This month’s column comprises the latest in a ‘Roman towns’ miniseries. I have recently visited Chester and Colchester, and next up is Cirencester (Corinium). While not the most famous Romano-British town, it has fared well in the annals of Current Archaeology, first appearing in CA 29 (November 1971) and recurring regularly since then, including in multiple cover stories – most recently, CA 397 (April 2023).
Understanding the City
Issue 29 provides an exceptional ‘state of the nation’ review of what was known of Corinium at that time, by which point sustained fieldwork had been under way for 12 years, sponsored by the Society of Antiquaries of London. This work identified most of its major features, including the wall-line, amphitheatre, cemetery, forum, and basilica. The relative lack of later development (until recently the town barely spread beyond its ancient boundary) meant that the Roman town survived well – less impacted by medieval and modern settlement, and spared the worst excesses of wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction. This makes Cirencester more akin to, say, Wroxeter (see CA 338, May 2018, and here in this issue) than other urban explorations of the era. CA 29 also introduced one of the great finds of Corinium, the ‘hare mosaic’ discovered in a house on its eastern edge in Insula XII. CA 42 (January 1974) followed up with additional detail from this site, suggesting that it lay within a farm complex on the periphery of the town.
There is more on this and other mosaic finds from Cirencester in CA 251 (February 2011), which describes Stephen Cosh and David Neal’s multivolume Mosaics in Roman Britain. (For more about Neal’s career, see here.) They explained how, by the 2nd century AD, Corinium was at the centre of a flourishing agricultural community spanning from the Cotswolds to South Wales, second only to London in size – a growth that continued into the 3rd and early 4th centuries AD. Further news (and the city’s second cover story) came in a brief update in CA 45 (July 1974), alongside details of the then-brand-new Corinium Museum (which was not touched on again until the time of its refurbishment 30 years later in CA 194, October 2004). After this focused flurry of activity though, coverage of the town itself went quiet in the pages of Current Archaeology for 20 years. As I explain below, however, other fieldwork nearby kept up the flow of articles exploring the wider area.
