dressel amphorae discovered at the port of London were produced (Williams Reference Williams2024). This example is part of a new trend of artefact analysis that has developed since the publication of the first edition, when Roman pottery and other artefacts were largely seen as dating tools (p xxx). Third, online resources have transformed the availability of data, while GIS mapping has allowed complex data sets to be spatially plotted and interrogated. All this has made the task of producing syntheses of urban centres such as London much more involved. In 1991, Dominic Perring published a 150-page synthesis of Roman London; thirty-one years later he published a 573-page sequel (Perring Reference Perring1991; Reference Perring2022). There are now more than five hundred Latin inscriptions from Roman London, implying that a certain proportion of the population was literate and confirming that there was a high degree of Romanisation in many aspects of daily life (Holder Reference Holder2007). New discoveries have challenged former assumptions; for instance, there are three sites in London where there is evidence for Flavian period glassmaking, disproving the long-standing assumption that all glass bottles and bowls were imported during this period. There is also a growing body of evidence that the pre-Roman population of Britain possessed a sophisticated material culture.
The vast amount of new archaeological data, together with the array of new analytical techniques, means that there is now immense scope for reappraising many of the ideas concerning Romanisation put forward in the book’s first edition. As Millett observes, ‘the challenge of synthesis is now much greater, and it is difficult to bring together the evidence even for a whole city, let alone the whole of Roman Britain’ (p xxxii). The way forward is surely for future research projects to be carried out by teams, one example of this approach being the Rural Settlement of Roman Britain project (Allen et al Reference Allen, Blick, Brindle, Evans, Fulford, Holbrook, Lodwick, Richards and Smith2015). The age of individuals composing major works of national archaeological synthesis, as Millett did thirty-seven years ago, has passed.
