Romano British - Is there really such a thing?

[Dinosaur]

It all gets a bit confusing where the 'Iron Age' stuff starts reappearing well before the 'Romans' have 'left', eg the thing with cists, or at least varying levels of stone/tile lining of graves is that they're already starting up again in the 4th century, at least in Northern England (Wetherby and Catterick are good examples, the former using 2nd hand stone roofing slates), and burying people along boundaries rather than in more traditional nucleated cemeteries also seems to kick off as a popular fashion around the same time, but both then carry on for hundreds of years after 410. And what's with the resurgence of cremation, decapitation, burying people with their boots on etc etc and with loads of other stuff in the 4th century, just when they're all supposed to be becoming nice conforming Christians?

And we need more C14 dates!

[Jack]

To paraphrase Dominic Powlesland at a recent talk (second hand unfortunately)..

'...There is no Iron Age, no Romano-British, no Anglo-Saxon.......is all just boll*&x...there is just people.'

The divisions we see are a product of looking at time in compressed chunks and through eyes masked by typology.

The term Romano-British was used to steer away from native sites (and features) being called Roman and hence implying the presence of Romans. But in dating terms its meaningless. Take the example of the River Don at around AD 70. According to (very few and dubious) written evidence, the River Don marked the southern boundary of the Brigantian Confederacy of tribes. The Brigantes were allied to Rome until a civil war caused the Roman Advance into the north around AD 71.

So taking this as 'True' a settlement dated to the early 1st century AD north of the Don would be Iron Age, but south of the River would be Romano-British...urk!

But the deeper you look into the so-called documentary evidence, dating, pottery, cultural change etc..etc.., the worse it gets!

But I agree with Dino.....the terms native and Roman are current.............as is much debate on theories on ethnicity, how it is perceived (from all directions), how it changes and how this relates to material culture and hence archaeological remains.

At the current state of archaeology I'd be very cautious! One important point (made above) is that the answers are very regionally based, there is a massive difference in the archaeological record between different regions.

Also for stuff on material culture/identity and creolization see.....

James, J. and Millet, M. (2001) Britons and Romans: advancing an archaeological agenda. Council for British Archaeology Research Report 125

[kevin wooldridge]

I am surprised that we haven't yet had one of those mad crazed geneticists claiming they have isolated a strand of DNA that identifies those Brits who are the result of interbreeding with those pesky Romans....I mean we have had Swiss archers, headless Vikings and all sorts of Jutes, Angles and Saxons...so why no Romano-Brit DNA?

[moreno]

"Romano-British" is another of those convenient umbrella terms like "Neolithic" that means different things, in different regions, at different times. We Moderns do love our classification, but the nature of culture (sic) is that it moves in fits and starts and doesn't give us the nice smooth transitions into which we keep trying to shoehorn history/prehistory. I think the terms we use and how we apply them, sometimes say more about our mania for categorising things, than they say about the things we're trying to categorise.

As you observe, "Romano-British" in south-eastern England was a completely different beast to "Romano-British" to the north or west. Maybe some areas were actually "Brito-Roman"?

Modern humans are naturally cultural magpies. Facilitating cultural scope-creep is something we've always been good at. Nab the bits of a culture that we like best and forget the bits we don't. I could murder a curry...

Well put! Nice neat categories never did go well with fluidity and change. Was that curry over rice?

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

I use the term 'Romano-British' to indicate a period of time, and elaborate about the various cultures in that time-frame.

[BAJR]

this is a great thread. think we should have more of these (and causewayed enclosures) in addition to the politics and trials of archaeology.

For me there is an issue in southern Scotland, where, for example romano british is a term that is so innapropriate. and that is not even getting into the roman incursions into the north where 'britons' is perhaps not even a valid term. with a growing understanding of the formation of tribal identities and the seeming retention of this identity in the more settled areas of southern britian and the more complex arrangements of association in places like wales or scotland (themselves modern constructs that would not be recognisable during the time period in question).

shorthand it may be... but shorthand for what?

i like dino's and jack's posts.

how thin is the veneer of empire? how quick does town life dissapate without imperial authourity. and the people... did they return to the old ways or did it never stop?

more work on rural settlement during this time... and if you remove goods that could be classed as readily available trade items.. what is the change in lifestyle?

[Dinosaur]

An interesting aspect is how the 'post-Romano-British' people viewed their 'Romano-British' past - many moons ago (and I'm sure that one day the mongraph will get published) I dug an Anglian cemetery where one of the graves was absolutely stuffed with random bits of RB metalwork re-used as jewelery items, 6 coins strung as part of a necklace, couple of cu-alloy studs, a mystery cu-alloy obj (always good when the finds specialists are flummoxed) etc. The dead woman clearly had a fixation with the stuff unlike her (funerary) neighbours...antiquarian, superstition, or maybe it was just a fashion thing and she'd got bored with the Anglian look, all those cruciform brooches and glass beads get sooo boring after you've seen the first few hundred....

[As an aside, can anyone come up with any good refs for pierced Roman coins, am sure I read an article about it not that long ago?]

[Wax]

To me Romano-British is just a handy label for that period of time when this country was part of the Roman Empire. It has no meaning beyond that

[BAJR]

ah... which country? and at what time?

because so many caveats and clarifications must be added to make sense of the term romano-british is it less a short-hand and more of an incumberance to a correct and more explicit terminology.

for example ... during the short (matter of years) flavian expansion into southern scotland, do i describe the people as romano british, and then back to native again? did they even know?

[P Prentice]

i prefer to think in date ranges rather than labels and even go so far as removing all reference to imperialist three age etc system, ie early 1st millennium BC or late 1st millennium - but generaly end up putting them back when nobody else can work out what period i am talking about