Creating Rural Settlements: New Perspectives on Roman Imperialism, Ontogenesis and Processualism in Britain

我的博士学位将通过应用最新的理论进展来研究罗马不列颠的乡村聚落，这些进展被概括在“本体论转向”之下。术语“本体论”指的是世界的方式，而不是人们如何获得对世界的可靠知识(认识论)。对罗马不列颠的传统研究集中在该省是如何治理的，以及并入帝国后生活是如何改变的。基于对罗马-不列颠的后殖民方法(马丁利，2006)，我将不同的殖民经历作为一种本体论现象进行研究，将提供一个新的视角，了解身份是如何在农村聚落中定义的，并提供对罗马占领下农村变化的动态描述。通过忽略‘罗马人和不列颠人’的二分法，我将调查新出现的和多样化的身份。对这些本体论的起源(创造、延续和维护)的关注很容易适用于更广泛的目标，即提供具有后殖民焦点的历史记述，即我所说的“个体发生”。该项目的主要目的将是了解这些本体论是如何在罗马英国的农村聚落中出现的，以及如何出现不同的“罗马英国人”身份。运用“个体发生论”的概念，我将重新评价“罗马人-不列颠人”的二元对立，并重新定义那些生活在罗马人-不列颠人的殖民经历。这篇论文的一部分将涉及到对“起源”的定义以及它为什么对考古学有用，特别是考虑到在讨论更广泛的文献中的出现和变化时，学者们忽视了“诞生”和“创造”的概念。研究起源将使考古学中一个以前过时但重要的理论概念重新焕发生机。实证数据将包括对两个农村地区的区域研究：南部和威尔士，这两个地区因其丰富的数据、各种农村聚落和进行比较分析的潜力而被选中。我的研究将集中于三种类型的证据：乡村聚落、物质文化和葬礼习俗，以研究社会、经济和政治身份的形成方式。我将使用一个严格的方法框架，综合这两个区域的数据，阐明一种适用于其他区域分析的方法。该项目将受益于最近对罗马不列颠农村聚居地大型数据集的综合(Smith等人。2016)。我将把这些数据与罗马时代的英国、铁器时代后期的英国和后罗马时代的英国的城市住区进行对比。对考古证据的关注也将通过使用自下而上的方法来提供更微妙的图景来对抗传统的关于自上而下罗马影响的乡村叙事。

My PhD will investigate the rural settlements of Roman Britain by the application of recent advances in theory encapsulated under the 'ontological turn'. The term 'ontology' refers to the way the world is, as opposed to how people come to gain secure knowledge of the world (epistemology). Conventional studies of Roman Britain have focused on how the province was governed and how lives were transformed by incorporation into the empire. Building upon post-colonial approaches to Roman-Britain (Mattingly, 2006), my research into diverse colonial experiences as an ontological phenomenon will offer a new perspective on how identities were defined in rural settlements, as well as providing a dynamic account of change in the countryside under Roman occupation. By ignoring the 'Romans-Britons' dichotomy, I will investigate emergent and diverse identities. The focus on genesis (the creation, perpetuation and maintenance) of these ontologies is easily applicable to the broader aims of providing a historical account with a post-colonial focus, what I refer to as 'ontogenesis'. The project's main aim will be to understand how these ontologies emerged within rural settlements in Roman Britain and how different 'Romano-British' identities emerged. Applying the concept of 'ontogenesis' I will re-evaluate the binary opposition of 'Romans-Britons' and reconceptualise the colonial experiences of those living in Roman-Britain. Part of this thesis will concern itself with defining 'genesis' and why it is useful for archaeology, especially considering scholarly neglect of ideas of 'birth' and 'creation' when discussing emergence and change in the wider literature. Studying genesis will reinvigorate a previously stale but important theoretical concept in archaeology.The empirical data will include regional studies of two rural zones: The South and Wales, chosen for their wealth of data, variety of rural settlements and potential to perform a comparative analysis. My study will focus on three types of evidence: rural settlements, material culture and funerary practices to study ways that social, economic and political identities were formed. Using a rigorous methodological framework, I will synthesise data from the two regions, articulating an approach appropriate for the analysis of other regions. The project will benefit from the recent synthesis of the large dataset of The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain (Smith et al. 2016). I will contextualise the data in comparison to the urban settlements of Roman Britain, Later Iron Age Britain and post-Roman Britain. A focus on archaeological evidence will also counter traditional rural narratives about top-down Roman influence by using a bottom-up approach to provide a more nuanced picture.