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

• 168 • Simon Esmonde Cleary
sites are altars, sculptures and various forms of votive deposit, of which the single most interesting
is the assemblage of over 12,000 coins, other offerings and inscribed curse-tablets (defixiones)
from Bath (Cunliffe and Davenport 1988).
Religion in relation to earlier practices
The study of pagan religion in the civil areas of Roman Britain has been much conditioned by
the problem of the extent to which it represents a continuum from the ill-understood religious
world of the Later Iron Age. This, as so often, has stemmed from epigraphic and literary sources.
Inscriptions reveal the practice of interpretatio romana, the conflation of native with Roman deities,
such as the goddess Sulis Minerva at Bath or the god Mars Rigonemetos (King of the Grove)
from Nettleham (Lincolnshire). The better-known classical deity can be used as a guide to aspects
of the native. Also called in aid are the early Welsh and Irish myth and hero stories, which give
some insight into Celtic religious beliefs and practices. Sometimes these sources can provide a
context for elements observable in the archaeological record, such as the importance of the
number three, of the head, or of springs and other places involving water. They can also suggest
some ways of approaching some of the otherwise inscrutable sculptures and symbols from
Romano-British religious sites. It is clearly dangerous, however, to make simple links between
sources of evidence so widely different in type, time and context (Wait 1985). More secure evidence
for the continuance of Late Iron Age observances into the Roman period comes from those
Romano-Celtic temples that overlie Iron Age predecessors, as at Hayling Island (Hampshire).
Nevertheless, it should be remembered that worship at temples and the use of features such as
altars and sculpture derive from Mediterranean practice. Even the deposit at Bath, though placed
in a spring as in later prehistory, consisted of a range of objects very different from those in
comparable Iron Age contexts, and the curse-tablets were inscribed throughout in Latin.
Oriental cults; Christianity
A feature of the Later Roman period was the appearance of evidence for the oriental ‘mystery’
cults in the civil areas of the Province. These offered some form of salvation or life after death
to those initiated into the cult, in return for right belief and action in this life. Though again more
common at military sites, the civil areas have evidence for the worship of Isis and of Mithras
from London, and from there and elsewhere for the cults of Cybele and of Serapis. Ultimately,
the most successful of these religions was Christianity (Thomas 1981). There is increasing evidence
for Christianity amongst the urban and land-owning rural classes in the fourth century.
Churches (albeit small ones) are suggested at Lincoln (Figure 9.10) and Silchester, and fonts
are known from the Saxon Shore fort at Richborough (Chapter 8) and the ‘small’ town of
Icklingham. From the ‘small’ town of Chesterton/Water Newton (Cambridgeshire) comes a hoard
of Christian silver plate. The villas at Frampton and Hinton St Mary (Dorset) (Figure 9.8) and
Lullingstone (Kent) had Christian mosaics and wall-paintings respectively. That Christianity should
have made head-way amongst the upper classes in the fourth century is unsurprising, given the
amount of imperial patronage and privileges the religion was granted. More difficult to assess is
the spread of ‘lower class’ Christianity, due to problems in how to identify it if it did not leave
substantial remains. Some large fourth-century cemeteries, such as Poundbury, Dorchester (Dorset),
have been claimed as Christian on the basis of east-west inhumation with no grave goods, but in
truth this just seems to have been the general rite in Late Roman Britain and is not necessarily
related to religious affiliation, which had little effect on Roman burial practice. It was, of course,
this Romano-British tradition of Christianity, reinforced from Gaul, that was to persist in the
British Isles as ‘Celtic’ Christianity. Early in the fifth century, it also produced the Romano-
Britons Pelagius the heretic and Patricius, better known as Patrick, apostle of the Irish.