Romans on the move
Researchers at the University of York will partner with colleagues at Cardiff University on a three-year project investigating population movements around Roman Britain.
The UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has awarded £1.49m for the project, which will be the largest combined archaeological, isotopic and ancient DNA (aDNA) study into a Roman population ever undertaken.
Dr Sophy Charlton is working on the project at the Department of Archaeology's BioArCh facility at York, alongside Dr David Roberts and Professor Richard Madgwick, both at Cardiff University.
Build
Dr Charlton explained the project will build on recent excavations of Roman Cemeteries throughout England and Wales, which have been carried out by commercial archaeological units as part of planning and development processes.
She said: “The high quality data generated by specialist archaeologists working on cemeteries excavated in advance of development allows us to work more efficiently, reusing our colleagues’ data and adding additional value to their projects
“We’re grateful to our partners for allowing us to work with them on this exciting project.”
Mobility
Previous research into mobility during the Roman occupation of Britain has tended to focus on military movements, or the movements of people involved with the empire.
But, says Professor Madgwick, this project will undertake far larger scale analysis, focused on a wider range of people and sites, investigating not just provincial level mobility, but also movement of people within Britannia.
“This work will build on several recent major Roman projects at Cardiff, working with our colleagues at York to investigate mobility across Britannia,” he said.
“The scale of this research will be game-changing in understanding how people moved around, and into, Roman Britain. Our integrated archaeological and scientific methodology will provide a model to investigate other Roman provinces in future.”
Foundational
Dr Roberts said: “The Roman period is foundational to our national narratives, and we aim to re-examine assumptions about the level of migration and mobility in Britain at that time.
“We’ll be focusing particularly on people from rural and civilian sites, using multiple strands of scientific and archaeological evidence to weave together subtler narratives of how people moved as individuals, as groups, and over multiple generations than has ever been possible before for Roman Britain.”