Animalscapes and Empire: New perspectives on the Iron Age to Romano-British Transition

Project outline

Animals have always been central to the creation, use and perception of landscape and environment. This project put animals back into the landscape in order to inform research on human society and ideology. Animalscape research could be applied to any place or period but as a case study this project explored, through the analysis of archaeological animal bones, how landscape and environment were used to negotiate cultural identity during the Iron Age/Romano-British transition, a pivotal but poorly understood period in British history.

Achievements

The project focused on the re-recording of animal bones from Fishbourne Roman Palace, Sussex. This material was originally examined by Grant (1971) at a time before modern zooarchaeological techniques had been developed. This re-analysis demonstrated significant oversights in the 1971 report.

Species misidentifications have also been highlighted. Perhaps most importantly a number of bones originally identified (and frequently cited) as the great bustard (Otis tarda) a rare Down/Wold-dwelling species, have been shown to belong to the common crane (Grus grus), a fenland/marshland inhabitant. This single re-identification has, therefore, changed our view of human-animal-landscape interactions in the Roman period. Other migratory birds, including two quite rare species of duck, were also identified.

At a more detailed scale, new spatial analysis of the Fishbourne assemblage has provided an insight into how landscape and environment were structured at the settlement level; the location of kitchens, refuse dumps and boundaries revealing something of Iron Age and Roman attitudes to the world around them.

A wider regional synthesis of faunal data from the study area suggests that significant differences existed between local rural farmsteads, the Roman town of Noviomagus Reginorum (now the modern city of Chichester) and the elite site at Fishbourne Roman Palace. Across the Iron Age/Romano-British transition many farmsteads seem to have developed from mixed-farming, subsistence-based settlements into more specialised producer sites, probably in response to the urbanisation which took place at Noviomagus.

At Fishbourne Palace, ageing and skeletal evidence of the domestic mammals suggest that herds and flocks were being kept within the estate's boundaries and so may have been signifiers of social space. In terms of wild animals, the first osteological evidence of wild boar from the area has been demonstrated through analysis of pig teeth. This find, along with the Fishbourne hare and deer remains (three species of deer are represented), indicates that the Roman elite frequently hunted in this region.

The project also made progress in elucidating people's relationship with the air and water.  

Martyn and Naomi ran a conference entitled 'People and Place: Landscape and Identity through Time' in Chichester in September 2008. An exhibition of posters from the conference was then on public display at Fishbourne Roman Palace.

Martyn was awarded his PhD in 2011. Since completing he gained a position with English Heritage at Fort Cumberland working as a Research Assistant on the EH Roman Regional Review of the Zooarchaeology of Southern Britain (2011-12). As of June 2012, he has been employed by the University of Reading as a Research Fellow on a Leverhulme-funded project examining the Rural Settlement in Roman Britain. In summary, the project places a special emphasis on the impact of developer-funded archaeology, utilising the mass of unpublished 'grey literature' which have been produced since the implementation of PPG16 in 1990. My research in particular focusses on the role of the agricultural economy, land-use and wild resource exploitation in the Romano-British countryside.