On the Edge of Empire: Society in the south-west of England during the first century BC to fifth century AD

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siân Alyce Thomas

This volume explores the relationship between people and material culture in the south-west peninsula of England from the first century BC to the fifth century AD. This is achieved through the analysis of the ceramics, personal adornment items and coins found in the region, gathered from excavation reports and from data recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

1981 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 78-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold B. Mattingly

The American excavators in the south-west area of the Forum at Corinth have revealed an intriguing architectural complex, which they have called the ‘Punic Amphora Building’. Evidently it housed a thriving import business with a speciality in fish and wine, whose trade extended in one direction to Sicily and perhaps Spain and in the other to Chalkidike and Chios. Masses of fragments of Punic and Chian amphoras were found crushed and pounded in the make-up of successive floor-levels in the courtyard, together with numerous pieces from Mende and elsewhere. Many others emerged from the single floors of most of the rooms or were discovered in the littered debris from the final phase of occupation. The life of this business house was somewhat short, but a domestic building on the same site had earlier been partly devoted to the same trade. All this activity ceased with dramatic suddenness; the emporium went out of use and in the late fifth century it was overlaid in one area by a new road. The end seems to be securely dated c. 430 B.C. by Attic black-glaze pottery in the final floor-level or in the debris covering the last floor. Professor Williams plausibly links the collapse of business with the interruption of Corinth's trade caused by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War: one of Athens' first war measures was to blockade both the Saronic and the Corinthian Gulfs. This new material evidence for Corinthian commerce is most welcome in itself and, as I hope to show in this paper, it may help clarify other problems.


1974 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 295-298
Author(s):  
Michael B. Walbank

This document is one of a number of Attic proxeny-decrees that A. G. Woodhead considered to be evidence for Athenian concern with the south-west Aegean towards the end of the fifth century B.C. He identified the honorand Proxenos as a native of Chalke, a small island off the west coast of Rhodes. I share the view of J. and L. Robert that Woodhead has not proved his case either for the date or for the ethnic.The inscription is non-stoichedon, its engraving inexpert and careless, with several mistakes untidily erased and corrected. There is a mixture of Attic and Ionic letter-forms in the first three lines (gamma, eta, and lambda are Ionic, while xi is written chi sigma); otherwise the lettering is Attic, indicating a date before 403 B.C.


Britannia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 53-77
Author(s):  
Matthew Symonds

AbstractExceptional aspects of the design and location of a pair of first-century fortlets on the Exmoor coast are explicable as a product of local influence. Previous explanations for the remote setting of these small posts and the distinctive defences securing them have focused on a signalling role, with the fortlets serving as a means to transmit messages to naval vessels patrolling the Bristol Channel. Instead, both the landscape setting and articulation with local settlement patterns imply that these installations strengthened pre-existing measures to counter coastal raiding. Parallels between this variant fortlet design and settlement morphology in the South-West peninsula suggest that the army co-opted an indigenous architectural style. The two fortlets could act as components of what was effectively a composite coastal cordon, built on collaboration between the Roman military and the local population.


Author(s):  
Olympia Bobou

Children’s representations appear early in the Greek visual material culture: first they appear in the large funerary vases of the geometric period, while in the archaic period they appear in funerary reliefs and vases. To the representations in vase painting, those in terracotta statuettes can be added in the fifth century, but it is in the fourth century bc that children become a noteworthy subject of representation, appearing both in small- and large-scale objects in different media. This chapter considers the relationship between changing imagery of children in ancient Greece and social and religious developments from the geometric period, through the Hellenistic period and into the Roman period in Greece.


1970 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Daniels

SummaryThe Garamantes inhabited Fezzan, now the Saharan province of the Libyan Arab Republic, their capital, Garama, lying c. 105 miles west of Sebha in the wadi el Agial. After an unruly early history they appear to have become pacified and open to Roman influence. Before Garama was founded the tribe inhabited the promontory fortress of Zinchecra c. 2½ miles to the south-west, where excavation has revealed three main periods of occupation. The earliest consists of rock-scooped hearths, the second of rough dry-stone and frond shelters with stone-lined hearths. The third is more complex with buildings ranging from rough shelters to well-built mud-brick ‘houses’, the latest of which date to the first century B.C. and employed dressed stone in their basal courses. At the start of this period a complex of enclosure banks and walls was thrown around the base of the spur. Finally the site was abandoned to cemeteries.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-151
Author(s):  
Christian Konrad Piller

