The development of animal husbandry from the Late Iron Age to the end of the Roman period: a case study from South-East Britain

In this paper zooarchaeological evidence from Iron Age and Roman sites in South-East Britain is presented and the results are applied to the continuing debate over culture contact and change following the Roman invasion. Evidence from Heybridge in Essex indicates that there were two stages of livestock development. These may reflect the import of new breeding stock into Britain. Differences between the rate of livestock development at this rural site and the nearby urban centre of Colchester indicate differing mechanisms of animal supply between the two sites. The appearance of very large cattle in Late Roman contexts at Boreham in Essex suggests that improvement of animals continued throughout the Roman occupation and was not merely an initial response to new economic and administrative demands. The biometrical evidence from these three sites is compared with evidence from elsewhere in Europe and the development of livestock during the Roman Period is shown to be complex and varied. The impetus and ideology behind the changes in animal husbandry following the Roman invasion in Britain are explored.     

A regional investigation of subadult dietary patterns and health in late Iron Age and Roman Dorset,England

This is the first regional analysis of the impact of Romanisation on subadult dietary patterns and related health parameters in Britain. A sample of 200 subadults from late Iron Age (LIA) and Romano-British (RB) Dorset were examined for dental health and specific metabolic diseases, and a sub-sample of 29 individuals were selected for nitrogen and carbon isotope analysis. The results showed that dental health declined in the Romano-British period and the incidence of scurvy and rickets rose. Increased consumption of marine foods in the RB period is indicated by an increase in δ¹³C between the LIA and RB subadults. After early childhood, there was no age-dependent variation in dietary protein in the RB and LIA populations from Dorset. We propose that these changes related to the introduction of urban living, Romanised diets and population migration.     

Temporal changes in diet: a stable isotope analysis of late Iron Age and Roman Dorset,Britain

This study investigates the relationship between diet and cultural change in late Iron Age and Romano-British populations from Dorset, England (1st century BC to the early 5th century AD). Dorset was the only region in Britain to exhibit continuity in inhumation burial rites through these periods and a wide array of environmental, archaeological and material culture evidence is available there. A sample of N = 77 human adult and N = 17 faunal rib samples were utilized for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis to test the hypothesis that Romanization of the diet would result in greater dietary variation.     

Massive storage in As Laias/O Castelo (Ourense,NW Spain) from the Late Bronze Age/Iron Age transition to the Roman period: a palaeoethnobotanical approach

The highest platforms of As Laias, a settlement located in northwest Iberia, were used for storage during the Iron Age and until the turn of the Era. In this time-span, the whole hilltop – the croa – was a walled enclosure mostly used for storage and due to recurrent fires affecting the settlement's terraces, abundant plant remains were preserved in overlying wattle and daub storage structures.     

行省中的罗马军队:以罗马不列颠为中心

进入帝国时期以后,罗马的扩张活动基本上偃旗息鼓。相应地,元首制时期的罗马军队经历了两个重要变化。一是兵源募选日益本土化,这使军团和辅助军之间的区别日渐淡化。二是行省驻军日益定居化,这使军队作为自成一体的社会具有隔离于非军事区的趋势。由于这两个变化,军队在和平时期的非军事功能日益突出。对不列颠罗马驻军的考察表明,军队对行省的影响主要体现在：军队对城市化进程起重要的推动作用;向军队供应粮食带动了不列颠南方地区的农业发展;军队是普及罗马公民权的重要渠道。关注这些非军事功能有助于更充分地理解作为罗马帝国主义工具的军队。     

Creating an Imperial Frontier: Archaeology of the Formation of Rome’s Danube Borderland

For investigating the formation of frontier zones, study of changes in small communities that constituted the majority of earlier populations provides a different perspective from a focus on major centers. A network model applied to settlement and cemetery sites on Romes Danube River frontier in Bavaria, Germany, shows that many communities, through participation in regional and long-distance circulation systems, played significant roles in creating the dynamic and culturally heterogeneous character of that landscape. This approach offers a model applicable to analysis of the formation and functioning of frontier regions in all cultural contexts.     

What Do Objects Want?

