Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Paul Booth

Reviewed work(s):
The Archaeology of Roman Towns: Studies in Honour of John S. Wacher by P. Wilson
Source: Britannia, Vol. 35 (2004), pp. 366-367
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4128652
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366 REVIEWS
The
Archaeology of
Roman
Towns:
Studies in Honour
of
John S. Wacher. Edited
by
P. Wilson. Oxbow
Books,
Oxford,
2003.
Pp.
xviii +
269,
illus. Price: ?60.00. ISBN 1 8421 7103 8.
As the editor notes in his
foreword,
the
'slightly
eclectic mix' of the
papers
in this festschrift is
'entirely
appropriate'
in view of its
recipient's range
of interests. Preceded
by
an
appreciation
of John Wacher
(by
Alan
McWhirr)
and a
bibliography
of his
works,
the
twenty-six papers
include
eight
on non-British
subjects.
The
editor has avoided
any
thematic
grouping
of
papers by arranging
them in
alphabetical
order of contributor.
Broadly, they
include four
papers
-
three
town-specific pieces
- on urban defences
(Esmonde Cleary
on
Gaul, Crummy
on
Colchester, Magilton
on
Chichester, Manning
on
Caerwent);
nine that
may
be described
as
'Wacheresque'
summaries of individual towns
(including Ancyra (Bennett), Nijmegen (van
Enckevort
and
Thijssen)
and
Nicopolis (Poulter),
and three 'small
towns');
three
regional
or
provincial
overviews
-
the Lower Rhine
(Carroll),
Dalmatia
(Wilkes),
and Yorkshire
(P. Wilson);
and ten more
heterogeneous
contributions
mostly
on
specific aspects
of individual
towns,
such as M. Jones and T. Williams on
aspects
of water
supply
at Lincoln and London
respectively
and Webster on the contribution of artefact studies to
a number of
questions
at
Caerwent,
but
including wider-ranging pieces
on urban tabularia and the sorts
of documents that
might
have been contained within them
(Hassall)
and
(monumental)
urban art
(Ferris).
Clearly
treatment of such a
wide-ranging
collection can
only
be
very
selective.
The individual town summaries
provide
useful
information, though
a number of the sites in
question (as
disparate
as
Carlisle, Shepton Mallet,
and
Nicopolis)
have been the
subject
of recent
major publications
and/or
syntheses (as
have
Colchester, Lincoln,
and
Catterick, aspects
of which are dealt with in other
contributions).
Overall,
much of what is
presented emphasises report
rather than broader
analysis.
Within this framework a
number of well-established
preoccupations emerge
- urban
defences,
for
example, clearly
a
topic
far from
being
exhausted. Refinement of
sequence
and
chronology
is still a
major
issue in the
papers
here
(Crummy,
Magilton,
and
Manning
on
Colchester, Chichester,
and Caerwent
respectively
-
the last two of these are
reviewed
thoroughly
and shown to lie
broadly
within
increasingly
well-understood
patterns
of
development),
while Esmonde
Cleary presents
a useful
summary
of
early
urban defences in the West
(meaning Britain,
the
Gauls,
the
Germanies,
and
Raetia).
His
principal conclusion,
that 'under the
high empire
urban defences in
the west were much more to do with urban status and civic ambition than with defence' is
plausible
for the
first and
early
second centuries
A.D.,
but less
convincing
in the later second
century,
when the numerous
British earthwork defences still
appear
remarkable -
why
is it that such 'ambition' is
apparently
much more
widespread
here than in
Gaul,
where so
many major
towns are not defended at all in this
period?
Interesting questions relating
to the
composition
of urban
populations emerge particularly
from the
contributions on
Nijmegen
and
Nicopolis,
both of which had substantial
'foreign' components,
in the latter
case
explained by
the lack of 'an
appropriate
tribal
organization upon
which to
graft
an urban structure'
(205),
an
interesting
contrast to the situation
prevailing
across lowland Britain. At
Nijmegen
we see not
only
a
multiplicity
of locations and
types
of
military
sites but also a
variety
of civil settlement locations of
apparently contrasting
character. In
particular,
in the first
century A.D.
van Enckevort and
Thijssen suggest
that there were
parallel
settlements of Batavians in Batavodurum and non-Batavians in
oppidum
Batavorum
-
mostly
'Gallo-Roman
craftsmen, officials, soldiers/veterans, innkeepers
and other
immigrants' (64).
