Repetition in abundant landscapes: dynamic approaches to Iron Age and Roman settlement in England

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we draw attention to several regions of England where the knowledge of Iron Age and Roman settlement has reached a level of ‘abundance’ such that what we can say about the past goes beyond simply creating a gazetteer of ‘sites’, or discussing the presence or absence of particular settlement types. We explore how this level of ‘abundance’ has come about, and what the wider implications are interpretatively and for future work.

Acknowledgments

The paper was read by Matt Brudenell (CAU), two anonymous Historic England reviewers, and a further two journal reviewers before submission, and we are grateful for the improvements that were made thenceforth. OA, CE, AC thank Charlotte Walton and Andrew Hall for the CAU’s graphics. We also thank the case study contributors, and especially Rob Wiseman (CAU) for carrying out the Cambridge HER study. ML thanks Drew Shotliff (Albion Archaeology) who read and commented on Bedfordshire’s first draft text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

AC (then Cambridge Archaeological Unit, University of Cambridge) initiated the study while CE (University of Cambridge) managed it; AD (Oxford Archaeology) produced the analysis and text for the Upper Thames Valley; PC & CG (University of Oxford) produced the analysis and text for the RoLCAP study; ML (Albion Archaeology) produced the analysis and text for the Bedfordshire study; EM & MM (University of Cambridge) produced the analysis and text for the Yorkshire study; and LW (University of Lincoln) produced the analysis and text for the Kent study. OA (Cambridge Archaeological Unit, University of Cambridge) brought the various strands of the project and texts together into a single paper.

Notes

1. In the Cambridge region our knowledge of the Iron Age and Roman periods, in terms of settlement densities, has dramatically increased twenty-one and seven-fold respectively compared with Fox’s 1920s knowledge base (see Evans, Aldred, and Cooper 2023). This increase also ties in well with other approaches that discuss regional identities, such as the RRS project (e.g. Smith et al. 2016), and Stephen Rippon’s studies on fields and territories (Rippon, Smart, and Pears 2015; Rippon 2018). Although this increase varies across different parts of the UK; while the southeast shows a convincing increase from the 1920s to today, the increase in knowledge has been much slower in other areas due to the ‘pace’ of development.

2. Fox’s ACR was the first such study that deepened the archaeological understanding of how different parts of past landscapes connected to one another and ‘worked’ at a sufficient scale of enquiry for patterns to emerge in the distribution. Fast forward a hundred years or so, from Fox’s (1923) publication, and we are at a place in Cambridge and other regions where we have a good grasp of how the different parts of a ‘region’ work (e.g. how settlements, field systems, communication links, industry, burial grounds connect up spatially and through time, and the material and social networks that supported these), following several iterations of regional analyses, using the Cambridge region as an example (e.g. Taylor 1972; Browne 1977; Cambridgeshire 1978; Kirby and Oosthuizen 2000). We are also beginning to understand how communities function at the local level (e.g. Evans and Lucas 2020; Aldred 2021), and how this extrapolates at larger scales, e.g. in terms of the communication and kinds of material transfer and exchange occurring between neighbours, and what constitutes neighbours beyond identifying their groupings (Evans, Aldred, and Cooper 2023; see also Hallam 1970, 51). While elements of our understanding such as settlement distributions have reached a knowledge plateau in several areas in the Cambridge region, there are still areas where new data has the potential to change the understanding as we have not yet reached a ‘total’ archaeology – if this is ever achievable (contra Taylor 1974, 1983).

3. This is derived from an increased number of investigations and research in the area. The pre-PPG 16 distribution included information from Fox’s maps and the OS Roman Britain map (1991 edition), showing the distributions of settlements, funerary and religious sites, as well as production sites and finds locations. The subsequent post-PPG 16 distribution was derived from: the EngLaId project (c. 2012) that summarised Historic Environment Record (HER), Portable Antiquities and Historic England’s (HE) National Mapping Programme (NMP) data into 1 km ‘aggregated’ squares; and RRS data (c. 2015) that looked at all evaluation/excavation events related to the Late Iron Age to Roman periods; and Cambridgeshire’s HER data for the Iron Age and Roman periods within a discrete study area (see also Tier 2 below).

4. The data for the Abundant landscape study was acquired on 10/10/2020 and the NAIS data [https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/record/27042_040] accessed on 31/05/2022.

5. These two studies have been discussed and analysed in the companion paper to this one (Evans, Aldred, and Cooper 2023).

6. Whatever the potential in the patterns of data, and the degree of abundance at the macro-level, there is further embedded nuance within-the-region where a ‘territorial’ analysis could assess the state of and type of knowledge, and what effect this has on our understanding of later Iron Age and Roman landscapes, especially on the relationship between settlements, field systems and routes. However, with the accumulation of new and deeper regional knowledge, in particular about the Roman period, the impression of ‘sites’ – as defined through the main categories identified above (settlements, funerary and religious, production and finds) – has also been studied by other pre-PPG 16 gazetteer and map-based research. For example, The Fenland in Roman times (Philips 1970) which covered approximately half of the northern area of Fox’s Cambridge region; the VCH Roman Cambridgeshire (Cambridgeshire 1978) shows a diachronic development of ‘settlements’ across a large part of Fox’s study area; and the Fenland Project (e.g. Coles and Hall 1994; Hall 1985, 1987, 1992, 1996).

7. 40 (43%) of the projects were less than 1 ha in size; 36 (38%) were between 1 ha and 10 ha, and 14 (15%) were between 10 ha and 42 ha in size.

8. The RRS also include a hexagonal feature at Star Hill in Bourne Park, which is unlikely to be Roman as it is one of a pair situated symmetrically on either side of an 18^th-century approach to Bourne Park House (see Wallace et al. 2016).

9. Allen, Martyn, Nathan Blick, Tom Brindle, Tim Evans, Michael Fulford, Neil Holbrook, Julian D Richards, and Alex Smith. ‘The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain: An Online Resource’. Archaeology Data Service, 2015 (https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/romangl/index.cfm (accessed 27/07/2022)).

10. Kent County Council. ‘Exploring Kent’s Past’, 2008. https://webapps.kent.gov.uk/KCC.ExploringKentsPast.Web.Sites.Public/Default.aspx.

11. Several projects formed the basis for the RRS project: Evaluation of PPG 16, ‘grey’ literature and the rural settlement of Roman Britain (2012–2015 - RPG-417) and From Roman England to Roman Britain: rural settlement, society and economy (2015–2017 - RPG-2014-227).

12. Or perhaps archaeology from any period.

13. What is not often discussed, or acknowledged even, is the role that local authority decision-making has had on knowledge production beyond the geography of development (M. Brudenell pers comm.). This is potentially a topic of future research.

14. This kind of work might inform strategic planning decisions, not just academic study.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Historic England [Abundant Landscapes 8307 MAIN].