This paper develops an argument for the agency of objects, looking at the effects objects have on people. Groups of related objects, such as pots or metal ornaments, create stylistic universes which affect producers and users of new objects, bound by the canons of style. For an object to be socially powerful in a recognized manner, the form of the object lays down certain rules of use which influence the sensory and emotional impacts of the object. Formal properties of artifacts are influenced by the genealogy of the object class, including historical continuities and changes, and also its perceived source. The forms of objects, the historical trajectories of the class of objects and their perceived sources combine to have social effects on people, shaping people as socially effective entities. Britain’s incorporation into the Roman Empire between 150 BC and AD 200 provides an excellent case study through which to look at the changing corpora of objects, which had continuities and changes in form, a set of subtle attributions of sources and a complex range of social effects.     

A long-distance copper alloy trade to the North Eastern Baltic during the late pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age (250 BCE–450 CE) explored with lead isotope MC-ICP-MS

The North Eastern Baltic has no copper resources of its own, meaning that Cu alloy was imported either as raw material or as finished objects. The north-eastern coastline of Estonia during the late pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age was connected to the south by sea to the long-distance ‘amber’ trade route and to the east by Russian river systems. This study quantitatively assesses the direction of the Cu alloy supply in the region before and after brass enters circulation at the beginning of the Roman Iron Age. After an initial portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) survey, 18 objects were chosen for Pb isotope analysis. This isotope analysis resolved a group of nine brass artefacts from the Roman Iron Age amongst a ‘melting pot’ of other Cu alloys. The similarity between the isotope ratios found in the Roman world suggests the presence of the same ‘melting pot’ in the North Eastern Baltic, possibly created by a large amount of Roman Cu alloy being traded north. No evidence for Cu alloy from Scandinavia or the Ural Mountains could be found. The hypothesis from this small study is that the Cu alloy entering Estonia was dominated by metal from Southern Europe from the late pre-Roman Iron Age and the Roman period.     

‘The debatable territory where geology and archaeology meet’: reassessing the early archaeobotanical work of Clement Reid and Arthur Lyell at Roman Silchester

The first large-scale archaeobotanical study in Britain, conducted from 1899 to 1909 by Clement Reid and Arthur Lyell at Silchester, provided the first evidence for the introduction of Roman plant foods to Britain, yet the findings have thus far remained unverified. This paper presents a reassessment of these archaeobotanical remains, now stored as part of the Silchester Collection in Reading Museum. The documentary evidence for the Silchester study is summarised, before the results are presented for over a 1000 plant remains including an assessment of preservation, identification and modern contamination. The dataset includes both evidence for the presence of nationally rare plant foods, such as medlar, and several archaeophytes. The methodologies and original interpretations of Reid and Lyell's study are reassessed in light of current archaeobotanical knowledge. Spatial and contextual patterns in the distribution of plant foods and ornamental taxa are also explored. Finally, the legacy of the study for the development of archaeobotany in the 20th century is evaluated.     

Cosmopolitan Catterick? Isotopic evidence for population mobility on Rome’s Northern frontier

In order to investigate how the population diversity at major Romano-British urban centres compared to small towns and military outposts, we conducted multi-isotope (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium) analyses of bones (42 individuals) and teeth (26 individuals) of human skeletons from Cataractonium/Roman Catterick in North Yorkshire (U.K.). The results suggest a markedly less diverse population at Catterick than at the larger towns. Significant differences are observed between burials from the town and fort area and the suburb of Bainesse to the south, and it is suggested that these reflect a shift to more localised recruitment for the Roman army in the Late Roman period. Isotope data for the ‘Bainesse Eunuch’, an unusual 4th century burial that has been interpreted as the remains of a ‘transvestite’ priest of Cybele, are not ultimately conclusive but consistent with origins in Southern Britain or areas with a similar climate abroad.     

Coastal villas, maritime villas; a perspective from Southern Britain

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.     

