Manifestations of Empire: Palaeoenvironmental Analysis and the End of Roman Britain

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The end of Roman imperial control in Britain during the early-fifth century AD marks a period of far reaching socio-political and economic change at the boundary between what scholars regard as separate research areas, the Romano-British and early medieval periods. What happened at the end of Roman Britain is a contentious issue which both historians and archaeologists have struggled to fully explain. Some experts argue that there was widespread continuity between the late-Roman and early medieval periods, whilst others favour discontinuity associated with abrupt short-term change. The problem is that there are few historical sources, a limited number of archaeological sites with good dating evidence, and very little evidence with which to explore the use and function of the sites that have been identified. This project will offer a new perspective on the debate by adopting an approach that spans both periods and seeks to examine the transition between them through a programme of high resolution pollen analysis focused on South East Wales.Pollen analysis has long been used by archaeologists to reconstruct past agrarian and land-use patterns, particularly for prehistoric periods, but in this project the technique will be used to provide evidence about the patterns of land-use and agricultural exploitation associated with important Roman and early medieval settlement sites. This will allow us to explore how the use and function of settlements, including towns and villas, changed, and to assess the degree to which there was continuity between the late-Roman and early medieval periods. The potential benefits of such an approach have been highlighted by both historians and archaeologist, but a lack of suitable pollen sampling sites close to core areas of settlement - most sampling sites have tended to be upland peat bogs - and poor chronological resolution of cores have constrained the realization of the potential. A small number of research projects have undertaken high chronological resolution lowland pollen analysis, but these have not focused on Romanized areas and could not be used to address wider research questions.This project, however, will use high density, high resolution pollen analysis to investigate changes in environment and land-use across a densely settled and Romanized lowland region. A successful pilot study has demonstrated that it is possible to identify a suitable density of sampling sites within the study area, and pollen cores with chronological limits and levels of preservation to warrant further analysis were recovered. This project will focus upon a network of sampling sites in South East Wales. The most Romanized part of the Principality, and a predominantly lowland landscape, the south East is more in keeping with western England than upland Wales in terms of its topography and archaeology. Moreover, South East Wales has been identified as having special significance for the debate about the Roman to early medieval transition, as it represents a rare example of a part of the Western Roman Empire which, although Romanized, was not subject to 'barbarian' incursion following its collapse in the fifth century, and where early medieval power structures and state institutions developed as the result of indigenous processes alone. Analysis of this area could therefore greatly contribute to our understanding of the transformation of the Roman world in general by providing a comparative case study. This opportunity is enhanced by a substantial corpus of early medieval land charters preserved in the Book of Llandaff, and previous landscape surveys focused on the Gwent Levels. This project will examine multiple pollen cores close to a series of key archaeological sites, including Romano-British settlements and villas, Caerwent Roman town, the high-status early medieval settlement at Dinas Powys, and early medieval estate centres recorded in the Book of Llandaff.