Steve Roskams

Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons

The purported migrations that have formed the peoples of Britain have been the focus of generations of scholarly controversy. However, this has not benefited from direct analyses of ancient genomes. Here we report nine ancient genomes (∼1 ×) of individuals from northern Britain: seven from a Roman era York cemetery, bookended by earlier Iron-Age and later Anglo-Saxon burials. Six of the Roman genomes show affinity with modern British Celtic populations, particularly Welsh, but significantly diverge from populations from Yorkshire and other eastern English samples. They also show similarity with the earlier Iron-Age genome, suggesting population continuity, but differ from the later Anglo-Saxon genome. This pattern concords with profound impact of migrations in the Anglo-Saxon period. Strikingly, one Roman skeleton shows a clear signal of exogenous origin, with affinities pointing towards the Middle East, confirming the cosmopolitan character of the Empire, even at its northernmost fringes.

The Poverty of Empiricism and the Tyranny of Theory

Almost since its emergence as a distinct sub-discipline, alongside New Archaeology in the 1970s, the practitioners of environmental archaeology have been criticised for their undue focus on the development of methodology, and an all-too-rare interest in cultural and social issues. Nowhere has this attack been more virulent than amongst post-processualists in the 1990s. However, this paper will seek to suggest that the failure of recent perspectives to make an impact on much environmental work is not due to closed minds on either side, but because post-processualism itself offers little to anyone wishing to come to terms with detailed trajectories of past social development. Using examples from environmental analyses in York, we will show how Marxism allows the study of the processes of production and distribution of food to be linked effectively to an analysis of the patterns of consumption and disposal, thus avoiding the polarisation between traditional empiricism and the idealism of post-processual theory.

Engaging Communities in the ‘Big Society’: What Impact is the Localism Agenda having on Community Archaeology?

Abstract When the UK Coalition Government came to power in May 2010, its members brought with them a localism agenda, based upon what they called the ‘Big Society’. This agenda was focused on community engagement and devolvement of power, and has seen a number of legislative and policy changes in the UK, with the 2012 Localism Act devolving powers to local government, and providing means for local communities to become involved in decision making, inspire volunteerism, and support social enterprise. This paper draws upon debates which have arisen within the archaeological sector relating to the broad influence of the localism agenda on its work, with individual contributors taking various positions regarding theoretical analysis of the Big Society in relation to the social goals of archaeology. The contributors ask, respectively: what is it that we do which can be thought of as the Big Society, and what is its meaning against the context of the socially focused archaeology work already done by the sector? What limitations must we be aware of, and how can we make the most of the opportunities? Critical consideration is then given to why archaeologists should be interested in political agendas such as this.

Authority and Community: Reflections on Archaeological Practice at Heslington East, York

Abstract This paper describes the successes and limitations of our community work during archaeological investigations at Heslington East in York, and draws out some of the wider lessons of this engagement. The successes involved wider participation in the archaeological process by a number of different groups, including often marginalized ones such as homeless people. It not only generated greater understanding of the historical depth of their locality, but delivered important wider skill sets in problem-solving approaches and team working. However, it also showed the conflicts that can develop in such contexts, which relate, in our case, to the fact that the university was institutionally committed to local engagement but was also the (often unwelcome) developer of a green space already used by that community for its own purposes. More generally, tensions result from a government strategy of emphasizing citizenship and localism to tackle the current eco- nomic recession, participation in which can result in tokenism rather than real empowerment of local communities. We conclude that archaeology, as socially-embedded practice, must recognize these deeper contexts and, hopefully, do more to transcend their limitations if ‘community archaeology’ is to deliver fully on its promises.

Landscapes of imperialism : Roman and native interaction in the East Anglian Fenland

This work is ostensibly a study of the archaeology and history of a single Roman landscape - the Fenlands of East Anglia. However, it was also the authors intention to consider the issues raised by the application of post-colonial theory to landscape archaeology. The aims of this study are thus two fold: to explore the nature of imperialism as practiced in the Roman Empire from a post-colonial perspective, and, secondly, to test a series of models generated in relation to the Roman Fenlands. The study as a whole is much concerned with an examination of Roman imperialism as it is with the detail of a particular case study.

