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Villa-Owners: Romano-British Gentlemen and Officers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

E.W. Black
E.W. Black
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90, Lisle Road, Colchester
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Extract

In the study of Romano-British villas the reconstruction of a site's economy is treated as fully as the evidence will allow. One approach to this has been to attempt to calculate the size and productivity of an estate from the excavated remains of the principal dwelling and other buildings in its close vicinity. It is now recognised that such guesses are of little value, and for some the response has been to excavate larger and larger areas so that a more complete picture can be offered. However, our present emphasis on the productive economy of villas reflects the pre-occupations of our own day and age. In this there is a danger that we will be tempted to neglect what villas can tell us about consumption and expenditure, and in particular to transfer our own patterns of private spending back into the first and second centuries A.D. This paper attempts to focus on some aspects of expenditure and consumption, and of other non-productive activity, that are perhaps now being overlooked in our present climate of thinking.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 25 , November 1994 , pp. 99 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © E.W. Black 1994. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 An impressive recent example is Barton Court Farm: Miles, D. (ed.). Archaeology at Barton Court Farm Abingdon, Oxon., Oxford Arch. Unit Rep. 3 (CBA Res. Rep. 50) (1986).Google Scholar

2 For example Applebaum, S., ‘Some observations on the economy of the Roman villa at Bignor, Sussex’, Britannia vi (1975), 118–32. The reconstruction of the economy offered in this has lost credibility because it assumed the contemporaneity of buildings that have since proved to be of different periods. More fundamentally, functions were assigned to these buildings without the support of any excavated evidence. Modern large-scale excavations at, for example, Winterton and in particular Stanwick have yielded a wealth of information but it remains to be seen if even these will allow truly comprehensive reconstructions of the productive economy of the estates.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Praetorius, C.J., Proc. Soc. Antiq.2 xxiii (1911), 121–9.Google Scholar

4 This term is applied to a small room equipped with a hypocaust, like the caldarium of a bath-suite. Its purpose was to heat adjoining rooms indirectly. This could be done by opening a porthole in the wall between the hypocauston and an adjoining room as described by Pliny the Younger (Epistulae II.17.23). See also Black, E.W., ‘Hypocaust heating in domestic rooms in Roman Britain’, Oxford Journ. Arch. iv. 1 (March, 1985), 77–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For the dating of first-century tile types see Black, E.W., The Roman Villas of South-East England, BAR 171 (1987), 12–13.Google Scholar

6 ibid., 84-6 for the dating of the Period 1C and Period 2 buildings at Fishbourne. The Period 1C ‘proto-palace’ has recently been re-interpreted as a public bath-building: Black, E.W., ‘The Period 1C bath-building at Fishbourne and the problem of the “Proto-palace”’, Journ. Roman Arch, vi (1993), 233–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 M. Todd (ed.), Studies in the Romano-British Villa (1978), 200-2 puts the case for negotiatores.

8 R. Agache, La Somme pre-romaine et romaine (1978), 287, fig. 11.

9 The dating is not precise in many cases. However, both Eccles in Kent and the Ditches villa in Gloucestershire are provisionally dated to the late Neronian-early Flavian period; Eccles: A. Detsicas, The Cantiaci (1983), 120; Ditches: S. Trow and S. James in K. Branigan and D. Miles (eds). The Economies of Romano-British Villas, 85.

10 Black, op. cit. (note 5), 26-7. I now doubt the development of the Park Street type of house from Gallic hall-type villas.

11 Paul Drury has already pointed out that certain ‘room-sets’ are common to villas and mansiones: Drury, P.J. (ed.). Structural Reconstruction, BAR 110 (1982), 295–8.Google Scholar

12 Haalebos, J.K. in Maxfield, V.A. and Dobson, M.J. (eds.), Roman Frontier Studies 1989 (1991), 184–5.Google Scholar

13 O. Ludin, ‘Die Untersuchungen im Gebiet der Friedhoferweiterung von 1967’, Gesellschaft Pro Vindonissa: Jahresbericht (1967), 44–50.

14 L.F. Pitts and J.K. St. Joseph, Inchtuthil. The Roman Legionary Fortress (1985), 207-22; E.W. Black, Cursus Publicus: The Infrastructure of Government in Roman Britain (forthcoming).

15 Black, op. cit. (note 5), 23-4 and 27-8. The origin postulated here is compatible with, and in fact supports, J.T. Smith's theory of ‘joint proprietorship’ of villas in Todd, op. cit. (note 7), 149-85.

16 Green, C. and Draper, J., ‘The Mileoak Roman Villa, Handley, Towcester, Northamptonshire. Report on the excavations of 1955 and 1956’, Northants. Arch, xiii (1978), 28–66.Google Scholar

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18 D.S. Neal, A. Wardle and J. Hunn, Excavation of the Iron Age, Roman and Medieval Settlement at Gorhambury, StAlbans (1990).

