The application of microfossils in assessing the provenance of chalk used in the manufacture of Roman mosaics at Silchester

Microfossils recovered from chalk tesserae in mosaics from the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, southern England, are used to suggest a provenance for the source-rock. The microfossils include foraminifera characteristic of late Cretaceous (Campanian) foraminiferal biozone BGS20 (quadrata macrofaunal biozone) and foraminiferal subzone BGS21i (basal mucronata macrofaunal biozone). Calcareous nannofossil assemblages from the same tesserae are poorly preserved, preventing precise age determination, but confirm an age of Santonian to Campanian. As indurated chalk beds of this age are not normally present in the stratigraphically higher chalks of southern England, it is probable that calcretised chalk, formed by secondary calcification beneath Palaeogene rock cover, was used to manufacture the tesserae. This suggestion is supported by a comparative analysis of chalk tesserae from the Norden Roman site in Dorset. Although the provenance of the chalk in some of the Silchester tesserae can be placed only within a broad geographical area of downland in southern England, others may have originated in the Dorchester–Swanage area, some 100 km to the southwest of Silchester, or the Portsdown area of southern Hampshire. None of the tesserae have been constructed from chalk found near Silchester.     

NORDEN AND THE "SUBSTANTIVE LANDSCAPE": A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

This commentary takes its point of departure in the debate provoked by the landscape theory that Denis Cosgrove presented in his seminal book, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (1984), in which he defined landscape in terms of scenic, spatial forms of representation. By unpacking the evolution of the concept of landscape the author proposed an alternative interpretation to Cosgrove's, emphasizing differing conceptions of lawfulness, in which the “substantive” platial landscape was introduced as a counterpoint to the scenic spatial concept. Initially, and for two particular reasons, the substantive landscape became theoretically placed in Norden: first, due to the historical and contemporary territorial/platial connotations of the term in the Nordic realm, and second, because the interest in a substantive landscape has been considerable among Nordic scholars. Today, this interest goes well beyond a Nordic context. In commenting on the contributions in this special issue the paper points at how different engagements with a “substantive landscape” might inform present and future scholarly debate concerning the role and meaning of landscape.