Roman towns in Britain

This book aims to examine and define the functions of towns in Roman Britain and to apply the definition so formed to Romano-British sites; to consider the towns' foundation, political status, development and decline; and to illustrate the town's individual characters and their surroundings.

Traces the development of towns in Britain from late Roman times to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period using archaeological data.

In this book, Adam Rogers examines the late Roman phases of towns in Britain. Critically analysing the archaeological notion of decline, he focuses on public buildings, which played an important role, administrative and symbolic, within urban complexes. Arguing against the interpretation that many of these monumental civic buildings were in decline or abandoned in the later Roman period, he demonstrates that they remained purposeful spaces and important centres of urban life. Through a detailed assessment of the archaeology of late Roman towns, this book argues that the archaeological framework of decline does not permit an adequate and comprehensive understanding of the towns during this period. Moving beyond the idea of decline, this book emphasises a longer-term perspective for understanding the importance of towns in the later Roman period.

This book sets out to provide a new synthesis of recent archaeological work in Roman Britain.

Before the Roman conquest there were few settlements in Britain that could properly be described as towns and their rapid growth was one of the first effects of the invasion of AD 43. This book traces the process of urbanization and provides answers to questions about how Roman towns grew and functioned: why towns are sited where they are, who lived in them, what services and facilities they provided, how they were organized, and their role in trade, industry and economy. Roman towns, with their impressive public buildings on a scale not seen before in Britain, must have had a great impact on the native population. They have attracted attention ever since and a vast amount of evidence for the Roman towns, many of which lie beneath modern British cities, has been recovered. This book draws together as much of this information as possible to present a picture of life in the Roman towns of Britain. With over 100 maps, plans, reconstructions and photographs, this is the complete companion to the Roman Towns in Britain - whether you wish to study the sites before or after a visit, or whether you are simply an armchair archaeologist.

Early Medieval Britain is more Roman than we think. The Roman Empire left vast infrastructural resources on the island. These resources lay buried not only in dirt and soil, but also in texts, laws, chronicles - even charters, churches, and landscapes. This book uncovers them and shows how they shaped Early Medieval Britain. Infrastructure, material and symbolic, can work in ways that are not immediately obvious and exert an influence long after the builders have gone. Infrastructure can also rest dormant and be reactivated with a changed function, role and appearance. This is not a simple story of continuity and discontinuity: it is a story of transformation, of how the Roman infrastructural past was used and re-used, and also how it influenced the later societies of Britain.