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In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar crossed into Britain and was immediately engaged in a unique style of warfare. The Iron Age Britons used sturdy and fast two-horse chariots to respond to Roman invasion. This article looks at the tactics of and analyzes aspects of the battle chariot. It assesses the capabilities of the people who fielded the chariot and the means used to sustain their resources and gauge their capabilities. Drawing on both classical and archaeological sources, this article presents a fuller account of Caesar's two trips to Britain in 55-54 B.C. and the British warfare he encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aisled hall at North Warnborough has attracted attention as one of a handful of examples frequently included in surveys and analyses of this common architectural type as well as for arguments related to the gendered use of space. This article presents a new architectural analysis of this building and attempts to set it within its immediate and wider archaeological and geological landscape context. A theoretically informed interpretation of the social significance of this site is offered, which has broader implications for the studies of Romano-British architecture, rural settlement, and landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology has been firmly embedded in the British planning systems for over a quarter of century, and development-led fieldwork is now by far the largest source of new information available to researchers. Custom and practice in the way that such work is conducted has evolved over this time, yet methodological innovation has been surprisingly limited. Using the data gathered in a major survey of the rural settlement of Roman Britain, this paper explores some themes in the way that commercial work is undertaken and seeks to open up a long-overdue debate about professional practice in a development-led context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excavations at Park Prewett, Basingstoke, were undertaken in advance of a residential development. Three areas were opened, measuring a combined area of 1.6 ha, based on the results of a previous site evaluation. Limited later prehistoric finds suggest background activity of various periods, possibly relating to settlements outside of the excavated area. At the south-west of the site, a series of parallel linear ditches representing a field boundary and trackway dating to the Roman period were discovered. These are part of a wider agricultural landscape known through various excavations around the north of Basingstoke. A medieval field boundary ditch, with associated fence line and potential hedgerow were also identified towards the east of the excavation. A number of features were also uncovered that relate to Park Prewett Hospital, built in the early 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how the eminent antiquary Samuel Lysons (1763–1819) used his publications of Romano-British remains, which were aimed at a British and Continental audience, to challenge the widely held view that Britain’s climate and national characteristics were incompatible with artistic excellence and that Britain was culturally inferior to its Continental neighbours, most notably France, in both past and present. In particular, it shows how he depicted villas and mosaics as some of the finest examples of British cultural achievement under Roman rule, in a period when Roman Britain was largely seen as a military province and cultural backwater, and when aristocratic tastes were predominantly cosmopolitan. He asserted a dramatic improvement from former barbarism and placed Britain firmly within a pan-European classical tradition. The publications also showcased British achievements in the recording of Roman remains and antiquities and in landscape painting, serving as an impressive statement of intellectual and artistic superiority. Samuel Lysons and his associates were working collaboratively to an international agenda, celebrating Britain’s cultural leadership in Europe. Their efforts, most notably in the recording of Romano-British mosaics, have underpinned an exemplary tradition of mosaic scholarship in Britain, and merit far greater recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Those who study Roman art and religion in Britain will know that there are a relatively small number of pieces in stone and bronze which are regularly used to illustrate arguments on Romanization, provincialism and identity. However, while these objects become familiar through such use, they are, in fact, often little studied as pieces in their own right and the only description of their appearance and context are some fifty or more years old. Re-excavation of the context from which the Silchester eagle was recovered has raised questions about the date of its deposition, as well as its origin and use, and indeed the nature of its deposition at Silchester. This paper examines the figurine in detail, the role of the eagle at Silchester and explores the significance of the eagle more widely in Roman Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a new method for comparing proxy data for the health and well-being of Late Roman populations through the statistical analysis of skeletal remains and material culture. A multistage statistical approach is applied to a sample of published Late Romano-British