Shedding light on the Cypriot rural landscape: Investigations of the Athienou Archaeological Project in the Malloura Valley,Cyprus, 2011–2013

Abstract

Since its inception in 1990, the Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP) has focused on diachronic patterns of rural land use within the Malloura Valley located along the edges of Cyprus’s fertile Mesaoria plain. Employing careful field methods of excavation and recording, members of AAP have sought to reconstruct ancient life in this understudied region by charting local responses to regional and pan-Mediterranean networks of exchange. The present contribution reports on the results of excavations (2011–2013) in the Geometric to Roman period rural sanctuary and of limited pedestrian survey (2013) in light of the project’s research goals, while highlighting AAP’s effective implementation of a mobile computing platform that streamlined field recording through an increased reliance on born-digital data. For a discussion of AAP’s mobile computing platform in the context of our fieldwork in Cyprus, please see our online supplementary article on the JFA website (http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/suppl/10.1179/0093469015Z.000000000112).     

Where Do the Lead Ingots of the Saintes‐maries‐de‐la‐mer Wreck Come From? Archaeology Compared With Physics

The lead isotope compositions of many different samples from lead ingots of Roman age from two relicts (from Cabrera, and from Saintes‐Maries‐de‐la‐Mer) of the Western Mediterranean have been measured. Other lead isotope analyses of ores, metals or lead ingots from mines of Sierra Morena and from Cartagena and Sardinia have been accomplished. All the lead isotope measurements have been performed at the Joint Research Centre of the European Union, Ispra (Va), Italy. The samples have been prepared in a class 100 clean room, using only ultrapure reagents and FEP materials. In view of the archaeological arguments, it was possible to believe that the Roman lead ingots of the Saintes‐Maries‐de‐la‐Mer 1 wreck came from Spanish lodes, as well as those of the Cabrera 5 wreck. In fact, while the comparison between the first group of ingots (Cabrera 5) and the lead from Sierra Morena is consistent, the correspondence between the second group of ingots (Saintes‐Maries‐de‐la‐Mer 1) and the Cevennes ores (southern France) gives rise to several problems concerning the archaeological and physical origins. These problems are discussed.     

Morphological changes in domestic cattle in Gaul,from the second century BC to the fifth century AD: diversity of herds in the Seine valley (France) and northern Gaul

In Western Europe the transition from the Iron Age to the Roman period is the scene of a rapid economic and agro-pastoral evolution characterized in particular by a modification in the shape of the cattle. Understanding this phenomenon, its implementation mechanisms and development dynamics represents a major challenge in archaeozoology. In our study a local and regional approach of the evolution in cattle morphology is carried out first on the scale of the middle Seine valley, then of the northern Gaul. Its purpose is to observe and compare the evolution rates in domestic cattle between Middle La Tène and the fifth century AD, and with the help of a tight chronological and geographical grid, to estimate to what extent the shape of the cattle has been influenced by the indigenous cultures, the Roman economic pattern or even the environment. This osteometrical study is based on the Log Size Index method and on a measurement corpus of 12,969 bones collected on sites located on 117 communes in France (for most of them), Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The results we obtained show local specificities in terms of breeding methods and animal morphologies, observed on a very fine scale and taking place long before the Conquest. Moreover the growth patterns of the various herds happen to be different and to evolve under the impetus of the developing Roman economic pattern. This work thus points out an essential aspect of the agro-pastoral turmoil that took place in Gaul at the turning point of our era. The Roman pattern is not the cause of the morphological changes of the cattle, nor of the diversity in cattle shapes in Gaul, but it provokes a reshaping of the agricultural systems and a redefining of the breeding strategies which boost and completely change the cattle growth patterns.     

Long‐distance interaction in Urartu?: Provenance and composition of copper alloys from Ayanis,Turkey

The paper analyses tin bronze weaponry found at the first‐half‐of‐the‐seventh‐century‐BCE Urartian fortress in the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey. Examples of finely manufactured artefacts provide evidence for the consumption of high‐quality bronzes in a well‐defined elite context. This study tests for the presence or absence of long‐distance procurement of the raw materials used to produce status objects. The results of quantitative elemental and lead isotope abundance ratio analyses show that the bronzes were produced with varying copper tin alloys, and the copper was procured from several possible locations, including Anatolia and Cyprus.