John Creighton

Visions of Power: Imagery and Symbols in Late Iron Age Britain

This article is a speculative essay about one aspect of authority and power in the late Iron Age. Excellent narratives exist which discuss the political context of the rise of the polities of Verica and Cunobelin in the South East of Britain, but over the last few decades the place of druids in this story has been neglected. However druids did exist, and they need to be worked into our narratives of the past. What follows leads to a discussion of their nature and function in society, and of their decline in importance during the large-scale social changes which took place in the generations immediately preceding the Roman conquest. The article uses a mixture of ethnographic, historical, numismatic, and archaeological evidence.

Researcher development: the impact of undergraduate research opportunity programmes on students in the UK

Undergraduate research opportunity programmes (UROP) are common in North America where research has confirmed their benefits. These schemes are gaining ground in the UK, and this article provides evidence for how UK students are benefiting from the experience. Results suggest UROP makes a significant contribution to the research capabilities and confidence of participating students, boosting their understanding of both research and their own subjects. Whilst offering considerable benefits to student learning, there is no evidence that UROP schemes on their current small scale attract additional students to postgraduate research, since the majority that participate are already interested in postgraduate study. However, at an individual level, most students report increased confidence and appreciation of the realities of the research process, and desire to progress on to postgraduate study following the placement, indicating that schemes may have the potential to cultivate new research confidence and interest if expanded.

Oppida, Agglomerations, and Suburbia: the Bibracte Environs and New Perspectives on Late Iron Age Urbanism in Central-Eastern France

This paper explores the nature and chronology of La Tene and early Roman unenclosed agglomerations in central-eastern France. It has been prompted by the discovery of a c. 115 ha La Tene D2b/Augustan (c. 50 bc to ad 15) site close to Bibracte in the Morvan, located around the source of the River Yonne. This complex provides a new perspective on the chronology and role of Late La Tene and early Roman unenclosed settlements, adding further complexity to the story of the development of Late La Tene oppida. It indicates that these ‘agglomerations’ followed remarkably varied chronological trajectories, raising important issues concerning the nature of landscape and social change at the end of the Iron Age.

‘In practice it doesn't always work out like that.' Undergraduate experiences in a research community of practice

This paper examines the extent to which a structured undergraduate research intervention, UROP, permits undergraduate students early access to legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) in a research community of practice. Accounts of placement experiences suggest that UROP affords rich possibilities for engagement with research practice. Undergraduates tread a path of gaining access to mature practice while also building their own independence, participating in work that they see matters to the community and making gains in use of a shared research repertoire. Students place UROP experiences in a contrasting frame to research exercises experienced during degree programmes; their sense of the authenticity of the research experienced through UROP emerges as a key element of these accounts. The data generate the interesting question that the degree of engagement with mature practice may account for more of the gain from UROP than simply the quantity of contact other researchers.

The Supply and Movement of Denarii in Roman Britain

Hoards of denarii are common in Britain and the number which have been recorded in detail means that it is now possible to suggest reasonably accurately what a ‘normal’ hoard of a particular date should look like. That being the case, we can then look for variation around that norm and both investigate and speculate what that variation means. A methodology is developed which suggests periods of faster and less rapid coin circulation which has implications for consideration of monetisation. The model also enables us to view where denarii entered circulation; unsurprisingly the army looms large in this picture. The methodology is directly transferable to other provinces and other periods where there are longlived, relatively stable monetary systems.

A Late Iron Age Mirror Burial from Latchmere Green, near Silchester, Hampshire

The discovery by Mr David Walsh, a local metal detectorist, of what proved to be a Late Iron Age, decorated bronze mirror was reported to us on its discovery in the autumn of 1994 and led to a small excavation of the context and immediate environs of the find (Figs 1–2). It was made on the south-facing slope of a low hill, at about the 75 m contour, at SU 632 603 in LP 3516 which lies just within the parish of Bramley and at the southern extremities of a Roman settlement that developed around the junction of the Roman roads leading from Silchester to Winchester and Chichester. The findspot is thus some 2 km south-south-west of the walled area of the Roman town which overlies the heart of the Late Iron Age oppidum of Calleva . The overall extent of the site as revealed by the distribution of artefacts in the ploughsoil has been plotted by Corney over an area in excess of 6 ha (1984, 283–5, figs 81–3). Although some Silchester Ware of latest Iron Age and earliest Roman date had been recovered from around the centre of the settlement, the bulk of the pottery suggested occupation lay principally between the late 1st/early 2nd century AD and the late 4th century AD.

Fluxgate gradiometry survey at North Leigh Roman Villa, Oxfordshire

North Leigh Roman villa ranks as one of the largest known courtyard villas of Roman Britain. 1 Situated just above the floodplain of the river Evenlode, which loops around the site, the villa lies c. 2 miles north of North Leigh village and 10 miles west of Oxford (SP 397 154). The building developed within the Late Iron Age earthwork complex of the North Oxfordshire Grims Ditch, a discontinuous bank and ditch which partly encloses a 22-square mile area of this landscape. 2 The villa is under English Heritage guardianship (Scheduled Ancient Monument no. 334573) and a programme of geophysical survey was conducted at their request to assist in management of the site. 3

Herod's contemporaries in Britain and the West

This chapter focuses on Herods contemporaries in the west. First the context of client kingship is briefly discussed, after which the cases of Britain, northeast Gaul, Noricum and Mauretania are all examined. Imagery on the coinage shows how these members of distant aristocracies bought into the visual language of the Augustan revolution. Collectively the picture that emerges is that while the friendly kings on the northeastern fringes of the Roman world may have been the poor relations in terms of architecture and wealth, their outlook in the developing culture of the Augustan Principate was very much on the same lines as those of Herod, Juba and their ilk. Keywords: Augustus; Britain; Herod; Noricum

Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul . By G. Woolf. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge1998/2000. Pp. xv + 296, figs 20. Price: £40.00 (bound); £15.95 (paper). ISBN 0 521 414456 (bound); 0 521 789826 (paper).

1. On Romanization 2. Roman power and the Gauls 3. The civilising ethos 4. Mapping cultural change 5. Urbanising the Gauls 6. The culture of the countryside 7. Consuming Rome 8. Keeping faith? 9. Being Roman in Gaul.

Comment on: Greg Woolf's 'generations of aristocracy' and Jan Slofstra's 'Batavians and Romans'

Both Greg Woolf and Jan Slofstra have written articles that consider the theoretical agendas of archaeologists constructing narratives of the early Roman period. Then, both go on to construct their own narratives of change in two contiguous, but rather different areas of temperate Europe. In general I find the first part of their narratives as constructed more theoretically in harmony than their discourse on theory would suggest. I would like to pick up on three themes which I felt cross both papers: first on the nature of memory and kingship; secondly on the issue of Romanisation; and finally on the development of rural settlement or ‘villas’.