The South West Peninsula and the Roman World: A New Interpretation of Social Identity during the 1st to 4th Centuries AD

Principal investigator: Sian Thomas
Level: PhD level research

The South West Peninsula and the Roman World: A New Interpretation of Social Identity during the 1^st to 4^th Centuries AD

The principal aim of my thesis is to resituate the Romano-British period in the South-West through an exploration of the relationship between material culture and the creation of identity. In particular this thesis is concerned with ceramics, personal adornment items, stone artefacts (produced in Cornwall) and coinage and the role these played in the (re)negotiation of identity that resulted from the Roman conquest. The main objective of the research will be to re-evaluate the material assemblages from excavated sites to shed new light on changing social practices, how material culture was used and how and if this reflected changing identities of the communities and individuals in the South-West (following Hunter, 2001). Through analysis of these categories of material objects it will be possible to highlight variations in the way the population engaged with each other and how they responded to the coming of Rome and offer a new approach to reading the archaeology.

This re-evaluation and interpretation of material assemblages will be framed within the new contemporary theoretical models, such as discrepant identity and globalisation (see Mattingly, 2006, 2011 and Hingley, 2005). A re-evaluation such as this should help build a clearer picture of the political and economic structures, which underpin social practices and identity, before and after the Roman annexation. This thesis is also concerned with the evolution of settlement pattern in the landscape of the South-West as this may reflect the changes in the social practices evident in the material cultural assemblages. In particular the evolution of site morphology will be addressed here through large scale landscape survey. Little is understood of the social hierarchy of the South-West in the Iron Age or Romano-British periods, with current social models based on morphology as very few sites have been fully excavated (see Cunliffe, 1991 and Quinnell, 2004).

Occupation phases of sites targeted through geophysical survey will be dated through material collected from small scale excavations of each site. In this way it should be possible to show changes in the way communities interacted with the landscape throughout the Late Iron Age and Romano-British periods, and how these relate to changes in the expression of identity evident through the material cultural assemblages. A further aim of this thesis is to open a critical discourse on the continual grouping of the South West peninsula into one tribal territory, Dumnonia. This has obscured the immense variability between the populations and it has hampered past attempts to understand how these communities engaged within the wider regional and provincial economic and political administration of Roman Britain. The continued use of the term Dumnonia in describing this area during the Iron Age and Romano-British periods can be argued to have much the same effect. The reality of this perceived unity will be examined within this thesis and a critical dialogue begun on whether the archaeological record, the artefactual assemblages and settlement pattern, support one unified tribal entity or whether this unification has obscured a kaleidoscope of smaller political entities.

Audit data

• Created: 9 years ago
• Created by: Daniel Pett