ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

are separated by streets paved with a corduroy of logs,
speak of rigorous social control perhaps under some kind
of coercive power. While there is nothing to suggest that
these sites should be regarded as ‘urban’, they show that
substantial communities were now living together in
well-ordered settlements exhibiting a high degree of
planning, and with a social structure sufficient to galvanize
the occupants into producing communally beneficial
works such as streets and defences.
Even greater complexity is shown by the well-known
site of the Heuneburg, south Germany (Kimmig 1975;
Kimmig & Gersbach 1971; Gersbach 1976), where in the
late 6th century BC the defences were rebuilt on a
monumental scale with mudbrick set on a drystone
foundation, and were adorned with rectangular bastions.
Heuneburg differs from the other three sites mentioned
because of its evident link with the Mediterranean world
(amply demonstrated by the mudbrick and stone-based
architecture, and by imports of Greek and Massiliot
pottery). The usual interpretation of the site - as the seat
of a local chieftain indulging in a complex prestige-goods
economy - has much to commend it. The importance of
the Heuneburg to the present discussion is in the regional
functions which it performed. In addition to the administration
which the chiefs court may have been expected to
undertake, it is clear that the site served both as a
manufacturing centre for pottery, brooches, and other
goods, and as a redistribution centre for luxury items
brought in from outside the territory. Although redistribution
within a system of social obligation is some
remove from the market economy of a fully urban
community, it is a stage of complexity one might expect to
find in the pre-urban phases of an advanced barbarian
society.
While it is true that Heuneburg owed its position in the
late 6th century to its relationship with the Mediterranean
socio-economic systems, the emergence of redistribution
centres serving central-place functions appears to be
attested a few centuries later in Britain, as exemplified in
the excavation of Danebury in Hampshire (Cunliffe
1984b). The writer has argued elsewhere that Danebury,
and no doubt other ‘developed hillforts’, occupied central
positions in defined territories, and that through them the
exchange of commodities (albeit embedded within the
social system) was manipulated. The very considerable
storage capacity of Danebury, the regular layout and
maintenance of its roads, the presence of numerous crafts,
and the existence of prominently-placed shrines suggest
the wide range of services that the fort could have offered
to the farming communities dispersed about its territory.
On any check list of urban attributes a site like Danebury
scores high; indeed, it could be seen as possessing
proto-urban characteristics.
The problems of assessing the socio-economic complexity
of nucleated settlements, when using only archaeological
evidence, are very considerable. We cannot be sure
what percentage, if any, of the resident population was
engaged full-time in non-agrarian pursuits; the processes
by which commodities were disseminated among the
population are beyond certain recovery; and the structure
of government, administration, and law can seldom be
glimpsed. In other words one strongly suspects that
archaeological evidence alone will rarely be adequate for
complex settlements like Danebury, which clearly pro-
3
Cunliffe: Aspects of urbanization in northern Europe
vided some central-place functions, ever to be assigned to
the ‘pre-urban’ or ‘urban’ category with any degree of
assurance. At most we can suggest that it was well along
the road towards urbanism, but - because there was no
evidence of extensive or regular long-distance trade - had
not yet crossed the threshold which preceded advance to
the fully urban state. It is unfortunate, but inevitable, that
we are forced by the present inadequacies of our data-set
to rely on such intangibles as the absence, rather than the
presence, of positive evidence.
Nucleated settlements of the western
Mediterranean litoral: 700-120 BC
The Mediterranean coasts of France and north-eastern
Spain were densely settled in the latter part of the 1st
millennium BC and developed a network of fortified
nucleated settlements. The establishment of the Greek
ports, at Massilia in c 600 BC, and at Emporion a few
decades later, brought these native communities into
direct contact with advanced Mediterranean civilization,
providing them with models of urbanization, technology,
art, and literacy. The careful work of French archaeologists
at sites such as Cayla de Mailhac (Taffanel & Taffanel
1949), Ensérune (Jannoray 1955), Nages (Py 1978), and
Entremont (Benoit 1968) is providing a wealth of precise
evidence about the development of these places in the
shadow of the Classical world. At Ensérune, for example,
an ordered plan, with ramparts, houses, and extensive
storage facilities, was established early in the 4th century
BC; writing, using a local script, was widely practised.
Nages rose to dominance in its territory a little later (after
250 BC). Its regularly laid-out streets, flanking rows of
uniform-sized houses, were maintained over several centuries
as were those of Entremont in the Rhone valley to
the east. In terms of size, storage capacity, defensive
strength, and internal planning, these southern French
sites have much in common with their more northerly
counterparts, such as Biskupin and Danebury. Their
architecture may have been of stone instead of wood, some
part of their population was literate, and they were
evidently in direct trading contact with the Mediterranean
ports, but otherwise there was little difference. Can they
reasonably be regarded as urban centres? Certainly their
economy depended in part on long-distance trade and it
may well have been as a response to this that writing
developed. Some, like Entremont and Roquepertuse,
housed important cult centres formalized in quite sophisticated
architecture. The southern French settlements
would thus seem to possess all those attributes of urban
centres that might reasonably be expected to be recognized
in the archaeological record.
The effects of the Roman conquest
The establishment of Provincia Transalpina in the last
decades of the 2nd century BC and the subsequent
annexation of much of Europe to the Roman Empire
provided a complex of stimuli which deflected, and in
many cases hastened, progress towards the urban state.
The century between 120 and c 20 BC (by which time
Rome was taking direct control of the affairs of the
conquered territories) is a period of considerable interest