BMCR 2009.08.14: Mac Mahon on Gaffney, Wroxeter, the Cornovii, and the Urban Process: Final Report on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project 1994-1997. Vol. 1, Researching the Hinterland. Journal of Roman Archaeology. Supplementary Series, no. 68

Vincent L. Gaffney, R. H. White, H. Goodchild, Wroxeter, the Cornovii,
and the Urban Process: Final Report on the Wroxeter Hinterland Project
1994-1997. Vol. 1, Researching the Hinterland. Journal of Roman
Archaeology. Supplementary Series, no. 68.  Portsmouth, R.I.:  Journal
of Roman Archaeology, 2007.  ISBN 9781887829687.  $99.50.

Reviewed by Ardle Mac Mahon ([email protected])
Word count:  2046 words
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[Authors and table of contents at the end of the review.]

This is volume one of a regional research project that aims to put the
civitas capital of the Roman town of Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum),
which is located in Shropshire in the west midlands of England, into
the context of its surrounding environment. The second volume, which is
to follow, will concentrate much more on the urban area. It is due to
include the results of recent excavations within the town and an
interpretation of the comprehensive geophysical survey carried out
across the entire urban area.

The importance of towns in Roman Britain cannot be overstated. Although
towns have been studied in great depth, publications can frequently
give the impression that these settlements occupied a vacant landscape
or that towns and their surrounding environment are mutually exclusive.
The study sets out, in part, to carry out a survey of the settlement
pattern for the Wroxeter region. It also intends to move beyond the
descriptive and to place these results into the wider theoretical
context of the dual process of urbanization and Romanization. It is
unique, in that it uses GIS (Geographical Information Systems) to
examine the distribution of cultural material within the landscape to
investigate the relationship between the hinterland and town. It
presents hard evidence for an association for which many studies in the
past have merely theorized or developed from smaller site-based
studies. It also challenges many of the preconceptions that have been
become part of our understanding of the development of Wroxeter and the
people of the Cornovii. Perhaps the most important assumption
challenged is the seeming paradox of a major town surrounded by an
underdeveloped or unsuccessful countryside devoid of villas. The
authors are well aware of the importance attached to the primary
evidence but in this volume have set their sights well beyond the
material remains themselves and have aspired to explore the economic
and social dimensions of the surround landscape. Upon completion of the
two volumes the authors will have produced a more material based
history of Wroxeter and the Cornovii.

Wroxeter is the fourth largest town in Britain, and unlike most other
sites, it has remained largely unscathed by later urban development and
is available for archaeological research. Excavations have taken place
on the site since 1859. However,   the early work on Wroxeter was not
on the same scale as those that took place at Silchester (Calleva
Attrebatum) and Caerwent (Venta Silurum) and largely concentrated on
the central public buildings. There are few sites available for studies
such as that carried out in this volume and these are Caerwent, Caistor
St Edmund (Venta Icenorum), Silchester and Verulamium, none of which
was a colonia, the settlement type of highest status. It is an
archaeological reality that our understanding of urbanization in Roman
Britain is largely confined to the native civitates. Verulamium is
perhaps an exception, although its status as a municipium is much
debated.

The primary objective of the first volume is to examine the impact of
the imposition of Wroxeter as a town into a regional area that had not
been significantly influenced by Romanization before the arrival of the
Roman army. The other stated aim is to place the settlement into the
wider theoretical framework of the process of urbanization and
Romanization, as these will have had varying impacts upon the native
population. Furthermore, the project links new evidence from the survey
and excavation to pre-existing evidence.

The preface, which is suitably modest in tone, makes clear the sheer
scale of the project. Gathering the data and interpreting this material
to understand the wider pattern of integration between town and
countryside is no easy task. It also explains that the town-country
relationship can only be put into context by consideration of both
elements and states that this approach gives a more realistic picture
of Wroxeter and its environs.

Chapter 1 deals with the abstract terms of 'urbanization' and
'Romanization' in modern scholarship. It is a compelling discussion and
despite its best efforts to arrive at suitable definitions, emphasises
the fact and states that any definitions will remain elusive. The great
difficulty is that both Romanization and urbanization were not constant
or unified concepts across the Empire or even throughout its duration.
They are labels more akin to modern academic discourse than the Roman
world. Any effort to find some form of model of Romanization, or
urbanization for that matter, is a highly subjective pursuit and is in
reality a theoretical exercise. This chapter does feel a bit out of
context in a volume that predominantly focuses on the rural landscape
but such criticism needs to be seen in the context of the wider study,
which will follow in the second volume.

The second chapter places the research into the context of previous
work and defines the geographical boundaries of the study. There is a
fascinating discussion on boundaries in general such as that of the
civitas and land use. The chapter also illustrates the importance of
the study of acculturation in the urban hinterland and discusses the
apparent variations in the depth of Romanization of the neighbouring
Dobunni in the south and the Ordovices and Deceangli in the west.

Chapter 3 summarises the data and methodology that have been used to
support the project. This includes pre-existing archaeological data and
soil survey results. Chapter 4 discusses the surface survey of the
research area to determine the importance of Wroxeter on the
surrounding district and settlement patterns in the core of the
Cornovian territory. It also includes a summary of the limited
excavation work conducted in association with the project. Chapter 5
brings together the cultural material. These three chapters represent
the hard data of the volume and show that Romanization, as measured by
building materials, ceramics and other objects that demonstrate Roman
traits, never became embedded in the surrounding rural landscape.

