Map 8 Britannia Superior Compiled by A.S
Map 8 Britannia Superior Compiled by A.S. Esmonde-Cleary, 1996 with the assistance of R. Warner (Ireland) Introduction Britain has a long tradition of antiquarian and archaeological investigation and recording of its Roman past, reaching back to figures such as Leland in the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the classically-educated aristocracy and gentry of a major imperial and military power naturally felt an affinity with the evidence for Rome’s presence in Britain. In the twentieth century, the development of archaeology as a discipline in its own right reinforced this interest in the Roman period, resulting in intense survey and excavation on Roman sites and commensurate work on artifacts and other remains. The cartographer is therefore spoiled for choice, and must determine the objectives of a map with care so as to know what to include and what to omit, and on what grounds. British archaeology already has a long tradition of systematization, sometimes based on regions as in the work of the Royal Commissions on (Ancient and) Historic Monuments for England (Scotland and Wales), but also on types of site or monument. Consequently, there are available compendia by Rivet (1979) on the ancient evidence for geography and toponymy; Wacher (1995) on the major towns; Burnham (1990) on the “small towns”; Margary (1973) on the roads that linked them; and Scott (1993) on villas. These works give a series of internally consistent catalogs of the major types of site. Maps of Roman Britain conventionally show the island with its modern coastline, but it is clear that there have been extensive changes since antiquity, and that the conventional approach risks understating the differences between the ancient and the modern.
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