Authors: Miranda Aldhouse-Green (Editor), P. Webster (Editor), Peter Webster
ISBN-13: 9780708317525, ISBN-10: 0708317529
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Date Published: April 2003
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Miranda Aldhouse Green is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Wales College, Newport. She is the author of numerous books and articles on Celtic art, material culture and myth, including Celtic Wales (2000). Peter Webster is a senior lecturer in the Cardiff University Centre for Lifelong Learning and the author of Roman Samian Ware in Britain (1996).
Archaeologists excavate structures and objects, but they can and should aim to reconstruct the societies of the past and seek to understand them. Artefacts and Archaeology brings together essays written by leading scholars in the fields of Iron Age and Roman archaeology and material finds in Britain in order examine the ways in which the study of sites, artefacts and ancient societies are interdependent.
Artefacts and Archaeology deals with the wide range of objects produced by the Iron Age and Roman cultures, from ironwork, defences and the Roman army, and Roman finds. It emphasizes the role of the archaeologist as interpreter of people, not things, and shows how object studies can move beyond pure description and instead attempt communicate with the past. Individual essays discuss Iron Age and Romano-British religion, the Roman army in Wales, Roman bronze, pottery and glass objects, the Roman economy and museum objects, and the collection as a whole offers a fascinating overview of the material culture of Iron Age and Roman western Europe.
“ . . . a most delightful and well-edited tribute.” –Archaeologia Cambrensis
List of Figures | ||
List of Contributors | ||
Introduction: Archaeology is about People | 1 | |
1 | Any Old Iron! Symbolism and Ironworking in Iron Age Europe | 8 |
2 | Old Castle Down Revisited: Some Recent Finds from the Vale of Glamorgan | 20 |
3 | Evidence of an Armamentarium at Caerleon? The Prysg Field Rampart Buildings | 33 |
4 | Land Use and Military Supply in the Highland Zone of Roman Britain | 44 |
5 | The Late Roman Fort at Cardiff | 62 |
6 | Manning the Defences: The Development of Romano-British Urban Boundaries | 76 |
7 | Vitreous Technology: Evidence for Faience Production at Kom Helul, Memphis (Egypt) | 90 |
8 | Roman Window Glass | 102 |
9 | Two Vessels from Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, and Piercebridge, County Durham: A Note on Flavian and Later Polychrome Mosaic Glass in Britain | 112 |
10 | Bottles for Bacchus? | 132 |
11 | 'Venus' and the Ox: A Roman Visual Pun | 152 |
12 | In Aere Suo Censeri: Fragments of a Large-scale Statuette from South-east Wales | 161 |
13 | Zoomorphic Seal Boxes: Usk and the Twentieth Legion | 174 |
14 | A Rhineland Potter at the Legionary Fortress of York | 190 |
15 | Pots and Plots in Roman Britain | 235 |
16 | Centralization or Dispersal? Archaeological Collections in Museums | 257 |
Index | 268 |