This
striking situation,
identified
principally
on the basis of
archaeological
evidence without the
supporting
epigraphic
material adduced at
Nicopolis (but
how much
significance
should be
placed
on the absence of
early inscriptions recording Thracians?), might
have
implications
for
Britain, particularly
at
places
such as
London,
but could also find
parallels
in Colchester and elsewhere.
An
important
area of
study
indicated
by
the
Nijmegen
review that is echoed in a number of the British-
based
papers
relates to the
complexities
of
military/civil interaction, e.g.
at Carlisle
(McCarthy), Richborough
(Millett
and
Wilmott), early
Caerwent
(Webster)
to an
extent,
and the Yorkshire towns
(P. Wilson).
Millett
and Wilmott
emphasise
the
symbolic significance
of
Richborough
as the
principal port
of
entry
into Britain
in the
early
Roman
period
and
(rightly)
the fact that this would not have involved a few isolated
monuments;
on-going
work indicates the scale and
complexity
of the extramural settlement. Here and elsewhere
straightforward military/non-military
dichotomies will not
do,
as the recent detailed discussion of Catterick
has shown. The circumstances and social and economic framework in which
particular
activities took
place
need to be defined on a
priori grounds.
How did different communities, whether (for example)
a small
group
of soldiers within a 'town', or a 'civilian' community
attached to a fort, see themselves in a wider settlement
context, and how do archaeologists identify
the
degree
of
interdependence
of these communities?
P. Wilson's contribution on Yorkshire 'towns'
probably
comes closest to discussion of some of these issues.
REVIEWS 367
Overall, however,
few contributions
really begin
to
get
to
grips
with what urban
living
meant and how it was
understood
by
the
people
who lived in towns -
surely
we should be able to
begin
to use the
archaeological
evidence in this
way?
Ferris
tries,
but his conclusion that
'truly
urban art ... did not ... become ...
part
of
the fabric of the
city [in Britain]' (92)
confirms what one
might
have
suspected. Williams,
in an
illuminating
survey
of
aspects
of water
supply
in
London,
is more successful. Variation in the
quantity
and
quality
of
data is
inevitably problematic,
but recent increases in both at Leicester are summarised
very usefully by
Cooper
and
Buckley,
who favour an extended
chronology
for the late Roman
phases
there. In contrast,
Neal
provides
a neat deconstruction of the famous
Verulamium
Insula XXVII
Building
2 'late Roman'
sequence
by suggesting
a
probable
later
third-century
A.D. date for mosaics hitherto
assigned
to a
building
constructed
after
A.D.
360. The
building sequence may
not have outlasted the mid- to late
(at latest)
fourth
century
A.D.
Such
essays depend,
as Neal
acknowledges, upon
the
quality
of
published
or archived excavation records.
The contributions on the London water
supply
and Leicester are
particularly
useful as
they deploy large
quantities
of
'grey' literature,
some from sites that will
probably
never be
'published'
in the traditional
sense. The sheer volume of evidence now available
merely
underlines the achievement of Wacher's Towns.
The
approach
in some of the other contributions is much more
broad-brush,
an extreme
example being
that
of Wilkes on the towns of Dalmatia. This
province-wide survey principally deploys historical/epigraphic
sources and therefore
provides
much information on the
legal
status of towns
but, perhaps unavoidably
because of
scale,
leaves little
impression
of the broad trends of their
development,
what
they
looked
like,
and how
they actually
worked. We
get
a much better sense of this from sites such as
Nijmegen, Nicopolis,
London,
and
(inevitably)
the small discussed
sample
of
Pompeii (R.
Jones and
Schoonhoven),
in which the
chronological development
of distinctions between
high-status
and low-status
housing
areas can be traced
in some detail.
It is
perhaps
unfair to criticise the volume for
failing
to address
questions
that were not
directly
within
its remit.
Overall, despite
a few
lapses
and some editorial
untidiness,
it contains much that is useful and
sufficient,
better
still,
that is
thought-provoking.
As such it forms a fine tribute to John Wacher and his work
in this field.
Oxford Archaeology
PAUL BOOTH