Roman Britain and Europe

The similarities between certain types of Roman sculpture found both in the Rhineland area of modern Germany and in Britain are striking. Motifs and forms are shared between the two areas, and certain types of votive or funerary monument can be seen, often in only these areas and not widely in the Roman Empire. Soldiers were moved between these two geographic regions, particularly in the 1st and 2nd centuries, and the army could have acted as agent in the movement of ideas and technique. However, there are several potential actors and factors involved in production of sculpture during this period, with different network patterns: sculptors, patrons, stone supplies, viewers. The detail of these interactions and the transmission from one province to another has been acknowledged (especially Stewart (2009, Hayward (2009), Cassibry (2015)), but requires further examination.

Traditionally qualitative approaches have been used to understand associations amongst these sculptures, but this is a topic ripe for new consideration of networks and application of network theory. This poster will consider the central question: how did networks influence the transmission of form and styles between the Rhineland and Britain in the early- to mid-Roman period? Building on the work of Collar (2013) on movement of religion, and on models of economic circulation of stone and art by Russell (2013) and Harris (2015), case studies of auxiliary cavalry tombstones and mother goddess dedications will be examined to see how network theory can combine with qualitative research to understand the connections.

Abstract The late Victorian church of St. Michael, Workington, was destroyed by fire in 1994. Before rebuilding started, a programme of archaeological investigation took place. Most of the interior was found to be disturbed by burials but the foundations of the Norman nave and chancel arch were located along with a substantial collection of Anglo-Scandinavian sculpture, some incorporated into the medieval and later fabric. A small number of items of metalwork from the late 9th to the 11th centuries were also found. The collection of sculpture from this church is by far the largest anywhere in Cumbria, suggesting the presence of an important community in the Anglo-Scandinavian period with links to the Hiberno-Norse world around the Irish Sea. In the 12th century, the pre-Norman church was demolished and rebuilt, probably as a simple three-cell parish church to which aisles were added in the later Middle Ages. Further rebuilding work took place in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Барышников А.Е. 2014: Концепт идентичности в современных исследованиях римской Британии // Antiquitas Aeterna / Под ред. А.В. Махлаюка, О.Л. Габелко. Выпуск 4. Нижний Новгород. С. 373-388.

Резюме/Summary

Статья посвящена появлению и распространению концепта идентичности в современных романо-британских исследованиях. Автор рассматривает важнейшие публикации, связанные с теоретической разработкой концепта и его практическим применением в исследованиях истории провинции. Несмотря на интересные результаты и выводы, полученные в ходе этих исследований, сам концепт идентичности требует совершенствования. Ряд проблем, таких как, избыточная популярность идентичности, недостаточная ясность самого термина «идентичность», опасность модернизации исторической реальности, должны внушить исследователям дополнительную осторожность. При этом концепт идентичности остаётся одним из наиболее перспективных инструментов исследования жизни римской Британии.

The paper deals with emergence and development of the concept of “identity” in contemporary Romano-British scholarship. The author considers the most important publications concerned with the theoretical research of the concept and its practical use in the studies of provincial history. Despite some interesting results and conclusions made during these studies the concept still needs to be upgraded. Several problems such as an odd popularity of identity, an insufficient clarity of its meaning,  a danger of anachronisms must make scholars more careful. But with despite all this matters the concept of identity remains one of the most promising tools for the investigation of life in Roman Britain.

The discovery of twelve denarii found individually between 1985 and 1991 at New Fordey Farm, Barway, Soham in Cambridgeshire complements finds of aurei and denarrii at the same location reported in 1958, 1979, 1981 and 1984. The presence of associated pottery sherds, and progressively decreasing wear from oldest to youngest coin, identify this as a disturbed hoard of at least 451 coins (the total found to date) with a closing date of AD 180 in the reign of Commodus (AD 180–92). This paper describes the most recent finds and places them in the context of the earlier reports and what is known of Roman activity in the immediate vicinity, before considering possible reasons for their deposition.

Hoards of denarii are common in Britain and the number which have been recorded in detail means that it is now possible to suggest reasonably accurately what a ‘normal’ hoard of a particular date should look like. That being the case, we can then look for variation around that norm and both investigate and speculate what that variation means. A methodology is developed which suggests periods of faster and less rapid coin circulation which has implications for consideration of monetisation. The model also enables us to view where denarii entered circulation; unsurprisingly the army looms large in this picture. The methodology is directly transferable to other provinces and other periods where there are long-lived, relatively stable monetary systems.

CIte as:  John Creighton. The Supply and Movement of Denarii in Roman Britain . Britannia, available on CJO2014. doi:10.1017/S0068113X14000282.

