The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 162 • Simon Esmonde Cleary
Figure 9.3 Silchester: the forum (Hadrianic version), the baths (first period, late first century) and
amphitheatre (stone phase, third-fourth century).
Source: Fulford, M., 1993 in Greep, S. (ed.) Roman Towns: the Wheeler inheritance. London: Council for British
Archaeology Research Report 93; St John Hope, W.H.S. and Fox, G.E., 1905. ‘Excavations on the site of
the Roman city at Silchester, Hants in 1903 and 1904’, Archaeologia 59:2; Fulford, M. 1989, The Silchester
Amphitheatre. London: Britannia Monograph Series 10
Initially, however, this acceptance did not extend to actually living in the towns for whose
embellishment they were paying. Until the late second century, the domestic structures within
these towns overwhelmingly consisted of the shops/workshops of the artisans and traders who
made these towns centres of commerce. From the late second century, however, these towns
were increasingly colonized by the large ‘town houses’ of the elite, so that by the fourth century
they were dominated by these mansions for the private display of wealth, whilst the old public
buildings fell into decay and disuse and the commercial life of the ‘large’ towns became less
important to them.
Most of the ‘large’ towns of Roman Britain are now covered by medieval and modern towns,
but Silchester (Hampshire) was not reoccupied and is a type-site for Roman provincial towns
(Figure 9.2). The 40 ha within the defences were cleared at the end of the nineteenth century,
revealing the overall plan, the various public buildings (Figure 9.3) and many private buildings,
principally ‘town houses’ and some commercial premises along the main thoroughfare. The
cemeteries lay outside the defences, thus separating the world of the dead from that of the living;
they remain unexcavated. It is now appreciated that the plan bequeathed to us by the Victorian
excavations is essentially that of fourth-century Silchester. For a better impression of development
through time, one must turn to Verulamium (near St Albans, Hertfordshire), another abandoned
Roman town, where the excavations before the Second World War by Mortimer Wheeler and
subsequently by Sheppard Frere and others have revealed a complete sequence from the Late
Iron Age oppidum (Chapter 7) to the town destroyed by the Boudiccan rebellion of AD 60/61,
thereafter rebuilt, enlarged, embellished and ultimately declining to extinction through the late
fourth and fifth centuries.