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

Roman Britain: civil and rural society
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RELIGION
Many rural sites yield evidence for religious observance, and the study of the archaeological and
epigraphic evidence for religion and ritual have long been an important area for the assessment
of the degree of continuity of native cult on the one hand, and the changes wrought by Roman
introductions on the other (Henig 1984). Conventionally, religions in Roman Britain have been
classified according to whether they related to the state pantheon of Rome, or were indigenous,
or were imported eastern ‘mystery’ cults. The aspects of religion fossilized in the archaeological
record reveal little about the actual belief- and value-systems of the religion or about the views
and practices of the individual worshipper. For these, written evidence is required, hence the
paradox that the imperial and mystery cults are relatively well understood, whereas the far more
widespread indigenous cults are only obliquely illuminated.
The worship of the state deities, of Roma, of living and dead emperors and the imperial house
was one of the ways in which Rome tried to impose
some common loyalty and ideology on a vast and
disparate Empire. In Britain, the bulk of the evidence
for these observances comes from the military areas
of the north and west. In part, this is a reflection of
the political imperative of ensuring the loyalty of the
army, but it also reflects the fact that the overwhelming
majority of surviving inscriptions come from these
areas. In the civil south and east, the ‘epigraphic habit’
does not seem to have caught on, the relative shortage
of inscriptions being accentuated by the disappearance
of Roman stone into later buildings. Nonetheless, the
imposing Temple of the Deified Claudius at
Colchester, which was the centre of the provincial cult,
and fragmentary epigraphic evidence elsewhere, show
that the state cults were observed. Serving as a priest
of one of these cults would have been one of the
prestigious posts open to members of the local elites.
For the bulk of the population, however, it was the
cults with their origins in prehistory and often very
localized that shaped their day-to-day lives and
attitudes. The evidence for these is most easily
identified at temples. Sharing a very similar distribution
with towns and villas, temples were almost all built
not to the Classical plan, like the Parthenon, but to the
so-called Romano-Celtic plan of a square within a
square, or sometimes to a double-circle or doublepolygon
plan. These temples were small and designed
for the ministrations of priests or individual
worshippers, not to contain congregations. Many
temples stood within a precinct or temenos, sometimes
containing ancillary structures as at Lydney or Uley
(both in Gloucestershire) (Figure 9.7). These temene
could have accommodated large numbers of
worshippers at festivals. Also associated with temple
Figure 9.7 West Hill, Uley, Gloucestershire. The
Romano-Celtic temple (centre) and ancillary buildings
in the third/fourth centuries.
Source: Woodward, A. and Leach, P., 1993. The Uley
Shrines: excavation of a ritual complex on West Hill, Uley,
Gloucestershire: 1977–9. London: English Heritage
Archaeological Report 17