This paper examines the archaeological and faunal evidence from Wattle Syke near Wetherby in West Yorkshire, where developer-funded excavations revealed part of a large Late Iron Age and Romano-British settlement. The archaeological work uncovered close spatial references between features such as roundhouses and ditches, reflecting tangible links back to past households and structures. It was the prosaic practices, materials and movements of everyday life that allowed social memories to be carried forward across the generations, yet the evidence also suggests the reworking, forgetting or deliberate negation of memories and the past. The exceptionally well-preserved animal and human skeletal evidence allowed the construction of contextual biographies of depositional and ritualised practices over many centuries. Many of these acts seem to have reflected a concern with seasonality and with genealogy, and material culture, human and animal remains were strategically used to create, reinforce or even negate collective and individual identities and memories. Buildings, material culture and human and animal remains were all caught up in these meshes or networks of everyday 'memory work'.

This paper uses evidence from aerial photography and commercial developer-funded excavations to investigate the different social and temporal ‘scales’ of mnemonic practices that may be detectable in the Iron Age and Romano-British settlement evidence from central and northern England. These varied scales range from more generalised referencing of much older monuments within the landscape, through to more specific depositional, spatial and temporal links established between features such as roundhouses and ditches. Some activities suggest a concern with ancestry, identity and lineage; others were perhaps deliberately structured attempts to create long-term myths. Identifying such connections has important implications for understanding mnemonic practices within Iron Age and Romano-British communities, and for archaeological practice.

"Memory and forgetting are fundamental to human existence and experience. Within archaeology, although there has been increasing acknowledgement of the role of the past in the past, to date there has been surprisingly little specific discussion of how such long-term persistence of place and practice was possible; and why this was the case.

The sixteen papers in this collection use detailed contextual evidence and the results of radiocarbon dating to address these questions. Many papers highlight non-monumental practices, the less visible or tangible, where ‘memory work’ can be identified in ‘everyday’ landscapes. This volume weaves recent theoretical considerations of memory, materiality and landscape with exciting evidence emerging from research and developer-funded archaeology. There is a focus on British archaeology from the Neolithic to the early medieval period, but other papers deal with Neolithic Central Europe, ancient Etruscan and Egyptian landscapes, and historic Native American practices.

The contributors are Jocelyn Ahlers, Alistair Barclay, Adrian M. Chadwick, Gareth Chaffey, Chris Fenton-Thomas, Anna Garnett, Catriona D. Gibson, Andrew Hoaen, Daniela Hofmann, Kirsten Jarrett, Andy M. Jones, Helen Loney, Louise Martin, Jane Richardson, Gary Robinson, Lucy Shipley, John Thomas, Mara Vejby, and Alexandra Vieira; and there is also a foreword by Richard Bradley.

Catriona Gibson valiantly did most of the typesetting herself, and we are really pleased with the final overall ‘look’ of the book. We both hope that this volume will challenge existing methodologies, and propose new questions for future research, fieldwork and post-excavation practice, in both ‘academic’ and developer-funded archaeology.

As part of his foreword, Professor Richard Bradley of the University of Reading offers these generous words:

“There are many ways of conceptualising the relationship between structures and artefacts formed at different times. Key elements include memory, myth, the invention of traditions, and the erasure of old ones. The contributors consider these ideas in relation to a series of well researched case studies. What they share are sophisticated ways of thinking about the past in the past. As in all good archaeology, the lessons of this research are both theoretical and practical. That is why this book is so welcome and why it has so much to teach.”

Available from 1st December 2013. ISBN: 9781782973935. Hardback, 336 pages, 166 b/w illustrations. Initial special offer price £28.50."

In British archaeology, there are apparent tensions between macro-level, landscape-wide analyses, and micro-level, site-based approaches. Macro-level analyses are based on techniques and technologies such as aerial photograph transcriptions, LiDAR data and GIS-based mapping, as exemplified in many excellent National Mapping Programme studies and several large-scale research projects. These studies have proved invaluable in mapping extensive areas of archaeology, and GIS-based data can be interrogated through many forms of spatial analysis. At the same time, developer-funded fieldwork has provided opportunities to excavate and record large-scale areas. Sampling and recording methodologies have improved tremendously in recent years, in conjunction with the emergence of contextual approaches to the evidence. Such investigations are contributing a significant amount of new and exciting information to field system studies, though often at a detailed, localised level. This disparity in the scales of landscape analysis and interpretation is explored through a series of case studies focusing on later prehistoric and Romano-British field systems. Different approaches and methodological, temporal and interpretative scales are examined, and the creative rather than negative aspects of such tensions explored.