This final volume of New Visions of the Countryside of Roman Britain
focuses upon the people of rural Roman Britain - how they looked, lived,
interacted with the material and spiritual worlds surrounding them, and
also how they died and what their physical remains can tell us. Many
previous syntheses of life and death in Roman Britain have drawn mostly
upon data from urban or military settings with rural life being limited
to the elite residing in villas. Thanks largely to the increase in new
information resulting from developer-funded excavations over the past
thirty years, this situation has now changed so that we can place the
spotlight firmly on the mass of the rural population living in
farmsteads and nucleated settlements across the Roman province. This is
a world that has rarely been explored before and provides a picture of
the countryside of Roman Britain that is - for the most part - far
removed from the bucolic scenes of villa-life.
The six main chapters in this volume each tackle a different theme
relating to life and death in the countryside of Roman Britain, all
combining to facilitate construction of a broad social archaeology of
the province. Overall the analyses indicate a geographically and
socially diverse society influenced by pre-existing cultural traditions
and degrees of social connectivity between settlements. There is no
doubt that incorporation into the Roman Empire brought with it a great
deal of social change though it would appear that this change was
largely to the detriment of many of those living in the countryside.
