- Chapter Eight -
Nene Valley....... _...,.;.1,O __ .;;;20:.-_ .. ;3.0km& Irchester
W Water NewtonFigure 8,5 Rural settlement in the Nene valley. Comparative distribution maps of the known
sites in 193 I and 1972, the dramatic increase being the result of intensive aerial reconnaissance
and field survey. (After Taylor 1975.)
on non-villa sites is matched by growing evidence for settlement continuity from
the Iron Age into the Romano-British period. High levels of continuity have of
course long been known for the north and west of the province, where villas are
absent (e.g. Cefn Graeanog and Thorpe Thewles), and likewise even for some
areas of the south and east (e.g. Rotherley and Woodcutts on Cranborne Chase);
increasingly also in areas with villas, other forms of rural settlement have become
better known through excavation, many of them demonstrating either clear evidence
of continuity from an iron-age predecessor, or failing that, a layout and design clearly
perpetuating iron-age rather than Roman traditions (e.g. Odell and Wakerley). A
similar process of continuity can be argued for villas and many larger nucleated
and urban sites which emerged out of the existing native infrastructure.
A third factor has been the increasing study of the Roman Empire within a wider
chronological framework, with the realization that it is difficult to distinguish
between changes resulting directly from conquest and assimilation and those which
were merely intensifications of processes already under way. As will become clear
later, this has had a marked impact in Roman Britain in the key spheres of agriculture
and economy, but in the wider context, it is reflected in the increasing importance
now attached to the existence of an already 'romanized' native infrastructure as a
foundation upon which successful post-conquest interaction and assimilation could
be constructed and upon which it ultimately depended. The clearest statement of
this principle is to be found in Groenman-van Waateringe (1980), but it was first
elaborated for central and east Gaul by Nash (1978a, 1978b), who argued for a process
of significant socio-political change amongst the native communities in direct
response to the proximity of Roman Provence and the dramatic increase in the wine128