The temple and baths dedicated to Sulis Minerva at Aquae Sulis (Bath, Somerset) are usually seen as significant in terms of Britain's 'Romanization'. However, it is argued here that excavations carried out in the inner precinct of the temple revealed a sequence of great importance in understanding the end of Roman Britain. For the first time the documentary, stratigraphic and artefactual evidence is drawn together alongside a series of new radiocarbon dates which establish the date of the temple's demolition as AD -. This raises interesting questions regarding the process of transformation from Roman to post-Roman in Somerset and beyond.The great temple and bathing complex dedicated to Sulis Minerva at Bath, in Somerset, is one of the most famous and evocative Roman sites in all of Britain. Located in a loop of the River Avon, a number of hot mineral springs had already emerged as a venerated site during the Late Iron Age. Soon after the Roman conquest the religious use of the site was formalized and monumentalized. A classical temple was constructed and Sulis, the indigenous deity worshipped at the site, was syncretized with the Roman Minerva. The hot springs were constrained, piped and engineered to feed a bathing complex without known parallel in Roman Britain. By the early third century AD the site's fame was such that it could be listed in Solinus' Collectanea rerum memorabilium. The fame of Aquae Sulis continues and the temple and baths have attracted antiquarian and archaeological interest for at least the last years. The character of the temple and baths, the quality of the complex's architecture and sculpture, the illumination cast on social and religious life by epigraphic finds from the site and the early date at which the temple and bathing complex was constructed have led to considerable interest being focused on the first-and second-century aspects of this site. In many respects the temple can be seen as the epitome of the process of so-called Romanization in a remote and peripheral frontier province. The Roman state or its agents lavished resources on a project to control the natural world and honour a local deity, bringing Roman and indigenous culture together. Indeed, the depiction of the gorgon from the temple was so synonymous with the idea of Romanization that it was selected as an appropriate cover illustration for Haverfield's highly influential The Romanization of Roman Britain. However, the temple of Sulis Minerva and adjacent baths have just as much, if not more, to reveal about the end of Roman Britain.A fundamental break in British history is usually placed in the early fifth century with the end of formal Roman government in Britain. The extent to which a 'Roman' or
The small pig horizon within the headquarters building of the legionary fortress of Eboracum (York) is a unique assemblage of early post-Roman animal bones. Originally interpreted as evidence of an impoverished Dark Age community scratching out a living within the ruined fortress, reinterpretation of this deposit suggests that it may be evidence of the economic power of a post-Roman elite conspicuously consuming suckling pig, perhaps in an echo of high-status Roman dietary preferences.The Cathedral Church of St Peter, colloquially known as York Minster, stands at the heart of the City of York, dominating the cityscape around it. The Minster's central location reflects the early history of the settlement as the Cathedral occupies in part the site of the principia (headquarters building) of the legionary fortress of Eboracum. Between 1968 and 1973 Derek Phillips conducted a series of salvage excavations under extremely difficult circumstances as the superstructure of the Minster was underpinned (Phillips and Heywood 1995). These excavations revealed the Cathedral's long and complex structural history, beneath which lay traces of Anglo-Scandinavian York and the collapsed remains of the basilica principiorum of Legio VI. Within the basilica an internationally important sequence of deposits were recorded that appear to indicate activity continuing within the standing structure into the post-Roman centuries (Carver 1995, 188). In this short paper one aspect of that sequence -the so-called 'small pig horizon' -is reviewed and a new interpretation of its significance advanced.The basilica appears to have been rebuilt in the early fourth century, perhaps during the reign of Constantius I or Constantine I (Phillips 1995, 47; Bidwell 2006, 35; see also the reservations expressed by Ottaway 1997, 509). Within this structure three broad depositional horizons could be discerned in the north-west of the basilica pre-dating the collapse of the building. The earliest of these horizons was labelled the 'lower mud silt'. This was sealed by a series of thin laminated deposits called the 'multiple layers', which lay below the so-called 'upper mud silt'. This final horizon was sealed by the collapse of the basilica (Carver 1995, 188). The lower mud silt was interpreted as the bedding for a robbed floor of sandstone flags laid in the early fourth century (Carver 1995, 188; Phillips 1995, 63). The so-called multiple layers were formed of laminations of charcoal and sand along with intermittent floor surfaces of crushed tile (Phillips 1995, 65). Some of the charcoal may have been derived from industrial activities, traces of which were found elsewhere in the basilica (Carver 1995, 188).
How did Roman Britain end? This new study draws on fresh archaeological discoveries to argue that the end of Roman Britain was not the product of either a violent cataclysm or an economic collapse. Instead, the structure of late antique society, based on the civilian ideology of paideia, was forced to change by the disappearance of the Roman state. By the fifth century elite power had shifted to the warband and the edges of their swords. In this book Dr Gerrard describes and explains that process of transformation and explores the role of the 'Anglo-Saxons' in this time of change. This profound ideological shift returned Britain to a series of 'small worlds', the existence of which had been hidden by the globalizing structures of Roman imperialism. Highly illustrated, the book includes two appendices, which detail Roman cemetery sites and weapon trauma, and pottery assemblages from the period.
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