According to some classical authors, the region south-west of the Caspian Sea was inhabited by the large tribe of the Cadusians (Greek Καδουσιοι, Latin Cadusii). During the Achaemenid Period, several armed conflicts between the Imperial Persian forces and the warlike Cadusians occurred. Of particular importance is the disastrous defeat of Artaxerxes II in 380 B.C. From the archaeological point of view, little has been known about the material culture of the Achaemenid Period (Iron Age IV) in Talesh and Gilan. Until recently, only a few burial contexts from the South of Gilan could be dated to the period between the 6th and 4th centuries B.C. However, during the last two decades, Iranian archaeologists excavated numerous Bronze and Iron Age graveyards in the Talesh Region. A number of burial contexts at sites, such as Maryan, Mianroud or Vaske can securely be dated to the Achaemenid Period. With this new material basis, it was possible to subdivide the Iron Age IV into different subsequent phases. Furthermore, it is likely that the material culture described in this article could be at least partially attributed to the Cadusians.


Numen ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Bowman

AbstractGlastonbury, a small town in the south west of England, is the focus for a variety of spiritual seekers and religious practitioners. It therefore provides an interesting and appropriate context in which to explore the relationship between the local and the global in the contemporary spiritual milieu.This article explores the extent to which Glastonbury has claimed a "serial centrality" over the centuries in relation to different religious trends, first within Christianity and, in the course of the twentieth century, within a growing number of worldviews.Highlighting similarities and tensions between the competing visions and discourses to be found there, the article examines issues surrounding the negotiation of the local and the global for a variety of groups and individuals.Despite the element of change (indeed exoticism) in some of the manifestations of contemporary spirituality in Glastonbury, there is, nevertheless, a considerable degree of continuity in relation to the vernacular tradition there.


Author(s):  
Valter Lang

This chapter examines Iron Age funerary and domestic archaeological sites, and economic and cultural developments from c.500 BC–AD 550/600, in the east Baltic region (present day Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). While the early pre-Roman Iron Age was to some extent a continuation of the late Bronze Age in material culture terms, many changes took place in the late pre-Roman Iron Age. At the change of era, new cultural trends spread over the east Baltic region, from the south-eastern shore of the Baltic to south-west Finland, which produced a remarkable unification of material culture over this entire region up to the Migration period. Differences in burial practices and ceramics, however, indicate the existence of two distinct ethnic groups, Proto-Finnic in the northern part of the region and Proto-Baltic to the south. Subsistence was based principally on agriculture and stock rearing, with minor variations in the economic orientation of different areas.


Author(s):  
David Petts

This chapter reviews the evidence for the archaeology of early Christianity in Britain and Ireland. Here, the church had its origins in the areas that lay within the Roman Empire in the fourth century but rapidly expanded north and west in the early fifth century following the end of Roman rule. The evidence for church structures is limited and often ambiguous, with securely identifiable sites not appearing to any extent until the seventh century. There is a range of material culture that can be linked to the early church from the fourth to the seventh centuries; in particular, there are strong traditions of epigraphy and increasingly decorative stone carving from most areas. The conversion to Christianity also impacted burial rites, although the relationship between belief and mortuary traditions is not a simple one.


Britannia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 53-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind Niblett ◽  
William Manning ◽  
Christopher Saunders

ABSTRACTExcavations in Insulae II, III and XIII in the southern half of Verulamium demonstrated the absence of occupation prior to the late first century and the relatively late development of the street grid in this area. This forced a re-evaluation of the date of the 1955 ditch, suggesting it was not dug until the Flavian period. The excavations also demonstrated that Watling Street had never bisected Insula XIII on the south-eastern side of the Forum-Basilica, thus negating a major argument for the presence of a Claudian fort under the centre of the later town. A restricted excavation in the northern corner of Insula XIII revealed evidence for the location of the town’s baths, while excavation in Insula XIII revealed a long sequence of industrial and domestic occupation stretching from the late first to early fifth centuries. Evidence for continued occupation into the fifth century or beyond was recovered from Insula II, and to a lesser extent, in Insula XIII.


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