ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

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Fig 70 London: two, possibly three, wings of a 3rdcentury stone dwelling, around a small bath house, found opposite Billingsgate Market Fig 71 London: map showing the known remains of the 4th-century city Fig 72 London: lower part of the riverside defensive wall, as excavated at Blackfriars in 1975 Fig 73 London: at Blackfriars and in the Tower of London have been found parts of late Roman riverside defences which contain reused stones, as in this portion of collapsed wall at Blackfriars Fig 74 London: collapsed roof tiles from the east wing of the dwelling adjacent to the small bath building at Billingsgate; probably early 5th century Fig 75 London: Saxon saucer brooch of the 5th century Fig 76 Wroxeter: plan of the city, showing the probable alignments of the defences of the legionary fortress Fig 77 Wroxeter: conjectural plan of the first city Fig 78 Wroxeter: aerial photograph, looking north, of cropmarks within and outside the northern defences of the city Fig 79 Wroxeter: aerial photograph, looking north, of cropmarks outside the northern defences, showing roads and early cemeteries Fig 80 Wroxeter: plot of cropmarks within the northern part of the city and around Norton Fig 81 Wroxeter: the area of excavations on the site of the baths-basilica Fig 82 Wroxeter: plan of the latest occupation on the site of the baths-basilica Contributors P A Barker, Department of Extramural Studies, University of Birmingham, P 0 Box 363, Birmingham B15 2TT J Casey, Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, Saddler Street, Durham DH1 3NU P Crummy, Director, Colchester Archaeological Trust, Camulodunum, 12 Lexden Road, Colchester CO3 3NF B W Cunliffe, Professor of European Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG 0 A W Dilke, Emeritus Professor of Latin, University of Leeds, School of Classics, Leeds LS2 9JT J Drinkwater, Department of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN R P Duncan-Jones, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA A S Esmonde Cleary, Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, University of Birmingham, P 0 Box 363, Birmingham B15 2TT Vii Illustrations S S Frere, Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, Institute of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG F 0 Grew, Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN B Hobley, Chief Urban Archaeologist, Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN M J Jones, Director, Lincoln Archaeological Trust, Sessions House, Lindum Road, Lincoln LN2 1PB R Ling, History of Art Department, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL P Marsden, Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN D Perring, Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN R Reece, Institute of Archaeology, University of London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WClH 0PY P Salway, Professor of the Archaeology and History of Roman Britain, The Open University, 66-68 High Street, Harborne, Birmingham B17 9NB M Todd, Professor of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Queen’s Building, The Queen’s Drive, Exeter EX4 4QH J S Wacher, Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LEl 7RH Acknowledgements The editors wish to record their gratitude to Henry Cleere, John Wacher, and John Wilkes for help in planning the original conference; to Jean Coleman of the CBA for administering it, and to the Director and Governors of the Museum of London for providing facilities; to Gwen Profit and Diana Twells for typing; to Trevor Hurst and the Photographic Department of the Museum of London; to Dave Bentley, Nick Griffiths, and, especially, to Richard Lea for assistance with the artwork; and, finally, to Valerie Horsler of the CBA for skilfully guiding the book through the production processes. The papers dealing with Colchester, Lincoln, London, and Wroxeter are supported by a grant from the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, to which grateful acknowledgement is due.
Introduction: the study of Classical urban topography Francis Grew and Brian Hobley In Britain the comprehensive study of Graeco-Roman town planning began in 1910 when Haverfield gave a paper on the subject to the London Conference of Town Planning, itself in its infancy and much concerned with social reforms. This new discipline sought the benefits of parallels from antiquity, and Haverfield clearly identified the adoption of the straight line and right angle as the most definite principle of Classical town planning, which ‘separated the simplest civilization from barbarism’ (Haverfield 1913, 14). During the past 73 years much more has been learnt, both through aerial photography and through major excavations in urban centres, and many important studies have appeared (von Gerkan 1924; Congress 1958; Pounds 1969; Castagnoli 1972; Ward-Perkins 1974; Chevallier 1974; Frere 1977; Goudineau 1980). Yet many of the themes are the same as in 1910. At the 1983 conference Cunliffe, while recognizing certain characteristics of ‘proto-urbanism’ in the nucleated settlements of late barbarian Europe, clearly still placed with ancient Athens and 7th-century Rome the beginnings in Europe of uniform town planning as it is generally accepted today (this volume, pp l-5). And, in particular, he called the attention of archaeologists to the importance of studying cities as socio-economic political systems, not simply as artefacts (this volume, p 1). The location of Roman cities is a matter dealt with by many Classical writers, but principally by Vitruvius. After military requirements, trade and the need for sites on safe and navigable rivers and shorelines were major determinants, as the Peutinger map shows (Miller 1962); but, in the choice between several possible sites, a factor which should not be forgotten was the Roman reliance on favourable omens as pronounced by the livers of sacrificed animals, particularly of those who had lived on the site and which thus might reflect healthy living conditions, not least the presence of pure water (Salway, this volume, p 67). The ownership of land was highly prized in the Roman world, not only for the status it conferred but as a sound investment, as was the ownership of urban properties. In the provinces, however, the Roman authorities ignored ownership rights of native