scholarly journals Making Space for Past Futures: Rural Landscape Temporalities in Roman Britain

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-342
Author(s):  
Andrew Gardner ◽  
Lacey Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The Future ◽  
Material Record

In this paper, we seek to explore the ways in which landscapes become venues not only for manipulations of the past in a present, but also for shaping possible futures. Considerations of temporality and being in the landscape have been more strongly focused on the past and social memory than the future, anticipation and projectivity, but these are vital considerations if we are to preserve the possibility that past people imagined alternative futures. A fruitful archaeological context for an exploration of past futures can be found in the choices people made during the late Iron Age and Roman period in Britain, which has an increasingly rich and high-resolution material record for complex changes and continuities during a period of cultural interactions and imperial power dynamics. More specifically, recent research into the architectural and material practices evident on rural settlement sites and across landscapes forces us to challenge preconceptions about the reactive/reactionary culture of rural societies. Case-studies from Kent and the West Country will be deployed to develop the argument that in the materializing of time, the future has a very significant part to play.

Artefact studies in Late Iron Age and Roman Britain: a blast from the past?

Antiquity ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (331) ◽  
pp. 258-260
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Ponting
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age

Memories of the Past in Roman Britain

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zena Kamash
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Memory Process ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

After setting out the history of memory studies and the role of archaeology in these studies, this chapter examines three realms of memory in Roman Britain: the burial of memories; the reorganization of landscapes and memories; and the building of religious memory. First, I explore how burying people and objects can be part of the memory process, focusing on embodied actions and the use of legendary topographies in the landscape. I then examine how different memory communities responded to major periods of landscape reorganization, linking this to wider discussions about the creation and maintenance of identity in Roman Britain. Finally, I explore the Romano-Celtic temple phenomenon. I argue that the construction of temples was linked to the kinds of memory-making that are particularly prevalent in times of social instability, a phenomenon seen as part of a broader set of processes that began in the late Iron Age.

scholarly journals Between Roundhouse and Villa: Assessing Perinatal and Infant Burials from Piddington, Northamptonshire

Britannia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 195-219
Author(s):  
Claire M. Hodson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Skeletal Development ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Poor Health ◽  
Infant Survival ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Growth Changes ◽  
Age And Sex

AbstractThe discovery of perinatal and infant individuals is common in the excavation of Iron Age and Romano-British domestic sites. In recent years, the discovery of many such burials has led to interpretations of infanticide and unceremonious disposal. Although this has been a widely discussed phenomenon, much of the literature has focused on the funerary context, and the biological age and sex estimates of these individuals, with little consideration of the palaeopathological evidence. This article provides a detailed analysis of 17 perinates/infants from the late Iron Age/early Roman site of Piddington, Northants. It discusses the skeletal evidence for poor health and growth, and highlights the potential of these remains to reveal alternative insights into perinatal and infant death. Evidence of growth changes and pathological lesions were identified, suggesting that these individuals experienced chronic episodes of poor health that affected their skeletal development. The study explores the implications of these findings within the context of Iron Age and Roman Britain. At Piddington, the death of these infants is not associated with the cultural practice of infanticide, but occurred due to poor health, highlighting the precarious nature of infant survival in the past.

Anticapitalist Utopias and Neotopias

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Mulgan
Keyword(s):  
William Morris ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Utopian Thinking

This chapter studies the radical alternatives that can be found in the traditions of utopian thinking that have offered fully formed alternatives to a flawed present, from Thomas More to Ursula LeGuin, and from William Morris to Ivan Efremov. Utopias are one of the ways societies imagine alternative futures, and many utopians put their ideas into practice too, creating islands of the future. Then as now they were healthy antidotes to the lazy pessimism which claims that all attempts at progress are futile. If utopias are worlds where predators have been eliminated, dystopias are ones where they rule. But utopias both promise too much and deliver too little, their greatest weakness now as in the past being that they lack an account of how change will happen.

The Introduction of Roman Ceramic Styles and Techniques into Roman Britain: A Case Study from the King Harry Lane Cemetery, St. Albans, Hertfordshire

1988 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian C. Freestone ◽  
Val Rigby
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Surface Coating ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Firing Techniques

AbstractSpecialised ceramics from Gaul were imported into late Iron Age Britain, and their forms copied in native techniques. Roman technology was introduced after the Conquest, and involved changes in paste preparation, surface coating and firing techniques that allowed increases in the scale, standardisation and quality of the production.

scholarly journals Hillforts, rocks and warriors

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Javier Rodriguez-Corral
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
The Bronze Age

During the Late Iron Age, monumental stone statues of warriors were established in the northwest of Iberia, ‘arming’ landscapes that ultimately encouraged specific types of semiotic ideologies in the region. This paper deals with how these statues on rocks not only worked in the production of liminality in the landscape – creating transitional zones on it –, but also how they functioned as liminal gateways to the past, absorbing ideas from the Bronze Age visual culture up to the Late Iron Age one, in order to create emotional responses to a new socio-political context.

scholarly journals REGES, REGULI, DUCES: SOME REMARKS ON THE INDIVIDUAL AND POWER IN LATE IRON AGE PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
ANTON BARYSHNIKOV
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
The Individual

The paper considers one of the most significant changes in late pre-Roman Iron Age in Britain—the emergence of individual power, usually labeled as kingship. The modern perception of this sociopolitical phenomenon has been largely determined according to texts from Greek and Roman authors. This paper argues that this image is distorted and says more about the ancient writers than it does about ancient political leaders, their status, or the essence of their power. Avoiding terms like king to prevent a general misunderstanding of the phenomenon is reasonable; nevertheless, coins from so-called dynasties and tribes as well as other material sources show the emergence of individual power from the first century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. This new phenomenon should be analyzed with new (and re-worked) theoretical frameworks. Additionally, comparative studies can play a significant role in exploring the nature of what is referred to as Iron Age kingship in Britain.

Cemeteries and Funerary Practice

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake Weekes
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Spatial Separation ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Process Method

This chapter applies and attempts to contribute to the funerary process method of investigating late Iron Age and Roman period mortuary ritual in Britain. In this approach, evidence derived from archaeological contexts including tombstones and monuments, possible cemetery surfaces, cemetery boundaries, burials, pyre sites, and other features is reconsidered diachronically in relation to funerary schema. We therefore try to consider objects and actions in their correct funerary contexts, from the selectivity of death itself, through laying-out procedures, modification of the remains and other objects, degrees of spatial separation of the living and the dead, and types of deposition and commemorative acts. The development of tradition and diversity in funerary practice in Roman Britain is considered throughout, and the chapter concludes with a brief reconsideration of the multi-vocality of funerary symbolism.

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