Cottam, Cowlam and Environs: An Anglo-Saxon Estate on The Yorkshire Wolds

From 1993–95 investigation of a so-called ‘productive site’ known as Cottam B revealed an Anglo-Saxon settlement occupied during the eighth to ninth centuries AD, succeeded in the late ninth to early tenth century by an Anglo-Scandinavian farmstead. The final report (Richards 1999a) concluded that the Anglo-Saxon settlement may have been an outlying farming and hunting dependency set within a royal estate centred upon Driffield, but that following the Viking partition of East Yorkshire it developed into an independent proto-manor. In subsequent years, fieldwork was undertaken at other early medieval sites in the immediate locality. At Cottam A (in 1996) and later at Church Farm, Cowlam (in 2003), contemporary Anglo-Saxon occupation was revealed at both sites. These sites provide a local context for the results from Cottam B, and show widespread and dispersed settlement foci in this part of the Wolds in the eighth and ninth centuries. They illuminate how a number of outlying dependencies of a single estate were interrelated, and how they contributed to the evolution of the Late Saxon and medieval settlement pattern. This paper provides a summary report of the archaeology of Cottam A and Cowlam with a supporting digital archive, and draws conclusions about the nature of the activities and interrelationships within the proposed Anglo-Saxon estate in which these settlements were likely to have been situated.

Early Medieval Settlement at Mothecombe, Devon: The Interaction of Local, Regional and Long-Distance Dynamics

Excavations at Meadowsfoot Beach, Mothecombe, south Devon, between 2004 and 2011 focused on two main areas. In the first, evidence for occupation in a sand dune included successive hearths and imported early medieval finds. In the second, three phases of early medieval structures were uncovered, along with more imported finds including amphora sherds. At least one of the structures was very large, and is presently unique in Devon. The landscape context of the site is considered along with the impact of sea-level change and coastal erosion. The paper concludes with a discussion of the site and its relationship to post-Roman networks of trade and communications with late Antique Atlantic Europe and the Mediterranean. We argue that Mothecombe helps us towards a better understanding of these networks by furnishing new insights on their social foundations in western Britain.

THE URBAN POOR: FINDING THE MARGINALISED

Why are archaeologists ‘missing’ the poor in Late Roman towns? This paper suggest that we are looking in the wrong place, and need to concentrate on areas of the townscape beyond its monumental centre; that we are looking in the wrong way, and need to develop more sophisticated methodologies in both gathering and analysing data; and that we are seeing our evidence through inappropriate interpretative frameworks. To remedy this last state of affairs, we must develop Marxist approaches defining different modes of production, and then apply them to the analysis of townscapes and landscapes, and to artefact and ecofact assemblages.

‘Late Antique Field Archaeology’: A Legitimate Aim?

AbstractThis paper discusses some issues raised by Lavan et al. (2007) in relation to the study of everyday life: that is, do we need a distinctive set of fieldwork practices to investigate late antique sites? I will argue here that such an objective is both unnecessary and unhelpful. Instead, we should invest in reconnaissance and evaluation by using non-invasive techniques in advance of destructive excavation, then develop a more focused strategy by enhanced deposit modelling, involving a consideration of preservation levels, degrees of disturbance and deposit status. This has already been done successfully on several late antique sites, which I consider here. The above argument has important implications for the role of ‘interpretation at the point of the trowel’ in fieldwork practice. Counter to most recent commentators, I contend that, if we are to fully understand complex late antique archaeology, it is essential to retain a distinction between data gathered during excavation and interpretations reached as a result of their subsequent analysis.

Food for thought : the potential and problems of faunal evidence for interpreting late antique society

AbstractThis article considers the use of animal bones as an aid to understanding social dynamics in Late Antiquity. Faunal evidence has been deployed to great effect in many aspects of archaeology but, I argue, remains under-exploited in Classical and Early Medieval contexts. Making the most of this material will require the development of new interpretative frameworks and an awareness of various methodological barriers. Nonetheless, patterning of data from Early Roman contexts provides a ready source of models to test and develop for later centuries. This process will be especially useful when groups of settlements can be compared (here, major towns in North Africa), and when faunal patterning can be related to contemporary developments in the landscapes where the breeding, husbandry and culling of livestock took place. Here I use the area around Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire as a case study.