Urban Societies And Environments Flashcards
What is the documentary evidence and what are the problems associated in using it?
It includes Tacitus’s Agricola and Annals. It tells us however very little of the actual form towns took except in pivotal episodes such as the sacking of Colchester during the Boudican revolt.
This provides us with visual representations but are completely stereotyped.
What does the epigraphical evidence include?
The epigraphic evidence includes stone inscriptions and instrumortom domesticom This is on many ways more useful since the instrumortom domesticom gives us information of the production of objects
What are the two categories of archaeological evidence?
Greenfield sites and sites of continual occupation.the Greenfield sites of sites have not been built upon and include Silchester. Be continually built upon sites include London in York.
What are the strengths and limitations of using green sites and continually built upon sites as archaeological evidence?
Greenfield sites give us a great understanding of the overall picture and layout of a town however they don’t give us much sense of time. continually built upon sites are often fragmentary as evidence of this is only ever really shown through town planning and excavation before developments. These particular sites are good at giving us an understanding of the chronology of the settlement however they do not give us an overall picture.
What biases are associated with the excavation and study of urban environments
Unbiased includes food work priorities while another includes the traditional emphasis on the private buildings rather than the public buildings. This gives us evidence of an individual but not necessarily characteristics of the population within the settlement.
What case studies can you use to show the biases of the study of urban environments
Silchester and Verulamium
What is the general bias associated with the case studies
In both Silchester and Verulamium that is evidence of reacquisition and spoliation of material. in silchester only the foundations of the basilica remain while in Verulamium the Roman bricks were used to build St Alban’s Abbey. This was mostly due to there being alack of building material in the South of Britain and the mediaeval castles such Roman sites provided an easy accessible quarry.
What are the traditional approaches to studying urban
One approach is the substitute histories and administrative classification. Another includes antiquarianism in topography. There is also urbanism as a socio-economic process.
Outline the substitute history and administrative classification approach to studying urban environments
The substitute histories and administrative classification approach includes the use of archaeology to flesh out the exiguous literary accounts. they look at the movements of individual governors to see what developments they might have on the settlements they were in charge of as well as looking the status granted to the different environments.
this was very much the concern of scholars around the 1960s 280 years including Peter Salway
Outline the topographic and antiquarianism approach
In the 18th century some archaeologists were concerned with mapping out the different Romano British settlements. William Stukeley for instance outlined where he suspected the private buildings in London would be in relation to the Roman wall surrounding the city.
this type of work was also based on something else of local pride which fuelled understanding as a way of showing whose town was greater.
Outline the approach of urbanism as a socio-economic process
Urbanism is a socio-economic process is considered in two ways. It focuses on the role of the Roman army and euergetism.
the contending view is that the role of the Roman army were exceedingly influential in Britain were the natives could not conceptualise towns in their own right. However the few that has the most consensus is that it was the native elitesadopting Roman cultural traditions in order to aggrandize themselves to the Romans. In this manner they were still able to retain power and control over their tribes and a hereditary defacto society.
Outline the approach of space constructing identity
This approach looks at the actual monumental evidence in buildings and analyses how buildings in each settlement influenced either an adoption or subconscious adoption of Roman practices. Such buildings include theatres and bath houses and these in many ways were used as a means of separating the elites and the general populace.
