Winchester is one of the most comprehensively excavated historic towns in England, with archaeology providing a valuable insight into its development from the Roman capital of the civitas of the Belgae to power base of the West Saxon kingdom. While there were important interventions in the decades immediately following the Second World War, the most extensive excavations of the walled city were those led by Martin Biddle between 1961 to 1971. Over this 11-year period, four sites at Cathedral Green, Lower Brook Street, Castle Yard and Wolvesey Palace were investigated in detail and more limited excavation was carried out at 16 further locations. The book is based on palaeoenvironmental data derived from 10 of these sites, nine of which lie within the historic walls, and is the first wide-ranging study of this type to focus on a single historic town in Britain. This monograph has taken several decades to reach publication and some of the contributions were written some time ago, but it is still an important, insightful and engaging collection.
The volume is divided into three sections; the first provides the background, with the opening chapter focusing on Winchester itself and the excavation and sampling methodologies adopted by the investigators. This is a useful orientation for anyone who is not familiar with the previous publications on the excavations, published in a series of annual interim reports called the Winchester Historic Town Atlas and the Urban Archaeological Assessment. The second chapter casts the net wider to look at the region in which Winchester is located, reviewing elements such as geology, hydrology, soils and natural vegetation. This part of Hampshire is known for its chalk rivers and streams that provide unique ecological environments and has attracted persistent occupation throughout human history. These remarkable but delicate watercourses are today facing an existential threat from drought, intensive fisheries, pollution from agricultural run-off and the dumping of raw sewage.
In the second section of the volume, the written evidence takes centre stage with each of the contributions skilfully contrasting textual sources with the archaeological data. In Chapter 3, Debby Banham examines Ælfric of Enysham's Nomina Herbarum (‘Names of plants’), a Latin–Old English glossary of terms to be used by students. Written at some point between 992 and 1002, the Herbarum has been used in the past to identify species of plants growing at that time but here Banham demonstrates that there are 21 plants cited in the text that currently have not yet been identified in the archaeological record of early medieval sites in England. In the following chapter, which surveys the medieval period at large, Derek Keene finds greater agreement between the archaeological evidence for plant remains and the documentary record. Keene makes it clear that heavy plant processing is probably behind the lack of archaeological material for herbs such as coriander and dye-plants like woad and madder but, on the flipside, archaeology does make visible wild fruits such as blackberry and raspberry that do not appear in the written sources. While most crops, fruit, and herbs occur in both textual and material forms, it is apparent the real diversity of the medieval environment becomes clearer only by combining sources. The section closes with a chapter on the elite gardens of the castle, Wolvesey Palace, and Eastgate House (Chapter 5) and a further contribution on the field crops of Hampshire (Chapter 6).
The archaeological evidence is the main focus in the third and final section, with seven chapters on subjects including pollen analysis (Chapter 7), the evidence for the utilisation of wood (Chapter 8) and insect fauna (Chapter 13). In this section, arguably, we gain the most developed picture of the plants and crops available in the city and how this varied over time, but we also get glimpses of organics used for different purposes such as fodder and bedding for animals. Notable across the Roman to medieval period is the persistent presence of wild plant species; however, there is also a lack of evidence for agricultural processing within Winchester, which suggests that grain was brought into the city as a finished product. Processing and storage of grain may have taken place within the suburbs, and arable fields probably came up close to the city walls in numerous periods. There are hints too within the palaeoenvironmental assemblage of the early medieval and medieval periods of plants being used for medicinal purposes; opium seeds may have been used as an anaesthetic, and bistort was perhaps used specifically to remedy toothache.
In summary, this is an extremely informative and enjoyable series of contributions that neatly dovetails the archaeological and textual sources for the environmental history of Winchester. The range of chapters includes discrete themes or data alongside ‘bigger picture’ contributions that together generate a most useful and highly readable volume.