peoples at their peril, as Tacitus recognized in his examination of the causes of the Boudican revolt (Annals, xiv.31; Agricola, 15). Once the site for a town was chosen its layout or planning would commence. There was, of course, a wide range and hierarchy of urban settlement, and there is general agreement between contributors that those below the rank of colonia have far greater irregularity of layout. As Drinkwater states, ‘Individual cities did not in the end emerge as identical, all reflecting some overriding master plan’ (this volume, p 51). Rather, as investigations have recently shown in Britain, there was an infinite variety of Viii sizes and shapes, with or without defences or suburbs (Rodwell & Rowley 1975). The more important settlements, coloniae, municipia, and civitas capitals, showed the highest degree of planned layout, and this was achieved principally by means of an orthogonal street grid. Drinkwater correctly observes that once the main grid had been laid down every structure had to respect it (p 53) - although sometimes there were small encroachments by houses and especially by porticoes (Frere 1977, 97 and fig 8) - and it is clear that whenever possible, contours were ignored, for the grid concept was based on horizontality. This was the reason for the importance of the mensores (Dilke, this volume, pp 613). It is indeed with the orthogonal grid that many recent studies have been concerned, and these have shown that in this, as in many other cultural affairs, Britain and the western Roman provinces - the subject of this volume - are a small but distinctive part of a developing tradition which extends, temporally, back to the early 1st millennium BC and, spatially, as far as the Euphrates. There can be little doubt that throughout antiquity itself the grid was widely recognized as the chief instrument of town planning, and almost invariably it was regarded with approval, comparing favourably with haphazard growth - this was considered old-fashioned. Aristotle, for example, writing in the 4th century BC and describing the ideal city, seems to have it in mind when he explains that ‘the arrangement of private houses is more pleasant and convenient for general purposes if it is clear-cut, in the modern “Hippodamean” fashion’ (Politics, vii. 10.4); the only drawback is that in the event of attack and street-fighting the regular layout may assist the attackers no less than the defenders. Similarly, Pausanias, writing about 500 years later and observing with his antiquarian eye the city of Elis in the Peloponnese, notes that ‘the agora is not like those of the Ionian cities or of the Greek cities near Ionia; it is built in the older style with stoas separated from each other and with streets passing through them’ (vi.24.2). The credit for inventing the ‘modern’ planning system to which these writers allude has generally been given to Hippodamus of Miletus (eg Aristotle, loc cit). Recent commentators have, with some justification, questioned the extent of his personal contribution (Burns 1976; Segal 1978), but the fact remains that in the Greek and Roman worlds orthogonal planning came to maturity during Hippodamus’s lifetime, that is, the 5th century BC. Two factors may have combined to bring this about. In the first place, it was a time when many cities were built or rebuilt de novo. Some were ancient foundations razed during the Persian Wars, others new colonies founded for political and commercial reasons by Athens in particular. Many of the former are the sites in Asia Minor to which Pausanias refers. This factor, the need to build many complete, new
Page 1 and 2: No 59 ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Bri
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Page 5: Illustrations Fig 1 Miletus Fig 2 C
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
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Page 21 and 22: PART II THE PLANNING AND BUILDING O
Page 23 and 24: Dilke: Ground survey and measuremen
Page 29 and 30: The mechanics of the building trade
Page 31 and 32: Ling: The mechanics of the building
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Page 49 and 50: Civic Pride: a factor in Roman town
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Page 53 and 54: Reece: Roman towns and their plans
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Wacher: The functions of urban buil
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Casey: The Roman housing market leg
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Casey: The Roman housing market Evi
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Casey: The Roman housing market Rom
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Drinkwater: Urbanization in the thr
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Forum and Capitolium in the early E
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Todd: Forum and Capitolium in the e
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The quick and the dead: suburbs, ce
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Esmonde Cleary: The quick and the d
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Salway: Geography and the growth of
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Colchester: the mechanics of laying
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Crummy: Colchester: the mechanics o
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New streets for old : the topograph
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Jones: New streets for old: the top
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London in the 1st and early 2nd cen
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Perring: London in the 1st and earl
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Perring: London in the 1st and earl
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Marsden: London in the 3rd and 4th
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Barker: Aspects of the topography o
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Fig 81 Wroxeter: the area of excava
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probably from Viroconium, the robbi
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Forum Iuhi (Cividale) (Italy) 61a f
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ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

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