Spheres of Transition: Iron Age/Roman transitions

Aim

Work in this period must take as its foundation the increasingly understood Iron Age landscape which Romano-British society inherited, and on which imperial authority endeavoured to impose itself. How substantial were the changes? At which levels were they most intensive - in landholding across the Wolds, within settlement organisation or at more focussed levels of analysis? And in which spheres were the impacts felt most forcefully - economic developments, gender relations, religious activities?

Objectives

  1. Site visibility and landscape context: investigation of crop mark evidence should elucidate changes to field boundaries during the first half of the 1st Millennium AD and allow dating of landholding systems. Any transformations within this period could be examined in relation to developing transport infrastructure, and before it in relation to both ladder settlements and even earlier Bronze Age features.
  2. Settlement differentiation and evolution: detailed mapping is required on those ladder settlements which continued in use after the first century AD, together with corresponding work on 'villa' sites for comparison, and on possible mineral extraction sites and proposed ritual foci, for example that near the source of the Gypsey Race. This work would be followed up, at the micro-level, with intensive sampling programmes to differentiate enclosure functions, room use etc.
  3. Social and economic development: systematic collection of both ecofactual and artefactual assemblages is needed for the whole period, with that from general field walking being set beside the patterns derived from (1), and that from detailed field walking and selected excavations compared to the results of (2). Evidence derived from botanical and insect work could be of particular significance here, for example in charting the way in which different types of land-use impacted on any natural vegetation.

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