ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Barker: Aspects of the topography of Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) Fig 79 Wroxeter: aerial photograph, looking north, of cropmarks outside the northern defences, showing roads and early cemeteries (Copyright A Baker) Webster (1962), Stephen Johnson (1975), and Peter Brown (1975), together with an unpublished excavation in c 1958 by a local research group. The remarkable common factor in all these was the total absence of any trace of cut stone, rubble, or mortar. The explanation given in the past has been exceptionally thorough robbing, in spite of the fact that those who dig out the foundations of mortared walls to recover stone usually knock all the surplus mortar off the stones and shovel it back into the trench, together with the scraps and lumps of rubble which are of no use to them. This is the common experience of those who have emptied robber trenches on this site or elsewhere. The circuit of the defences of Wroxeter measures about 2 miles (3.7km). On the most minimal calculation, assuming a wall 7ft (2m) thick and 15ft (5m) high, about 1,555,000 cu ft (44,000 m 3 ) of stone and mortar would 113 have been visible and available for robbing. For this to have been removed without trace puts a strain on credibility. In addition, it is worth noting that, as far as can be seen, stone from Wroxeter appears not to have been used in buildings more than 4-5 miles from the site. For example, the abbeys of Shrewsbury, Haughmond, Buildwas, and Much Wenlock, which might be expected to have absorbed a good deal of building material from the remains of the city, appear to be constructed, at least so far as their ashlar is concerned, with freshly-quarried stone. Certainly the tiles used for packing at Buildwas are medieval, not Roman, and no Roman tiles are visible at the other sites, though they were commonly reused in medieval buildings elsewhere in Britain. Finally, other deserted walled Roman towns, such as
Barker: Aspects of the topography of Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) Caerwent, Silchester, Verulamium, and Caistor, retain long stretches of their walls, in spite of centuries of robbing, as do even many continuously occupied towns. The conclusion, that Wroxeter was never defended with a stone wall, seems inescapable. The earlier defences of the late 2nd century on the same alignment were presumed to have been of timber (Webster 1975,44), and it now appears that their late refurbishment was in the same material. There is a further complication in the received interpretation of the defensive sequence. Kathleen Kenyon, in cutting a trench across the line of the lst-century defences, found that the ditch had been recut, probably in the 4th century (Kenyon 1940, 178 & pl LXX, section at bottom of plate). This must admit the possibility that the city was, in fact, reduced to its original size before its eventual abandonment. Until 1975 it had been assumed that the river Severn had eroded much of the western part of the site, but a small excavation by Peter Brown (1975) showed that there was a series of truncated ramparts along the present scarp above the river, and independent work by a geographer, David Pannett, confirmed that the river has not changed its course significantly since Roman times. Little, if any, of the city has therefore been lost. The latest occupation of the city centre The results of the excavations directed by the writer on the site of the basilica of the baths between 1966 and 1982 have been published in summary form elsewhere (Barker 1975; 1980a; 1980b; 1981; 1982) (Fig 81). Work since 1980 has confirmed many of the earlier results and added further information, particularly regarding the history of the basilica itself. The detailed evidence will be adduced in the eventual published report; here, the later history of this part of the city centre can only be summarized briefly (Fig 82). At some stage, probably c 300, the basilica apparently became unsafe. The floors had certainly sunk dramatically in places and most of the north aisle mosaics had been removed in Roman times. There is no evidence that the building collapsed: no fallen columns or fragments of columns, no piles of roof tiles, in fact virtually no debris of any kind lying directly on the floors. It seems, therefore, that the roof and the colonnades were carefully and systematically dismantled, leaving the walls standing and the interior empty. Perhaps at this stage it was used as a palaestra for the still-operating bath house. This would now be almost impossible to prove. Soil eventually accumulated on part of the nave floor, while elsewhere the postholes and stakeholes of buildings were cut into layers of sandy material presumably imported for the purpose. These were swept away in turn, and hundreds of tons of rubble were brought in and laid as foundation platforms for the massive timber-framed rebuilding of the last period. It is possible, in fact, that this was in two phases, though the evidence is slight and very ambiguous. Elsewhere, however, particularly on the southern edge of insula 2, the evidence for at least three phases of late major timber buildings is more certain (Fig 82) and this strengthens the argument that the ultimate replanning of the city centre was not a single operation, but complex and protracted. This last rebuilding was not confined to insula 5, the baths insula. Short rescue excavations directed by the writer - one in 1964 (Barker 1968) occasioned by modern road widening in insula 6, 300ft (100m) east of the baths insula, the other in 1980 (Barker forthcoming), on the site of the Post Office on the modern crossroads north of