19 Building III.2: R.E.M. and T.V. Wheeler, Verulamium A Belgic and Two Roman Cities (1936), 94-5 pl. xxix. The identification as a mansio is set out in Black, op. cit. (note 13).

20 For example: Walthew, C.V., Britannia vi (1975), 196.Google Scholar

21 Keppie, L., ‘Excavation of a Roman bathhouse at Bothwellhaugh, 1975-76’, Glasgow Arch. Journ. viii (1981), 46–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 The final report on the Eccles villa has not yet been published so that the suggestion made here must not be taken as an established fact.

23 For example at Mumrills: Macdonald, G. and Curie, A.O., PSAS lxiii 63 (1929), 435, fig. 30, and 462-93. Although the size of the baths led the excavators to query whether they were for the use of the commander and his household alone, this still seems most likely.Google Scholar

24 T.G.E. Powell, The Celts (2nd edn, 1980), 135-9; W. H. Manning, ‘The cauldron chains of Iron Age and Roman Britain’, in B.R. Hartley and J.S. Wacher (eds), Rome and her Northern Provinces (1983), 132-52.

25 At Gorhambury in Period 9 there was an aisled building in the outer enclosure with a bath-building beside it. From the former came a cauldron hook: Neal et al., op. cit. (note 18), 61-6. Examples of aisled buildings preceding villas are: Bancroft: Britannia xv (1984), 304Google Scholar; Stanwick: Britannia xxiii (1992), 285.Google Scholar

26 O'Neil, H.E., Trans. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. lxxi (1953), 13–87.Google Scholar

27 Rev. Master, G.S. in Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxii (1885), plan facing p. 244.Google Scholar

28 B.W. Cunliffe, Excavations at Fishbourne. I: The Site (1971), 106-10.

29 Tacitus, Hist. I. 70.2.

30 Tacitus, Agric. 29.2.

31 ibid., 21.1.

32 Brunt, P.A., ‘Did imperial Rome disarm her subjects?’, Phoenix xxix (1975), 260–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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34 The figure numbers from the excavation reports are given in FIG. 6. Dalton Parlours: Wrathmell, S. and Nicholson, A. (eds), Dalton Parlours. Iron Age Settlement and Roman Villa, Yorks. Arch. 3 (1990); Gorhambury: Neal et al., op. cit. (note 18); Whitton: M.G. Jarrett and S. Wrathmell, Whitton. An Iron Age and Roman Farmstead in South Glamorgan, University of Wales Press on behalf of the Board of Celtic Studies of the University of Wales (1981).Google Scholar

35 Bowman, A.K. and Thomas, J.D., Britannia xviii (1987), 135–7. D.B. Saddington in Maxfield and Dobson, op. cit. (note 12), 414.Google Scholar

36 P.T. Bidwell, The Roman Fort of Vindolanda at Chesterholm Northumberland (1985), 28-31. The preferred suggestion that this was accommodation for requisitioned labour within the fort seems less probable.

37 Jarrett and Wrathmell, op. cit. (note 34), 252-3.

38 Miles, D. and Palmer, S., ‘Claydon Pike’, Current Arch. 86 (March; 1983), 88–92.Google Scholar

39 G.W. Meates, The Lullingstone Roman Villa. II. The Wall Paintings and Finds (1987), 53.

40 A. Lintott, Imperium Romanum (1993), 168-74: compare RIB 311 from Caerwent.

41 For example Building G at Winterton: I.M. Stead, Excavations at Winterton Roman Villa and other Roman Sites in North Lincolnshire (1976), 58-68.

42 A number of villas show fires or other evidence of disruption in the late second and early third centuries (some noted by Woodfield, C. in Arch. Journ. cxlvi (1989), 264). Some of these were no doubt accidents, but not necessarily all of them. A careful assessment and comparison of the dating evidence might prove a useful exercise. Gorhambury will serve as an example: the Period 8 house was apparently burned down c. 175, soon after the additions shown in FIG. 4b and the Period 9 replacement at first lacked any room with direct hypocaust heating. Its plan suggests the possibility of two suites of rooms with a dining-room to the south (Room R7) adjacent to the heated rooms of a small bath-suite which may have acted as a hypocauston. The difference is considerable, with perhaps a change of ownership (Neal et al., op. cit. (note 18), 44-8 and 57-60). It is probably coincidental that the fall from power and death of Avidius Cassius came in 175.Google Scholar

43 This has many points of contact with John Drinkwater's view of the close vertical ties between landowners and the peasantry in Gaul: J. Drinkwater, ‘Patronage in Roman Gaul and the problem of the Bagaudae’, in A. Wallace-Hadrill (ed.). Patronage in Ancient Society (1989), 189-203.