Archaeologists, like most people, have an urge to grasp the world through something tangible or, even better, countable. There can be a great comfort in numbers, and numbers also convince; many have been the attempts to define cities by countable characteristics: an area of at least 10ha, 10,000 inhabitants, a certain number of public meeting places, a particular thickness of city walls in metres.
Research recently published in the journal Britannia has proposed a way to estimate the possible population of Roman Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), in Hampshire, suggesting that the town may have included many more residences than have yet been identified. As a…
Rubina Raja & Søren M Sindbæk on the complexities of communal living.
Rubina Raja & Søren M Sindbæk on heterogeneity.
We are grateful to LPRS Council member Simon Oliver for contributing this month’s ‘Odd Socs’ column.
Review by Joe Flatman. Growing Up Human examines the history of childhood in the broadest sense, from reproductive options through conception and eventual transference into adulthood, by way of gestation, birth, early years, childhood, and adolescence. The book was, clearly,…
Last month we explored the evolution of Roman and medieval Leicester. Now Mathew Morris explains how recent University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) excavations in the city have revealed links between its Roman predecessor and North Africa.
The London we know today traces its roots directly back to the modest settlement developed on the banks of the Thames in the late 9th century, in the time of the Saxon king Alfred the Great. In spite of fires,…
Arguably, one of the biggest challenges that continually faces archaeology is accessibility. While that can be interpreted in several different ways, what I’m going to concentrate on in this month’s ‘Science Notes’ is access to data. With the advent of…