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

• 172 • Simon Esmonde Cleary
significantly. For a start, the presence of the agriculturally idle mouths of the army, many towndwellers
and of the leisured elite would have affected crop production and animal husbandry and
emphasized a system of producing and consuming sites. Moreover, there were changes in dietary
preference, cuisine and the surroundings in which the Romanized section of the population
consumed its food. Food and its consumption can be as much social statements as dress or
speech, and what went on in the triclinium or stibadium, the formal dining-rooms of the villas and
town houses of the early and late empires, may have transformed the use of apparently standard
crops and animals almost out of recognition.
Mineral extraction
Mineral resources were heavily exploited in the Roman period. The gold mines at Dolaucothi
(Carmarthenshire) were opened up by the army. The lead deposits of the Mendips, the Peak
District, Flintshire and Shropshire were all worked, initially by the army but later by civilian
contractors. The principal interest here was in the small amount of silver in the lead, though the
lead was a useful by-product. The copper deposits of north Wales and the copper and tin of
Cornwall continued to be exploited. Iron was mined in the Forest of Dean and in the Weald, the
latter by the Classis Britannica, the fleet.
Other industries
Of other industries, by far the best known is pottery (Tyers 1996). The potter’s fast wheel had
been adopted in south-eastern Britain in the century before the Roman invasion, and ceramics
comparable with those of the Roman world were being produced (Chapter 7). Outside this area,
hand- or slow-wheel-made pottery was the norm, with much of the north and the west being
aceramic. The Roman army introduced new forms such as the flagon and the mortarium, a grinding
bowl. It was also responsible for a vastly increased supply of continental fine wares, especially
‘Samian’ (terra sigillata), a fine red table ware from Gaul, often with moulded decoration, and of
amphorae, large vessels for the transport of Mediterranean commodities such as wine, olive oil
and garum (fish sauce). This all betrays the impact of Roman eating and drinking habits.
Indigenous potters soon learnt to produce competent coarse and table wares in huge quantities.
These were manufactured either in small production sites, perhaps as a cash-crop in slack periods
of the agricultural year, or in major ‘industrial’ complexes such as those at Colchester and the
lower Nene Valley in the second century, or East Yorkshire, the New Forest and Oxfordshire in
the third and fourth centuries. The distributions show the importance of marketing through the
towns. The fine ware was simple but competent earthenware, with colour-coat and slip decoration,
occasionally with painted or impressed decoration. The coarse ware was generally undecorated,
often grey. It should be remembered that though pottery is very common and much studied, it
was a cheap commodity, and the well-to-do would have eaten and drunk from metalware such as
bronze, pewter or silver. The pottery industry shows that incorporation within the Roman Empire
did not lead to major technological innovation, but rather involved the systematic application of
technically simple but tried and tested means of manufacture not very different to some already
in use in the island; an example is the appearance of more developed kilns alongside the continuing
use of simpler methods of firing.
THE ‘END’ OF ROMAN BRITAIN
Given the durability of Romano-British buildings and the ubiquity of the artefacts, it seems
surprising that such an influential culture seems to have disappeared in short order early in the