cemeteries. A battery of health indicators are compared using multidimensional scaling, and patterns in the provision of grave inclusions are analyzed using the Gini coefficient of inequality. The results of these analyses yield two principal findings. First, patterns are often strongly conditioned by settlement type, with individuals in cemeteries from urban locations exhibiting better health than their nonurban counterparts, contrary to historical models stressing the disadvantages of urban environments. Second, urban cemeteries feature both higher levels of grave furnishings and greater equality in their intracemetery distributions than nonurban cemeteries. Such findings suggest entrenched differences in the quality of living conditions and social relations between urban and rural communities in Late Roman Britain, potentially mirroring the observed modern relationship between high levels of social inequality and poor health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contact between Latin and British, the Brittonic Celtic language, in Roman and post-Roman Britain has received considerable attention in the last few years as part of a more general discussion of linguistic contact phenomena in early Britain. Much of the discussion has focused on phonological aspects, although morphological features have sometimes been invoked without discussion. The aim of this paper is to consider some of the morphological features which have been claimed to reflect Latin influence on Brittonic Celtic languages, such as loss of a case system, loss of the neuter gender, the development of compound prepositions, and the acquisition of a pluperfect tense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews published work which draws on various kinds of evidence to assess the linguistic situation in Roman Britain. Having reached some interim conclusions about the state of scholarship, it proceeds to examine the particular contribution that place-names can make to the debate on how far Latin may have taken hold in the province at the expense of the native British Celtic. While there is rather more evidence of Latin here than has often been allowed, the widespread continuity of British across much, at least, of Lowland Britain is reaffirmed, in the face of a recent suggestion to the contrary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some time about the year A. D. 117, the Ninth Legion…marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again.During the excavations at Silchester nearly eighteen hundred years later, there was dug up…a wingless Roman Eagle, a cast of which can be seen to this day in Reading Museum. Different people have had different ideas as to how it came to be there, but no one knows, just as no one knows what happened to the Ninth Legion after it marched into the northern mists.It is from these two mysteries, brought together, that I have made the story of ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Archaeology, and in particular the study of ceramics, lies at the heart of the interpretive schemes that underpin Framing the Early Middle Ages. While this is to be welcomed, it is proposed that even more extensive use of archaeological evidence - especially that generated through the excavation of prehistoric burial-mounds and rural settlements, as well as the study of early medieval coins - would have produced a rather more dynamic and nuanced picture of the transformations in social and political structures that marked the passage from late Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous anthropological investigations at Trentholme Drive, in Roman York identified an unusual amount of cranial variation amongst the inhabitants, with some individuals suggested as having originated from the Middle East or North Africa. The current study investigates the validity of this assessment using modern anthropological methods to assess cranial variation in two groups: The Railway and Trentholme Drive. Strontium and oxygen isotope evidence derived from the dentition of 43 of these individuals was combined with the craniometric data to provide information on possible levels of migration and the range of homelands that may be represented. The results of the craniometric analysis indicated that the majority of the York population had European origins, but that 11% of the Trentholme Drive and 12% of The Railway study samples were likely of African decent. Oxygen analysis identified four incomers, three from areas warmer than the UK and one from a cooler or more continental climate. Although based on a relatively small sample of the overall population at York, this multidisciplinary approach made it possible to identify incomers, both men and women, from across the Empire. Evidence for possible second generation migrants was also suggested. The results confirm the presence of a heterogeneous population resident in York and highlight the diversity, rather than the uniformity, of the population in Roman Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economy of post-Roman Britain entered a phase of abatement in which pastoralism played an important part. Common pasture and access to it underlay small regions within which the form of dominance practised by an emerging elite was neither antique nor feudal but akin to that of chieftains over clans. The mid-Saxon emphasis on arable farming, which demanded heavier and more concentrated inputs of labour and capital, led to a more direct appropriation of peasant surplus and labour, the basis of the feudal mode of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has claimed that the history of Roman Britain has been discussed in terms of 'Romanization' since the beginning of the seventeenth century. In fact, it is wrong to think that there is a single tradition in the understanding of Roman Britain. