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The ‘native’ population in Roman Cumbria, the majority of whom are thought to have lived in farmsteads in the countryside beyond the civitas at Carlisle, forts, and vici, continues to be defined by its difference to the ‘invader’. This is not only a result of the nature of the artefactual record but of the history of research in the region which continues to influence the creation of archaeological narratives, with perhaps the most pervasive problem being a continuing reliance on analogies. Instead, by studying artefact assemblages from ‘native’ farmsteads on their own merits and taking a critical, self-reflective approach to their interpretation, it is possible to create a more dynamic model which posits that people and ‘things’ have the ability to move within and between two separate, yet co-dependent, ‘spheres’ of exchange. As expected, the process of analysis demonstrated that the material ‘fingerprints’ of pottery and glass assemblages are very different at farmsteads, forts, and vici in Cumbria. Existing narratives have tended to interpret this as either a result of the poverty or disinterest of the ‘native’, or that they were actively resisting the influence of the ‘invader’. However, by taking into account the form and function(s) of ‘things’, it can be argued that their selection was an active choice, and that this was influenced by a range of different social, cultural, and individual factors. Taking the same approach to the study of a number of sites in the Pennines/Northumberland, North East Wales/Cheshire, and Droitwich demonstrated that, although the size of artefact assemblages might indicate a strict North:South divide, the forms of pottery and glass implies an intermediate zone around North East Wales/Cheshire. All of these results appear to indicate that the economy of Roman Britain was composed of multiple, overlapping systems, and that individuals and groups had the power to choose if and when they engaged with them. However, at the moment, the ability to discuss this idea in depth is restricted by the number of sites available for examination. The problem in Cumbria is that the same farmsteads have been repeatedly re-interpreted and although a handful have been excavated over the last decade, a recent trend towards large-scale community projects focused on vici means that there is a danger this practice will continue. To break out of this cycle of re-interpretation requires the creation of a research project dedicated to establishing a detailed chronology of pre- and post-Conquest rural settlements in Cumbria. Doing so will enable us to truly move beyond ‘native’ and ‘invader’.

Rural Chicana/o art, a style of politicized Mexican heritage visual culture produced in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, has yet to receive substantial critical attention despite the prominence of agrarian issues in Chicana/o visual culture. This study argues that between 1965 and 1985, Chicana/o cultural producers in the Central Valley created a set of visual material that expressed their fraught—and often invisible—relation to the industrialized agricultural economy taking shape around them, and, in the process, helped establish the farm worker as a primary figure in Chicana/o visual culture. The Fresno scene has made particularly significant contributions to this body of work due to its long-standing position as the economic, cultural, and political center of the grape industry. This dissertation explores how three works—the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA)-led March to Sacramento (1965), Mujeres Muralistas del Valle’s mural at the Parlier Labor Center (1978), and Ester Hernandez’s Sun Mad (1982)—developed by cultural producers in Fresno and its adjoining circuit of culturally rich farm worker towns and cities provide insight into how Chicana/os experienced and represented their place in the civil rights-era agricultural industry. I argue that this triad of visual material, and the wider set of murals, poster art, performances, and domestic and roadside installations from which it grew, demonstrate a form of aesthetic resistance on the part of these artists, an important strategy they utilized to offer alternative historical narratives, register political dissent, and promote rural cultural practices. Ultimately, I argue that the environment has played a major role in shaping the visual culture of the Chicana/o Central Valley—whether it was the use of grape workers highly specialized environmental knowledge in NFWA bargaining strategies, the direct experience of grape harvesting by artists such as Hernandez, or the more indirect influences members of the Mujeres Muralistas del Valle gained through their proximity to the vineyards. This research aims to provide an initial map of how these place-based interventions took shape over time in this particularly fertile Fresno area cultural corridor known as “the grape belt.”