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Old and new ‘small towns’ in western England - Peter Leach with C. Jane Evans, EXCAVATION OF A ROMANO-BRITISH ROADSIDE SETTLEMENT IN SOMERSET: FOSSE LANE, SHEPTON MALLET 1990 (Britannia Monograph Series No. 18, London 2001). Pp. xvi + 349, 81 figs, 24 pls. ISBN 0 907764 27 4. £47. - A. S. Anderson, J. S. Wacher and A. P. Fitzpatrick, THE ROMANO-BRITISH ‘SMALL TOWN’ AT WANBOROUGH, WILTSHIRE: EXCAVATIONS 1966-1976 (Britannia Monograph Series No. 19, London 2001). Pp. xvi + 379, 126 figs, 11 pls. ISBN 0 907764 29 0. £44.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
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References
1 Burnham, B. C. and Wacher, J., The ‘small towns’ of Roman Britain (London 1990) 158–59Google Scholar.
2 Leach and Evans (320) are unaware that Nor'nour in the Isles of Scilly is no longer thought of as a production centre for brooches: cf. Wanborough 68.
3 Young, C. J., The Roman pottery industry of the Oxford region (BAR 43, Oxford 1977) 158 Google Scholar.
4 Booth, P., Boyle, A. and Keevill, G. D., “A Romano-British kiln site at Lower Farm, Nuneham Courtenay, and other sites on the Didcot to Oxford and Wootton to Abingdon water mains, Oxfordshire,” Oxoniensia 58 (1993 [1994]) 162–63Google Scholar.
5 They were produced, for example, in the N. Wiltshire industries (Wanborough 243), in a similar industry probably based in N. Oxfordshire (cf. Hands, A. R., The Romano-British roadside settlement at Wilcote, Oxfordshire I. Excavations 1990-92 (BAR 232, Oxford 1993) nos. 781 and 965)Google Scholar, at Tiddington and at Mancetter-Hartshill, both in Warwickshire, and at Perry Bar, Birmingham which, pace Evans 161, is in a Midlands tradition related to Mancetter-Hartshill and should not be seen as a Severn Valley ‘offshoot” ( Booth, P., “Roman pottery in Warwickshire, production and demand,” JRomPotStud 1 [1986] 29–32 Google Scholar).
6 Timby, J., “Severn Valley wares: a reassessment,” Britannia 21 (1990) 243–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Biswell, S., Cropper, L., Evans, J., Gaffney, V. and Leach, P. J., “GIS and excavation: a cautionary tale from Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England,” in Lock, G. and Stanic, Z. (edd.), The impact of GIS on archaeology: a European perspective (London) 269–85Google Scholar.
8 The point is not that the detail is unnecessary, but that much terminology is unexplained (a glossary might have been helpful) and, worse, that the significance of what is described is left completely unelucidated. A single instance (out of several) will suffice: we are told, under ‘Miscellaneous conditions’ (268), that “An adult female … has a calvarium which varies in thickness, with undulating areas up to 10.6 mm thick”. With no further explanation, one is tempted to ask ‘So what?’. This kind of information might have been more effectively tabulated — indeed, the rather laborious description of the burials in the site narrative might have benefited from the same treatment.
9 Quoting Macdonald, J. L., “Religion,’ in Clarke, G., The Roman cemetery at Lankhills, Winchester Studies 3 (Oxford 1979) 405–33Google Scholar.
10 Philpott, R., Burial practices in Roman Britain (BAR 219, Oxford 1991) 86–87Google Scholar.
11 Publications such as Timby, J. R., Excavations at Kingscote and Wycomb, Gloucestershire: a Roman estate centre and small town in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, with notes on related settlements (Cirencester 1998)Google Scholar, appeared too late to be taken account of; for a general review of recent literature, see Booth, P., “Defining small towns in Roman Britain,” JRA 11 (1998) 613–23Google Scholar; for a very recent review of nucleated settlements in Wiltshire, see Corney, M., “The Romano-British nucleated settlements of Wiltshire,” in Ellis, P. (ed.), Roman Wiltshire and after: papers in honour of Ken Annable (WiltsArchNatHistSoc 2001) 538 Google Scholar.