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Camden and his followers were primarily interested in the bringing of 'civility' to England, with only a minimal consciousness of material culture (coins, inscriptions and sites). Discussion of Roman Britain was already overshadowed by an emphasis on military identity, viewing Roman soldiers and civilian subjects as essentially separate, the latter little influenced by the former. Only in the later nineteenth century, and particularly in the work of Francis Haverfield, did an idea of cultural 'Romanization' find its way to the centre of scholarly discussions. Far from there being a single scholarly understanding of the history of Roman Britain, accounts have been continually rewritten to reflect the nature of the relationship between the English and their empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first detailed review of all archaeobotanical records from Roman Britain. It reveals that some 50 new plants food (mostly fruits, herbs and vegetables) were introduced into this country during the Roman period. These introductions represent a major diversification of the plant component of the British diet at this time, adding important nutrients, variety of flavours, ways of expressing cultural identity, as well as social status. The geographical, chronological and social dispersal of these foods is analysed and three dispersal patterns and at least four consumer groups are identified. Methodological issues are discussed and gaps in the data highlighted. The role of these foods in expressions of cultural identity is briefly discussed, as is the impact of their introduction on the productive capacity of the agricultural economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coastal siting of Romano-British villas is generally discussed and attention is particularly focused on the Channel seaboard of Britain. Here, comparison is made with the distribution of those natural harbours and offshore anchorages that have been traditionally favoured by sailing craft. These are clearly described in the first edition of Hobb's British Channel Pilot Of 1859. A relationship is proposed between the rare incidence of leeward anchorages and the siting of villas at Folkestone, Eastbourne, Sidlesham, Weymouth and Honeyditches. Other villas with significant maritime settings are identified at Southwick, Fishbourne, Emsworth, and Brading all of which adjoin harbours or 'roads' identified by Hobbs. In the Eastern Solent, anchorages at Spithead, Mother Bank and Cowes Roads are equated with the Magnus Portus described by Ptolemy. At this location some supportive evidence is offered by Roman ceramics recently recovered from the seabed. Attention is also drawn to maritime themes in the mosaics at Fishbourne, Brading and Low Ham where the chosen mythological scenes appear to be an overt expression of contemporary nautical preoccupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay extends the historical issues and the balance of texts and material culture in Roman British History. The author adds the figure and legend of Boadicea, which expresses the contradictions of Roman Britain. He addresses the revival of interest in the period. Shifting from texts to artifacts, from words to things from monuments to ruins, Hellenic classicism also turned the Roman heroic and militaristic tradition to an erotic one.

A silted-up palaeochannel in the postglacial estuarine alluvium exposed at Oldbury Flats on the south-eastern shore of the Severn Estuary has yielded a considerable variety of Romano-British occupation debris, and constitutes a major primary source for the substantial quantities of previously recorded archaeological material transposed into the present-day intertidal zone. The disposition of the abandoned tidal channels, the pattern of medieval fields, and the configuration and relationships of the surviving seabank to early finds in the area point to substantial landscape and coastal changes from the Roman period onward. Considerable losses of alluvial land appear to have occurred, and these may have forced the inland dispersal of the Romano-British settlement. Perhaps because of its location, close to the shore of the estuary, and near major creeks, the settlement is the richest so far detected on the Severn Levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the excavation of Roman artifacts and architecture in England. The author discusses the history of Roman society in England, including the invasion of Britain by Roman ruler Julius Caesar and the settlement of Britain by Roman emperor Claudius. Roman walls made from stone and vallum were constructed in Britain to repel enemies and included structures to house soldiers and guards. A road system to connect Roman-built towns and settlements in Britain is described. Excavations have suggested that iron, lead and tin mining was conducted in Britain during the Roman occupation. Artifacts discovered during excavations include bronze objects such as surgical tools and brooches, as well as Roman coins.