the baths at the junctions of insulae 2 and 16 - both showed that in the final phase of occupation, massive foundations, probably for timber sills, lay across the lines, in one case, of a levelled stone wall and, in the other, of the street dividing the insulae. The implications must be that the final replanning of the city was very extensive, and not merely the building of an imposing private house in a ruined urban landscape. The dating of the latest phases of development and of the ultimate abandonment of the city centre depends on a floating chronology, with a small number of termini post quos and one terminus ante quem. The arguments are very detailed, but chiefly depend on the sequences of buildings, worn surfaces, or other clear occupation horizons. The coin sequence ends before 400 and none of the pottery can independently be dated to the 5th century. There are, in fact, no objects from the site which must be 5th- (or 6th-) rather than 4th-century in date. Some of the buildings are given termini post quos by stratified coins and the most important of these is a sequence of structures on the northern edge of the site. Here a furnace with associated pits and interconnecting gullies was succeeded by three major timber buildings, one founded on massive post-settings of clay and cobbles, the others on the facades of buildings fronting the east-west street. These three buildings could have had a life of at least 50 years each, and a century or more is certainly possible. The collapsed clay roof of the furnace contained a coin of Constantine I, c 320, which gives a firm terminus post quem for the subsequent sequence. On the assumption that the buildings lasted only 25 years each, the occupation here will have continued until c 395. If we concede that each may have lasted a century, the final date is extended to 620. The date range of the abandonment, therefore, is 395 to 620, with a point midway between the two the most probable. Another pointer to the length of occupation between the dismantling of the basilica and the final abandonment of the site is given by the sequences of worn sandstone and cobble surfaces found within the basilica area. Detailed discussion must await the final publication, but on the most minimal arguments some of the worn surfaces could hardly have taken less than a century to develop. The problem, of course, is that we do not know how many people walked over them daily, or whether they all wore hobnailed shoes. However, an indication of how long it takes even the Wroxeter sandstone to wear smooth is given by a wall foundation on the site of the baths, which are open to the public. This wall was capped by the Ministry of Works in the 1950s and, despite approximately 25,000 people a year having walked over it twice each (as they enter and leave the site) for 30 years, the stones have barely lost their sharp edges; they are certainly not yet smooth. Considerations such as these incline us to believe in a longer rather than a shorter timescale for the whole sequence; it now seems impossible to compress all these events into a century, or even a century and a half, and a terminal date near 500 now appears increasingly likely. 114
Page 1 and 2:
No 59 ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Bri
Page 3 and 4:
Copyright © 1985 Authors and Counc
Page 5 and 6:
Illustrations Fig 1 Miletus Fig 2 C
Page 7 and 8:
Introduction: the study of Classica
Page 9 and 10:
Introduction and the land divided i
Page 11 and 12:
Introduction Fig 3 Timgad: the colo
Page 13 and 14:
Introduction Fig 6 Lepcis Magna: th
Page 15 and 16:
Introduction xvi
Page 17 and 18:
Cunliffe: Aspects of urbanization i
Page 19 and 20:
Cunliffe: Aspects of urbanization i
Page 21 and 22:
PART II THE PLANNING AND BUILDING O
Page 23 and 24:
Dilke: Ground survey and measuremen
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
The mechanics of the building trade
Page 31 and 32:
Ling: The mechanics of the building
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Who paid for public buildings in Ro
Page 45 and 46:
Duncan--ones: Who paid for public b
Page 47 and 48:
Duncan-Jones: Who paid for public b
Page 49 and 50:
Civic Pride: a factor in Roman town
Page 51 and 52:
Frere: Civic Pride: a factor in Rom
Page 53 and 54:
Reece: Roman towns and their plans
Page 55 and 56:
Reece: Roman towns and their plans
Page 57 and 58:
Wacher: The functions of urban buil
Page 59 and 60:
Casey: The Roman housing market leg
Page 61 and 62:
Casey: The Roman housing market Evi
Page 63 and 64:
Casey: The Roman housing market Rom
Page 65 and 66:
Drinkwater: Urbanization in the thr
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Forum and Capitolium in the early E
Page 73 and 74:
Todd: Forum and Capitolium in the e
Page 75 and 76:
The quick and the dead: suburbs, ce
Page 77 and 78: Esmonde Cleary: The quick and the d
Page 79 and 80: Todd: Forum and Capitolium in the e
Page 87 and 88: Salway: Geography and the growth of
Page 89 and 90: Colchester: the mechanics of laying
Page 91 and 92: Crummy: Colchester: the mechanics o
Page 101 and 102: New streets for old : the topograph
Page 103 and 104: Jones: New streets for old: the top
Page 109 and 110: London in the 1st and early 2nd cen
Page 111 and 112: Perring: London in the 1st and earl
Page 113 and 114: Perring: London in the 1st and earl
Page 115 and 116: Marsden: London in the 3rd and 4th
Page 125 and 126: Barker: Aspects of the topography o
Page 127: Barker: Aspects of the topography o
Page 131 and 132: Fig 81 Wroxeter: the area of excava
Page 133 and 134: probably from Viroconium, the robbi
Page 135 and 136: Forum Iuhi (Cividale) (Italy) 61a f
show all

ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?