Evergreen plants in Roman Britain and beyond: movement, meaning and materiality

In tandem with the large-scale translocation of food plants in the Roman world, ornamental evergreen plants and plant items were also introduced to new areas for ritual and ornamental purposes. The extent to which these new plants, primarily box and stone-pine, were grown in Britain has yet to be established. This paper presents a synthesis of archaeobotanical records of box, stone-pine and norway spruce in Roman Britain, highlighting chronological and spatial patterns. Archaeobotanical evidence is used alongside material culture to evaluate the movement of these plants and plant items into Roman Britain, their meaning and materiality in the context of human-plant relations in ornamental gardens and ritual activities. Archaeobotanical evidence for ornamental evergreen plants elsewhere in the Roman world is presented

Identification and measurement of intensive economic growth in a Roman imperial province

A key question in economic history is the degree to which preindustrial economies could generate sustained increases in per capita productivity. Previous studies suggest that, in many preindustrial contexts, growth was primarily a consequence of agglomeration. Here, we examine evidence for three different socioeconomic rates that are available from the archaeological record for Roman Britain. We find that all three measures show increasing returns to scale with settlement population, with a common elasticity that is consistent with the expectation from settlement scaling theory. We also identify a pattern of increase in baseline rates, similar to that observed in contemporary societies, suggesting that this economy did generate modest levels of per capita productivity growth over a four-century period. Last, we suggest that the observed growth is attributable to changes in transportation costs and to institutions and technologies related to socioeconomic interchange. These findings reinforce the view that differences between ancient and contemporary economies are more a matter of degree than kind

'The debatable territory where geology and archaeology meet': reassessing the early archaeobotanical work of Clement Reid and Arthur Lyell at Roman Silchester

The first large-scale archaeobotanical study in Britain, conducted from 1899 to 1909 by Clement Reid and Arthur Lyell at Silchester, provided the first evidence for the introduction of Roman plant foods to Britain, yet the findings have thus far remained unverified. This paper presents a reassessment of these archaeobotanical remains, now stored as part of the Silchester Collection in Reading Museum. The documentary evidence for the Silchester study is summarised, before the results are presented for over a 1000 plant remains including an assessment of preservation, identification and modern contamination. The dataset includes both evidence for the presence of nationally rare plant foods, such as medlar, and several archaeophytes. The methodologies and original interpretations of Reid and Lyell’s study are reassessed in light of current archaeobotanical knowledge. Spatial and contextual patterns in the distribution of plant foods and ornamental taxa are also explored. Finally, the legacy of the study for the development of archaeobotany in the 20th century is evaluated

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

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 weed seeds indicative of certain soil types, 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 1st millennium bc. Several centuries later, the development of urban settlements in the Late Iron Age and Roman period resulted in populations reliant on food which was produced elsewhere. Using the case study of central-southern Britain, centred on the oppidum (large fortified settlement) and civitas capital of Silchester, this paper presents the first regional quantitative analysis of arable weed seeds in order to identify the origin of the cereals consumed there. Analysis of the weed seeds which were present with the fine sieve by-products of the glume wheat Triticum spelta (spelt) shows that the weed floras of samples from diverse geological areas can be separated on the basis of the soil requirements of individual taxa. A preliminary finding is that, rather than being supplied with cereals from the wider landscape of the chalk region of the Hampshire Downs, the crops were grown close to Late Iron Age Silchester. The method presented here requires further high quality samples to evaluate this conclusion and other instances of cereal movement in the past

Agendas for Archaeobotany in the 21st Century: data, dissemination and new directions

Archaeobotany, here taken as the study of archaeological plant macrofossil remains, is a mature and widely practised area of study within archaeology. However, plants are rarely seen as active participants in past societies. Recent critical evaluations of the field of archaeobotany have focused on methodological issues, chronological and regional overviews and biomolecular developments, rather than theoretical approaches or research practices. This article aims to reflect on future agendas in archaeobotany, which may improve the use and communication of archaeobotanical data, and invigorate discussion. First, the article briefly reviews the development of archaeobotany in Britain, before focusing discussion on the areas of data publication and archiving, and the application of archaeological theory to archaeobotanical remains. Opportunities provided by the 'plant turn' in social sciences and humanities are explored in relation to plant materiality. The use of the Internet in training and analysis is considered, before reflecting on how archaeobotany has been successfully communicated to broader audiences