Roman towns
Just to be clear, I use the term ‘town’ and ‘city’ imprecisely ie not in the way that they are defined in modern Britain.
However, like the fine difference between town and city in modern Britain, Roman towns were also founded with their own official charter, which stated the type of town they were deemed to be. Full charter of the town of Urso in Spain from this link.
Roman towns went through a process of re-discovery, even the ones in southern Europe that continued to be lived in from classical times until today. In the many centuries that passed after the western empire fell apart, the knowledge that came with the Romans also waned, and it require the changes that came to learning with the Renaissance to enable people to ‘see’ the Roman structures that had become built on, in and over, in Rome, Milan, Pavia and elsewhere.
For places where the Romans evaporated and urban life disappeared, the realisation that we too had Roman towns didn’t really take hold until the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The antiquarian William Stukely led the way, mapping and drawing places like Lincoln before the industrialisation swept away older remains.
The 18th century dilettanti gentlemen of England funded a boom time for the people of the Bay of Naples, who cheerfully responded to the ready cash paid for the statuary and jewellery they recovered below their fields. So gradually Pompeii and Herculaneum became uncovered, and gave the learned world a very specific idea of life in a Roman town.
Excavations in England like that at Silchester revealed a different type of Roman town. Instead of stone-lined streets and multi-storey buildings, Calleva Atrebatum revealed itself as an upmarket country town with single-storey wattle and daub buildings centred on one fine stone basilica, a show-house for Romanised values. Most of the town had rapidly decayed into loamy soil, requiring a different type of forensic archaeology to detect its original layout.
Without Roman intervention, Celtic and Germanic societies may have developed large towns and associated roads within a few generations. In fact some pre-Roman sites show so many buildings that urban geographers agree to call them ‘proto-towns’. So, towns then.
These pre-Roman proto-towns certainly existed on the continent and near Colchester, at Camulodunum. Suggestions of an earlier town have been found at Calleva Atrebatum. So it looks like some Roman towns were sited consciously where earlier ones already existed.
However, like the fine difference between town and city in modern Britain, Roman towns were also founded with their own official charter, which stated the type of town they were deemed to be. Full charter of the town of Urso in Spain from this link.
Roman towns went through a process of re-discovery, even the ones in southern Europe that continued to be lived in from classical times until today. In the many centuries that passed after the western empire fell apart, the knowledge that came with the Romans also waned, and it require the changes that came to learning with the Renaissance to enable people to ‘see’ the Roman structures that had become built on, in and over, in Rome, Milan, Pavia and elsewhere.
For places where the Romans evaporated and urban life disappeared, the realisation that we too had Roman towns didn’t really take hold until the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The antiquarian William Stukely led the way, mapping and drawing places like Lincoln before the industrialisation swept away older remains.
The 18th century dilettanti gentlemen of England funded a boom time for the people of the Bay of Naples, who cheerfully responded to the ready cash paid for the statuary and jewellery they recovered below their fields. So gradually Pompeii and Herculaneum became uncovered, and gave the learned world a very specific idea of life in a Roman town.
Excavations in England like that at Silchester revealed a different type of Roman town. Instead of stone-lined streets and multi-storey buildings, Calleva Atrebatum revealed itself as an upmarket country town with single-storey wattle and daub buildings centred on one fine stone basilica, a show-house for Romanised values. Most of the town had rapidly decayed into loamy soil, requiring a different type of forensic archaeology to detect its original layout.
Without Roman intervention, Celtic and Germanic societies may have developed large towns and associated roads within a few generations. In fact some pre-Roman sites show so many buildings that urban geographers agree to call them ‘proto-towns’. So, towns then.
These pre-Roman proto-towns certainly existed on the continent and near Colchester, at Camulodunum. Suggestions of an earlier town have been found at Calleva Atrebatum. So it looks like some Roman towns were sited consciously where earlier ones already existed.