Agricultural innovations at a Late Iron Age oppidum: Archaeobotanical evidence for flax, food and fodder from Calleva Atrebatum, UK

Lodwick, Lisa

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2016.02.058

Cited by 17 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Hence, it is unlikely that Late Iron Age and Early Roman Silchester was reliant on farming settlements on the Hampshire Downs for the supply of cereals as suggested (Cunliffe 2012: 19; Sharples 2010: 173). The lack of evidence for cereal import to Silchester agrees with other aspects of the archaeobotanical record from Late Iron Age Insula IX, showing that agricultural activities were taking place on-site (Lodwick 2017), and new flavourings and fruits were being imported rather than staple foods (Lodwick 2014). This evidence also fits with the recent characterisation of oppida as examples of low-density urban sites, which were agriculturally self-sufficient (Moore 2017).…”

Section: Archaeobotanical Contextsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…The subsequent agricultural developments of hay meadow management and animal stabling, as evidenced at Silchester, can be understood as a reaction to this settlement nucleation (Lodwick 2017).…”

Section: Archaeobotanical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, it has been suggested that agricultural produce was sent from agricultural settlements on the Hampshire Downs to the oppida at Chichester and Silchester (Cunliffe 2012: 19;Sharples 2010: 173). Furthermore, the pastoral, rather than arable, activities taking place at oppida have been emphasised (Creighton 2000: 72;Moore 2012: 411;Lodwick 2017). The arrival of the Roman military in AD43, and the subsequent development of towns, resulted in much larger non-agricultural populations, requiring the import of plant and animal foods from rural areas in Britain and beyond.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Arable weed seeds as indicators of regional cereal provenance: a case study from Iron Age and Roman central-southern Britain

Lodwick

2018

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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The ability to provenance crop remains from archaeological sites remains an outstanding research question in archaeology. Archaeobotanists have previously identified the movement of cereals on the basis of regional variations in the presence of cereal grain, chaff and weed seeds (the consumer-producer debate), and the use of weed seeds indicative of certain geological areas, principally at Danebury hillfort. Whilst the former approach has been heavily criticised over the last decade, the qualitative methods of the latter have not been evaluated. The first interregional trade in cereals in Britain is currently dated to the Iron Age hillfort societies of the mid first millennium BC. Several centuries later, the development of urban settlements in the Late Iron Age and Roman period contained residents reliant on food produced elsewhere. Using the case study of central-southern Britain, centred on the oppidum and civitas capital of Silchester, this paper presents the first regional quantitative analysis of arable weed seeds in order to identify cereal origin. Analysis of the weed seeds present alongside the fine-sieving by-products of the glume wheat Triticum spelta (spelt wheat) shows that the weed floras of samples from diverse geological areas can be separated on the basis of the geological preferences of individual taxa. A preliminary finding is that rather than being supplied with cereals from the wider landscape of the Hampshire Downs, crops were produced within close proximity of Late Iron Age Silchester. The method presented here requires further high quality samples to evaluate this, and other instances of cereal movement in the past.

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Section: Archaeobotanical Contextsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Archaeobotanical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Arable weed seeds as indicators of regional cereal provenance: a case study from Iron Age and Roman central-southern Britain

Lodwick

2018

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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“…The evidence for extensive Middle Iron Age farmsteads and field systems in the Chichester pre‐ oppidum landscape suggests that agriculture played a significant role in how oppida society was formed and developed over time. Often overlooked in oppida studies, agriculture plays an important role in understanding the origins of these settlements and the nature of social organization (Lodwick , ; Moore , 297–8). Typically it has been argued that oppida were positioned on the convergence of landscape zones, i.e.…”

Section: Empty Landscapes or Emerging Societies?mentioning

confidence: 99%

THE ORIGINS OF BRITISH OPPIDA: UNDERSTANDING TRANSFORMATION IN IRON AGE PRACTICE AND SOCIETY

Garland

2020

Oxford J Archaeology

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Summary In Britain, large poly‐focal complexes known as oppida have played an important part in understanding the Late Iron Age. These sites are often described as emerging from empty or underused parts of the Iron Age landscape, originating through the convergence of different social groups and external influences from mainland Europe. However, new evidence suggests that ‘pre‐oppidum’ landscapes were far from empty and that earlier occupation, particularly agricultural activities, had a dramatic impact on how oppida and the societies that lived within them formed during the Later Iron Age. A new understanding of the origins of oppida highlights the need to rethink how we examine this settlement type over time and how we currently comprehend Late Iron Age society in Britain.

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“…The environmental evidence gives the clearest indications of the usual cycles of plant growth and processing, or animal breeding and management—the inhabitants of Claydon Pike seem to have focused on haymaking in the mid Roman period, while at Cotswold Community there was a mixed arable and pastoral regime, each with their own temporal sequences (Miles et al 2007, 165; Powell et al 2010, 118, 142; cf. Lodwick 2017). More social cycles, perhaps relating to regular festivals as well as the bonds of reciprocity, are indicated by evidence in the faunal assemblage for feasting at Claydon Pike (Miles et al 2007, 163).…”

Section: Making and Breaking Routines In The Upper Thames Valleymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Space for Past Futures: Rural Landscape Temporalities in Roman Britain

Gardner¹,

Wallace²

2020

CAJ

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In this paper, we seek to explore the ways in which landscapes become venues not only for manipulations of the past in a present, but also for shaping possible futures. Considerations of temporality and being in the landscape have been more strongly focused on the past and social memory than the future, anticipation and projectivity, but these are vital considerations if we are to preserve the possibility that past people imagined alternative futures. A fruitful archaeological context for an exploration of past futures can be found in the choices people made during the late Iron Age and Roman period in Britain, which has an increasingly rich and high-resolution material record for complex changes and continuities during a period of cultural interactions and imperial power dynamics. More specifically, recent research into the architectural and material practices evident on rural settlement sites and across landscapes forces us to challenge preconceptions about the reactive/reactionary culture of rural societies. Case-studies from Kent and the West Country will be deployed to develop the argument that in the materializing of time, the future has a very significant part to play.

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Agricultural innovations at a Late Iron Age oppidum: Archaeobotanical evidence for flax, food and fodder from Calleva Atrebatum, UK

Cited by 17 publications

References 34 publications

Arable weed seeds as indicators of regional cereal provenance: a case study from Iron Age and Roman central-southern Britain

Arable weed seeds as indicators of regional cereal provenance: a case study from Iron Age and Roman central-southern Britain

THE ORIGINS OF BRITISH OPPIDA: UNDERSTANDING TRANSFORMATION IN IRON AGE PRACTICE AND SOCIETY

Making Space for Past Futures: Rural Landscape Temporalities in Roman Britain

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