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REVIEW BY NEIL HOLBROOK
It is always instructive to look at the areas surrounding famous archaeological sites, as they can provide valuable context for the well-known remains. So it is with Silchester in Hampshire, where a late Iron Age oppidum was succeeded by a Roman town (Calleva Atrebatum). Michael Fulford has previously considered the finds and environmental evidence from Calleva to be quite distinct from that found at neighbouring Iron Age settlements, and as a result suggested that the oppidum was an alien creation, perhaps the work of colonists from Gaul. Is this view supported by a wider study looking at the Silchester hinterland?
This volume reports on a series of small-scale evaluations of a variety of sites, supplemented by a programme of environmental reconstruction, aided by the extensive application of radiocarbon dating. While evidence was recovered ranging in date from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, the most interesting focuses on the Iron Age. Many of the sites examined were in themselves unremarkable, with the notable exception of a richly furnished chamber burial from around the time of the Roman invasion, but that is largely to miss the point of this study, which is concerned with the bigger picture. One of the surprises is that some of the Silchester dykes (long-distance linear earthworks that divided up the landscape) pre-date the oppidum by several hundred years, contrary to what has previously been assumed.
The oppidum was established at the very end of the 1st century BC in a wooded area. A major conclusion of the volume is that a territory with a radius of 2km around the oppidum was seemingly devoid of contemporary farmsteads. Presumably, it was kept clear for cultivation and grazing to support the inhabitants of the newly established centre, and was retained during the life of the Roman town and perhaps even beyond, for its limits seem to be reflected in medieval parish boundaries. This book succeeds in shedding interesting new light on one of the key sites of the Iron Age and Roman periods in central southern Britain.
Silchester: the landscape setting of the Iron Age oppidum and Roman city
Michael Fulford, Catherine Barnett, Nicholas Pankhurst, and Daniel Wheeler
Oxbow, £44
ISBN 979-8888570401