The most interesting and striking results of the survey of
archaeological material are the limited number of finds. For example,
the excavation of Whitley Grange villa which, although equipped with a
bath-house, a hypocaust and an impressive mosaic, produced only seven
coins and surprisingly few sherds of pottery. The conclusions drawn in
chapters 4 and 5 are that while the Cornovian aristocracy willingly
took to living within Roman style buildings, they did not take on all
the vestiges of what is assumed for a Roman lifestyle when compared to
other tribes especially those in the southeastern Britain. A similar
pattern can be seen in the isolated farms, which do not seem to have
acquired what are presumed to be the basic trappings of Romanization in
the form of imported pottery. Furthermore, the results of extensive
fieldwalking have shown that those sites with Roman ceramics tend to be
located in close proximity to the road network.

Although I found chapters 1 and 2 particularly engrossing for their
discussion of the wider context of the project, chapters 6 and 7 are
the real the crux of the volume. Chapter 6 attempts the difficult task
of integrating the material and focuses back on Wroxeter in an effort
to reconstruct its population and its needs. Chapter 7 concerns
identifying the Cornovii and re-identifies their character in the light
of the outcome of this study. The volume concludes by placing the
results of the Wroxeter project into the wider context of Roman
Britain.

The volume proposes that Wroxeter was not a failed town, and that the
surrounding countryside was not impoverished, but that Romanized
lifestyles did not penetrate deeply into this landscape. The Cornovii
were every bit as sophisticated as the tribes in the South East, but
like their Iron Age ancestors, they set themselves apart in the manner
in which they disposed of and demonstrated their wealth. The answer to
the question of where this wealth originated, and how the landscape was
exploited, given the absence of hard evidence, is that the bulk of
agricultural production in the region must have been pastoral rather
than arable and that this practice continued into the Roman period. Far
from being culturally and politically backward, the Cornovii
constructed hillforts in profusion and once pacified channelled these
energies into constructing the administrative capital for the tribe in
the period of two generations. It seems that the adoption of town life
may well be the most potent symbol of commitment to Rome, as the
opportunity to use ceramics or adopt coinage existed prior to the Roman
invasion but was not embraced by the Cornovii.

The adoption of Roman cultural tradition was a complex process that
developed along very divergent lines in each region. Ultimately, the
concept of a town and what it was to be Roman was experienced, and
therefore conceived, in different ways, by different people at
different times. Wroxeter is not an isolated example of this, which I
am sure the second volume, which will concentrate on the town itself,
will demonstrate. Furthermore, this volume illustrates that such a
notion concerning Romanization reaches far beyond the organization and
exploitation of the urban centre into its hinterland. This adds further
weight to the importance of taking a holistic approach to the study of
towns by seeing them in the context of the surrounding territory.
The volume is quite free of typos. The illustrations are well chosen
and clear, although the impact of Fig. 2.7 is lost to an extent as some
of the symbols are extremely faint or nonexistent. The report on the
Upton Cressett (SA1919) pottery type is repeated from page 148 on pages
150-1.  One might question the appropriateness of chapters focused on
urban settings in a volume that claims to discuss the hinterland.
However, to be fair these probably need to be seen in the overall
context of the two volumes rather than this single publication.
Overall, I feel there is little to be critical about in what is a very
important book.

The volume is written with great clarity and is stimulating to read.
This publication sets Wroxeter apart from others towns in Roman
Britain, as the only civitas where the relationship between its major
urban centre and its hinterland has been studied in detail. If the
teams working on Caerwent, Caistor St Edmund, Silchester and Verulamium
adopted an equivalent interest in the hinterland, our knowledge of
towns in Roman Britain and their relationship to their surrounding
environment could be dramatically illuminated or even revolutionised.
Certainly the recent geophysical survey project of the urban area at
Caistor St Edmund has already produced exciting results.

It really is a credit to the authors, and the team, to set up this work
as a model for others to engage and develop, not only within the
context of urbanization and Romanization in Roman Britain but also for
the important rural-urban relationship. This is a very important work
that pushes forward our understanding of the social history of Roman
Britain. From a personal point of view, I await the following volume
with great anticipation.

Table of Contents

List of figures and tables 6
Preface and Acknowledgements 9
1. Unfinished histories: approaches to urbanization and 'Romanization'
14
2. Previous archaeological work within Wroxeter, its hinterland, and
nearby 35
3. The base data and methodology 54
4. Fieldwork of the Wroxeter Hinterland Project 65
5. Cultural material from the Wroxeter Hinterland 143
1. Iron Age metalwork from the Wroxeter Hinterland study area, by R.
White with D. Mackreth 143
2. The Roman pottery from Wroxeter's Hinterland, by C. Jane Evans 146
3. Samian pottery, by S. Willis 168
4. Roman glass, by L. Bevan with H. E. M. Cool 181
5. Coins from Wroxeter Hinterland Project and Wroxeter Hinterlands
Survey Excavations, by R. White 186
6. The metal finds, by L. Bevan with D. Mackreth and R. White 189
7. Stone objects, by L. Bevan with R. Ixer 198
8. Report on building materials from the Wroxeter Hinterland Project,
by R. White with N. Cassidy, R. Ixer, E. Macey-Bracken and M. Wright
203
9. Stone building materials, by L. Bevan with R. Ixer 229
6. Integrating the evidence 237
with H. Goodchild and T. Maguire
7. Imagine a city: Wroxeter and its hinterland 279
Bibliography 287
Abstracts 302