Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:48:12.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Becoming Roman on the Berkshire Downs: the Evidence from Alfred's Castle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

C. Gosden
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, [email protected], [email protected]
G. Lock
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, [email protected], [email protected]

Extract

Romanization is a term that people currently love to hate. Few these days approve of the view that Romanization was about bringing an inherently superior Roman civilization to the natives. Many would go further and attempt to replace the term altogether — the most successful of these attempts being Woolf's focus on what it meant to become Roman. The heart of Woolf's argument is that being Roman was not a static quality that people embraced or rejected, but rather a set of cultural forms always in the process of ‘becoming’ and that all within the Empire participated in its creation. ‘Gauls were not “assimilated” to a pre-existing social order, but participated in the creation of a new one’. Roman culture was an entity created anew in different parts of the Empire at different times, through the actions of all groups, and it was not just native peoples who were being Romanized through the expansion of Empire, but also the Romans themselves. The view of mutual creation is one we find attractive. However, there is one element of the argument that we would like to qualify and that is that the process is seen as primarily happening through the élites and the new urban centres created within the Empire — ‘A symbolic system did exist in the Roman cultural system, but it was not located in any one place or region but rather in the set of manners, tastes, sensibilities and ideals that were the common property of an aristocracy that was increasingly dispersed across the empire’.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 34 , November 2003 , pp. 65 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © C. Gosden and G. Lock 2003. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aubrey, J. 16651693: Monumenta Brittanica (Ed. Fowles, J. (1980)), SherborneGoogle Scholar
Barrett, J.C. 1997: ‘Romanization: a critical comment’, in Mattingly, D. (ed.), Dialogues in Roman Imperialism, Journal of Roman Archaeology supplementary series 23, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 5164Google Scholar
Bowden, M., Ford, S., and Gaffney, V. 1993: ‘The excavation of a Late Bronze Age artefact scatter on Weathercock Hill’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal 74 (1991), 6983Google Scholar
Bradley, R., and Ellison, A. 1975: Rams Hill: a Bronze Age Defended Enclosure and its Landscape, British Archaeological Reports 19, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colt-Hoare, R. 1819: The Ancient History of North Wiltshire, LondonGoogle Scholar
Cotton, M.A. 1960: ‘Alfred's Castle’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal 58, 44–8Google Scholar
Ford, S. 1982: ‘Linear earthworks on the Berkshire Downs’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal 71, 120Google Scholar
Gaffney, V., and Tingle, M. 1989: The Maddle Farm Project, British Archaeological Reports 200, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Gosden, C., and Lock, G. 1998: ‘Prehistoric histories’, World Archaeology 30.1, 212CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gosden, C., and Lock, G. 1999: ‘Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: excavations at Alfred's Castle 1998’, South Midlands Archaeology 29, 4453Google Scholar
Gosden, C., and Lock, G. 2001: ‘Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: excavations at Alfred's Castle 2000’, South Midlands Archaeology 31, 80–9Google Scholar
Grahame, M. 1998: ‘Redefining Romanization: material culture and the question of social continuity in Roman Britain’, in Forcey, C., Hawthorne, J. and Witcher, R. (eds), TRAC97: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Nottingham 1997, Oxford, 110Google Scholar
Henig, M., and Booth, P. 2000: Roman Oxfordshire, StroudGoogle Scholar
Hingley, R. 1989: Rural Settlement in Roman Britain, LondonGoogle Scholar
Hingley, R. 2000: Roman Officers and English Gentlemen, LondonGoogle Scholar
Hirst, S., and Rahtz, P. 1996: ‘Liddington Castle and the battle of Badon: excavations and research 1976’, Archaeological Journal 153, 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lock, G., and Gosden, C. 1997a: ‘The Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: excavations on White Horse Hill 1995’, South Midlands Archaeology 27, 64–9Google Scholar
Lock, G., and Gosden, C. 1997b: ‘The Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: excavations at Segsbury Camp 1996’, South Midlands Archaeology 27, 6977Google Scholar
Lock, G., and Gosden, C. 1998: ‘The Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: excavations at Segsbury Camp 1997’, South Midlands Archaeology 28, 5363Google Scholar
Lock, G., and Gosden, C. 2000: ‘The Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: excavations at Alfred's Castle 1999’, South Midlands Archaeology 30, 8290Google Scholar
Lock, G., Miles, D., Palmer, S., and Gosden, C. in press: Uffington White Horse Hill and its Landscape-Investigations at White Horse Hill, Uffington, 1989–95, and Tower Hill, Ashhury, 1993–4, Oxfordshire, Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Lysons, D. and S., 1806: Magna Britannia, LondonGoogle Scholar
Matthews, W.L. 1989: The National Trust Archaeological Survey. Ashdown House, National Trust internal publicationGoogle Scholar
Mattingly, D. 1997: ‘Introduction. Dialogues of power and experience in the Roman Empire’, in Mattingly, D. (ed.), Dialogues in Roman Imperialism, Journal of Roman Archaeology supplementary series 23, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 724Google Scholar
Phillips, B. 1981: ‘Starveall Farm, Romano-British villa’, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 74/5, 4055Google Scholar
Rhodes, P.P. 1950: ‘The Celtic field systems on the Berkshire Downs’, Oxoniensia 15, 128Google Scholar
Rhodes, P.P. 1954: ‘A Romano-British site at Odstone Down, Berkshire’, Transactions of the Newburx District Field Club 10, 4970Google Scholar
Tingle, M. 1991: The Vale of the White Horse Survey, British Archaeological Reports British Series 218, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Woolf, G. 1997: ‘Beyond Romans and natives’, World Archaeology 28, 339–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolf, G. 1998: Becoming Roman. The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul, CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar