Hertfordshire After Rome: Business As Usual?
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EAST HERTS. ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY Founded 1898 Registered Charity No. 257254 President: C. L. Lee Hon. Sec: Mrs. G. R. Pollard: 11 St. Leonard’s Close, Bengeo, Hertford, Herts. SG14 3LL Tel: 01992-423433 NEWSLETTER 31 SEPTEMBER 2010 Hertfordshire after Rome: Business as Usual? Did life in Hertfordshire change much after 410AD? Evidence from excavations in Verulamium and other towns around the county is helping to shed light on this transitional period. Image: Przemyslaw Sakrajda The first years of the fifth century AD were “AD 410 has an iconic status in the uncertain times in Britain. In 402AD, one of history of Britain as the year in which the island’s two Roman legions was Roman rule came to an end. However, transferred to the continent to help fight historians now doubt the validity of the invaders. Five years later, the last legion date and dispute the means by which left for Gaul under its leader Constantine Britain ceased to be part of the Empire. III. By 410AD, Britain was finally on its own. Archaeologists, who are used to dealing To mark the 1600th anniversary of the end with rather vaguer dates than this, are of Roman authority, in March the Roman not so worried by whether we should be Society held its ‘410AD conference’ in thinking of AD 410, 411, 400 or 425: London at which Keith Fitzpatrick- they agree that the first quarter of the Matthews, Archaeology Officer at North fifth century saw irreversible changes to Hertfordshire District Council, delivered an the old Roman Diocese. assessment of the fate of small towns in The debate about whether there was this post-Roman period. Here he considers continuity between Roman Britain and what the end of the Empire might have Anglo-Saxon England or a complete meant for Hertfordshire’s communities: break has raged for years. As with most of these debates, the two polar building erected on it) and some saw opposites are both likely to be wrong: in partial blocking, as if to regulate access. some places and with some aspects of Several cemeteries continued to receive life, there was continuity. In other places burials, one being used as late as the and other aspects of life, there was middle of the sixth century. New build- thorough disruption. So where does ings were constructed after AD 400, at Hertfordshire fit into this? least one of which had stone founda- The evidence from Verulamium is well known: Sheppard Frere's discovery of a fifth-century building followed by a water pipe seems to point to continuing occupation in the town after 450. Although recently challenged in the pages of Current Archaeology (CA237), Frere has given a very robust defence of his interpretation and the Sir Mortimer Wheeler working to uncover the shell mosaic consensus remains that the at Verulamium in the 1930s Image: Verulamium Museum sequence is real. In their 2005 overview Alban’s Buried Towns tions, unusual at any date in Baldock. In (Oxbow Books, 2005) Ros Niblett and these aspects, it was as if nothing had Isobel Thompson list ten of the city’s changed after AD 400. sites for which we can be certain of fifth- In other ways, though, there had been century activity. massive changes. For one thing, the Increasingly, we can see that this economy collapsed. It had always been sequence is not isolated. In this respect, based on a state supply system, with Gil Burleigh's excavations at Baldock in money circulating as a means to pay the 1980s provide us with a star exhibit. government employees (the military and In one location, there was a deeply the civil service) and to raise revenues stratified sequence spanning the first from taxes. In turn, this promoted a con- century BC to the sixth century AD, sumer-led manufacturing industry that which documented the growth of the flourished while the money supply Iron Age oppidum, the development of remained in place. The production of the Roman town and its eventual decline bronze and silver coins in western mints and abandonment. What was most stopped in 402 and gold coins in 406; by surprising about the sequence was that the time production resumed, Britain there was little difference between what was no longer part of the Empire. The was happening in the fourth century and effect was devastating. Within a couple what was happening in the fifth. of decades, the industries that had Contrary to all expectations, it was found become increasingly centralised during that roads continued to be repaired the third and fourth centuries collapsed. throughout the fifth century, with new Pottery supply came to a halt and the metalling and recut drainage ditches. goods that archaeologists depend on to Their lines were modified, some went provide dates for their sites vanish. At out of use (one of them had a small Baldock, though, the very late levels contain new forms of hand-made pottery and associated late fifth-century Pagan that look a little like Iron Age types but Saxon pottery. This lay on the edge of a are not found in Iron Age contexts; we farmstead established in the Late Iron are seeing a return to craft production Age and suggests its take over by rather than industrial production. Germanic settlers. At Queen Street in What this means, though, is that we can Hitchin, a cemetery partly excavated in recognise fifth- and sixth-century pottery 2001 was found to have burials that date from the late and sub- Roman period and that are evidently Christian. At this date, they can only be of Britons, suggesting the survival of a community in Hitchin well after the end of Roman rule. Indeed, Hitchin has a Celtic name, seen in the tribal name Hicce, and a minster church, which has been suggested as the site of Clofesho, the mystery loca- tion of a series of important synods between the 7th and 9th centuries. Hitchin lies in a well-known gap in the distribution of Tessa Wheeler sweeping the hypocaust mosaic during pagan Anglo-Saxon burials; excavations at Verulamium in 1932 Image: Verulamium Museum to the north, the Gifle, types. There is one type with plant whose name is also Brittonic and is tempering, which has been found on a preserved in the River Ivel, and to the number of sites across Britain, not just south-west, the Cilternsæte, also with a in the Baldock area, and another type partly Brittonic name, are neighbouring with sand tempering, that appears to be peoples whose territories also lack such a more local phenomenon. Both types burials. It has long been hypothesised have been found on sites in the hinter- that Verulamium was the capital of a land of Baldock, most importantly at sub-Roman state. So far, none of the Danes Field, in Pirton, where the other 'small towns' in the vicinity - sequence extends to the end of the sixth Sandy, Braughing and Welwyn - has century. At this site, there is a globular produced evidence for definitely jar with Anglo-Saxon style decoration of sub-Roman activity, though it has been around AD 600, albeit slightly bungled, argued for Sandy and Braughing. in a hard sandy fabric quite unlike any Sandy, however, also has fifth-century Anglo-Saxon pottery of this period. Pagan Saxon burials, There are two other sites in the hinter- suggesting that it was taken over at an land of the town where we can see fifth- early date by Germanic settlers. century activity. At Blackhorse Farm, just Braughing became an important royal a kilometre north of the town, there is a estate on the western edge of the king- grubenhaus or sunken-featured building dom of the East Saxons; like Hitchin, the exchange their surplus for manufac- tured goods and luxuries. So the survival of Baldock and Verulamium, at least, requires continuity in the countryside, yet the rural archaeology of Hertfordshire at this time is largely invisible. Here is the nub of the issue: there must be people but we cannot (yet) see them. In those areas where Pagan Saxon remains are found, we can safely assume that there were Anglo-Saxon peasant farmers, but in areas where such remains are scarce or even absent, we must explain what happened to the Romano-British population after 400 as it obviously did not just vanish into thin air. Presumably, the Britons were there, calling themselves Hicce, referring to Were mosaics like this 2nd century example from the River Beane as Beneficcan (the Verulamium patched up and re-used well into the 'little Beane' in Old Welsh) and slowly fifth century and beyond? Image: Verulamium Museum assimilating Anglo-Saxon culture as the name of the settlement derives from the immigrants from northern Europe gained name of the people, the Breahhingas, political control. Ultimately, they became whose name in this instance is Old English without even realising what was English. An enclosure containing the happening. minster church developed some Seen in retrospect, AD 410 (or distance to the north of the old Iron Age whenever we choose to date the end of and Roman centre and the challenge is Roman rule in Britain) appears as a to find evidence linking the two watershed, a moment of transformation settlements. However, the coincidence when the benefits of being part of a of location of a locally important Roman wide-ranging Empire ceased and the settlement and a locally important early barbarian hordes prepared to descend. medieval church may be an indication To someone born in, say 390, the that some sort of ecclesiastical or other events of their life will not have elite organisation survived the collapse appeared so traumatic.