Interpreting Roman London

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Interpreting Roman London Papers in memory of Hugh Chapman Edited by JOANNA BIRD, MARK HASSALL AND HARVEY SHELDON Oxbow Monograph 58 Contents Editors' foreword vii List of contributors viii Hugh Chapman, Michael Robbins x Bibliography of Hugh Chapman's publications, Bernard Nurse xi 1 The temple of Diana, John Clark 1 / 2 The beginnings of archaeology in the City of London, Peter Marsden 11 3 London as a provincial capital, Mark Hassall 19 4 The status of Londinium, John Wilkes 27 5 Characterizing Roman London, Martin Millett 33 6 How to interpret Roman London?, Richard Reece 39 7 Monumental architecture in Roman London, T F C Blagg 43 8 A palace disproved: reassessing the provincial governor's presence in lst-century London, Gustav Milne 49 9 The cemeteries of Roman London: a review, Jenny Hall 57 10 A miniature chalk head from the Thames at Battersea and the 'cult of the head' in Roman London, Jonathan Cotton 85 11 Sculptors from the west in Roman London, Martin Henig 97 12 The London hunter-god and his significance in the history of Londinium, Ralph Merrifield 105 13 Isis, not Cybele: a bone hairpin from London, Catherine Johns 115 14 Frogs from the Walbrook: a cult pot and its attribution, Joanna Bird 119 15 Petrecus connected: thirty years on, G B Dannell 129 16 The hare with three front legs: London to Toronto, Alison HEasson 135 17 Late Iron Age and early Roman pottery traditions of the London region, Paul A Tyers 139 18 Procuratorial mortarium stamps, Katharine F Hartley 147 19 Problems of Roman coin interpretation in Greater London, MichaelJ Hammerson 153 20 Early decorated Roman spoons from London, Christine E E Jones & David Sherlock 165 21 A new collyrium-stamp from Staines and some thoughts on eye medicine in Roman London and Britannia, Ralph Jackson 111 22 Roman material from London in the Pitt Rivers collection at Salisbury Museum, N Griffiths 189 23 Dem dry bones, Clive Orion 199 24 A five-acre wood in Roman Kent, RS O Tomlin 209 25 The London region in the Roman period, D G Bird 2X1 i 26 In searchof Sulloniacis, Harvey Sheldon 233 27 Stony Jack's Roman London, Jean Macdonald 243 28 The display of Roman London, Max Hebditch 7Sb Index, Lysbeth Merrifield 263.

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1 the Material Culture of Post-Medieval Domestic Magic In
Accepted Manuscript. Book chapter (https://doi.org/10.30965/9783846757253_017) published in The Materiality of Magic (https://doi.org/10.30965/9783846757253), Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 10 May 2019. The Material Culture of Post-Medieval Domestic Magic in Europe: Evidence, Comparisons, and Interpretations Owen Davies1 In his retirement the Deputy Director of the Museum of London and specialist on Roman London, Ralph Merrifield (1913-1995), wrote a book entitled The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (1987) that drew upon his note-making during some forty years in the museums services of south-eastern England. With his interest in folklore and religion, Merrifield was curious about odd finds found in odd locations, from sites dating from the Roman period through to the twentieth century, which were ignored by academic archaeologists and were a puzzle to the museums that received them. Shoes buried in walls, animal bones under hearthstones, bent coins and tokens found on the Thames foreshore, chickens found in wall cavities. Was it all rubbish? Did these stray finds have any meaning? Merrifield had eclectic interests and by his retirement he had accumulated a large file of miscellaneous information. “Getting this into order not only revealed new complexities and some unexpected relationships, together with a number of curious survivals,” he explained, “but also made it necessary to reconsider the theoretical basis of interpretation.”2 The unexpected relationships were revealed by Merrifield’s comparison of artefacts and deposition behaviour across two millennia, an approach that was highly original for the time – and remains so today. He was also in the early vanguard of archaeologists interested in the “archaeology of the mind” or cognitive archaeology, and in particular the study of pervasive ritual in prehistory and early history, interests he noted that potentially marked one out as within the “loony fringe” of archaeology at the time.
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Roman London
III Roman London Ralph Merrifield The Origin of Londinium were unfamiliar with the ford they were obliged to swim, but some others got over by a bridge a little way upstream.4 It BRIDGE-BCILDI:--:G \vas a particular accomplishment of seems likely that this was a temporary military bridge hastily Roman military engineers, and the main roads that were soon thrown across the river by an army that had come prepared to to be centred on the first London Bridge were almost deal with this obstacle. Ifso, it is likely to have been a floating certainly laid out by the sun'eyors of the Roman army bridge, and it was not necessarily on the same site as the later primarily for a military purpose the subjugation and control permanent bridge, which was presumably a piled structure. of the new province. It was the army therefore that provided Recent work in Southwark suggests that the south bank the conditions from \\'hich London was born. Can \ve go opposite the Roman city was by no means an obvious place to further, and suggest that Londinium itself was a creation of select as a bridgehead. It is true that sandy gravels here rose a the Roman arm\) A.. centre of land communications that fnv feet above the less stable silts on either side, but they were could also be reached b\' large sea-going ships, taking intersected by creeks and river-channels, forming a series of advantage of the tides that probabh' then just reached the islets \vhich themselves had to be linked by small bridges.
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United States National Museum
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