Iron Age Settlement Patterns and the Urbanism of Roman Britain

Abstract

The expansion of Rome into Western Europe and the creation of urban settlements with distinct Roman features and relatively high occupation densities has led to an expectation that towns in Roman Britain with the same features would have been behaving in the same way. A recent analysis of the Roman town of Silchester by Scott Ortman and Jack Hanson has shown that for this to be the case, the surveys of that settlement must be missing a substantial number of buildings. This would have considerable implications if it applies to all towns in Roman Britain (Ortman and Hanson 2022).

An alternative interpretation is that towns in Roman Britain may have had a different residential spatial format compared to those in Continental Europe. This thesis considers what that alternative may have been. The analysis investigates the relationship between Roman urban form and the settlement practices of the local, British people to assess whether features of the preceding, lower density ‘oppidum’ occupation pattern persisted in the behaviour of the towns of Roman Britain.

The study assesses built-area density gradients within the towns and vici for which spatial data is available and the regional trends in the aggregate built-area densities of the settlements. In the comparison of the aggregate densities for all the settlements there appears to be two density trends, one from higher to lower density with increasing settlement size and another which may be the reverse, perhaps suggesting the presence of an ‘oppidum’ pattern of occupation intermixed within the Roman urban framework. Several alternative models will be outlined along with a brief comment on their implications.