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

Roman Britain: civil and rural society
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distinction at the expense of new, Roman-derived ones. Thus command over people or livestock
may have been what mattered, and traditional means of display such as gift giving or ritualized
feasting may have been preferred to building a villa with Roman-style dining room and using
pottery. This may also hold good for some of the villa-less areas of the south and east such as the
West Midlands.
There were, however, inescapable links between the military garrisons and the civilian population
of the north and west through the needs of the former for supplies from the latter. The Roman
army was, in part, fed, clothed and supplied through taxation, and there is evidence that in frontier
provinces such as Britain this was often rendered in kind rather than coin. Over and above this,
military units could purchase supplies, as could individual men. For convenience’s sake, much of
this would have been obtained from the regions in which the army was based, thus the army
would have been an attractive market for local agriculturalists. The apparent peak in rural settlement
in this period might in part result from this stimulus, for instance the Roman army ate meat and
used huge quantities of leather, which would suit regions of pastoralism. In the previous chapter,
a rather different perspective on these potential impacts is offered. Also vital was a supply of
recruits. Once the army settled on permanent frontier systems, local recruitment would increasingly
have been the case; but balancing this drain of young men would have been the soldiers’ input
into the local demography through their families, mainly resident in the vici. Thus economic and
social links would undoubtedly have existed between military and civilian, even if they were not
of a type that leaves much trace in the archaeological record.
AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Farming and foodstuffs
For a long time it was believed that the impact of a major civilization on Britain must have
included substantial changes and improvements to the productive capacity and technology of
the island. By far the most important single ‘industry’ in Roman Britain was agriculture, and
modern work on archaeological evidence for the arable and pastoral regimes suggests that in fact
there was considerable continuity from the Iron Age (Jones 1989). The principal grain crops
remained spelt wheat (with some emmer in the north and west) and barley and oats. The Roman
period did see a wider use of bread wheat, perhaps initially under military influence, though its
rise to dominance was to be a post-Roman trend. If the staple crops changed little, there is
evidence that the ‘relish’ plants—vegetables, herbs and spices—did see introductions in the Roman
period, from cucumber to coriander, presumably reflecting Romanization of the cuisine. There
is now good evidence for Roman-period viticulture in Britain. There is also some evidence for
developments in the technology of crop production and processing, with the introduction of the
coulter to speed the plough, the mould-board to turn the soil and the water-mill.
Likewise, the main domestic animal species remained the same: cattle, sheep and pigs (Grant
1989). There is, though, evidence for changes in their raising and consumption. Over time, there
was a trend towards cattle at the expense of sheep, showing first at forts and ‘large’ towns, then
spreading to villas and ‘small’ towns, again probably suggesting a change in dietary preference
and cuisine. This is supported by evidence for changes in butchery practice between the Iron Age
and the Roman period. The kill pattern of cattle and sheep tends, broadly, to be bi-modal, with a
number killed young, presumably for meat, but many kept into maturity. In the case of cattle, this
was probably for energy, reproduction, as a wealth-store and for the many products of the eventual
carcass, and, in the case of sheep, for their wool.
Even if the basic crops and animals of British agriculture remained pretty stable through the
Roman period, there are grounds for believing that the ways in which they were used changed