Introduction

This book considers late Roman urbanism in Britain, but its approach has consequences for work across the Empire on both the late Roman period and urbanism in general. Studies of late Roman urbanism have commonly been influenced by the theory of decline and fall (e. g., Faulkner 2000a; Haverfield 1912; Liebeschuetz 2000; B. Ward-Perkins 2005), while, in association with this, studies of the growth of towns and the nature of preceding settlement pattern have been directed by notions of'romanisation’ and 'civilisation’ (e. g., Frere 1967; Haverfield 1912; Millett 1990; Wacher 1975). The result of this is that the archaeological analysis of late Roman towns, and perhaps Roman urbanism more generally, has not advanced to the same theoretical sophistication as some other areas of Romano-British studies such as rural settlement and identity.

This investigation focuses on the area of public space and the use of public buildings within towns in Britain, with the ‘official’ or ‘public’ towns - the coloniae, municipia, and civitas-capitals (Figure 1.1) - providing a further focus. The public buildings are used to evaluate the usefulness of the theory of decline for understanding urbanism and social attitudes at this time. These structures were a significant aspect of towns and the way in which they were experienced; they were perceived and used in symbolic ways (Boman 2003). As will become apparent in later parts of the book, public buildings have been the subject of a considerable number of excavations and have often received greater attention than many other aspects of Roman urbanism, being used as indicators of levels of ‘romanisation’, of civilisation in the ‘Golden Age’, and subsequent decline in the later Roman period. That they have been examined predominantly through this framework of interpretation might explain why the study of public buildings has perhaps become less fashionable in Romano-British research today. Apart from the production of important excavation reports and the discussions they contain (e. g., Fulford and Timby 2000; Yule 2005), there have been relatively few recent studies of public buildings in Britain, especially from theoretical perspectives (with important exceptions, including Creighton 2006; Mattingly 2006a; and Revell 2009). This situation indicates the need for reanalysis and the opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of theoretical approaches when one is tackling subjects relating to urbanism.

In studying the later Roman period there is a danger of becoming preoccupied with end dates, which in the case of urbanism can be problematic, because it places too much restriction on the significance of the sites as places. With this in mind, attention will be given to the archaeological evidence of activity within towns in the late Roman period rather than attempting to fit it into a restrictive historical framework. Focus will be on

The varied evidence relating to the use of spaces enclosed by public buildings and the significance of buildings as places. Whilst space is a more geographically definable entity, place is connected with human experience, feeling, and thought; its importance need not necessarily be governed by economic circumstances or linear concepts of time (E. Casey 1996:24-5; Ingold 2000:149; Taylor 1997:193). The end date of Roman Britain itself is debatable; the significance of a. d. 410 as a point of change is uncertain and it seems probable that many people continued to consider themselves as 'Roman’ well into the fifth century (Bartholomew 1982; Birley 2005: 461-2; Esmonde Cleary 1989, 2004; M. E. Jones 1996). A loose framework for the late Roman period will be taken as the late third, fourth, and early fifth centuries after the 'third century crisis’ (Mitchell 2007: 55-62). This has traditionally formed a dividing point between the late Roman and earlier periods, but the impact of this period of'crisis’ in Britain has been subject to review (see Chapter 3). As a result, this book concentrates on exploring methods for understanding evidence of activity that adopt a more theoretically and methodologically rigorous procedure.

Studies of the late Roman phases of towns often differ widely in methodology from explorations of other periods. In a recent study on landscape, M. Johnson (2007: 147-8, 198-9) commented on the distinction that is often drawn between work on the 'irrational’ landscapes of prehistory and the 'romanticism and empiricism’ of studies of the medieval period. This argument is also relevant for Roman-period landscape and settlement studies in which work has not tended to embrace the 'unfamiliar’ as it has for prehistoric periods. Studies of Late Antiquity have especially been unwilling to embrace theoretical developments. In this book I attempt to draw the different approaches together. An important part of this is an examination of our understanding of Roman urbanism itself in Britain and its relationship with pre-existing land use.