Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Sally Crawford

Reviewed work(s):
Inhumation Rites in Late Roman Britain: The Treatment of the Engendered Body by S. L.
Keegan
Source: Britannia, Vol. 35 (2004), pp. 358-359
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4128644
Accessed: 06/12/2008 11:09
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358 REVIEWS
Roman Lincoln.
Conquest, Colony
and
Capital. By
M.J. Jones.
Tempus, Stroud,
2002.
Pp. 160,
illus. Price:
?16.99. ISBN 0 7524 1455 0.
Over the last few
years Tempus
has
published
a series of volumes on some of the more
important
Roman towns
and fortresses in Britain. In this book Mick
Jones,
who has worked in Lincoln for over
thirty years, presents
a
readable account in the now familiar format aimed
primarily
at the interested
non-specialist
and student. The
majority
of the book is devoted to a
chronological
account of the fortress and colonia which is
firmly
rooted
in the
archaeological
evidence that J. knows so
well,
some of which is not as
yet fully published.
For those
not familiar with the modern
city,
it can be difficult at times to work out where sites and
places
mentioned in
the text are in relation to one another
(fig.
86 does not
really serve).
More
plans (for
instance of the forum and
one
showing
the course of the
Fossdyke
canal - even if it is not
Roman)
would assist
understanding.
On the
positive
side the book benefits from David Vale's reconstruction
drawings
which
help
the reader to
appreciate
the
city's striking
location and monuments. The differential
quality
of the
archaeological
evidence is
apparent
throughout
the account: Lincoln is best known for its
defences,
but
by
virtue of its later
history
few
complete
or reconstructable
building plans
are known. The
potential
of the
waterlogged deposits
in the
valley
bottom
to inform
knowledge
of
diet, environment,
and
economy
has
recently
been realised.
The best
part
of the book is the last
chapter
where J.
gives
his views on what kind of
place
Lincoln was.
He discards Richmond's 1946 assessment that 'Roman Lincoln itself offers a
glimpse
of
flourishing
Roman
urban culture in
imported purity
such as has not
yet emerged anywhere
else on British
provincial
soil' with
a more balanced view of Roman
provincial
and Romano-British influence. He discerns an
explicit zoning
of activities within the
city
-
power
and
prestige
in the
upper town; wealthy
residences in the
lower;
and
trade and commerce in the
valley
bottom - and a
flourishing
late Roman
economy
until
c.
A.D. 370-80
(few
sites were abandoned or in evident
decay
before
then).
The book concludes with a section on visible remains
and further
reading.
The latter
curiously
refers readers to the
forthcoming (in 2002)
Lincoln
Archaeological
Research Assessment for detailed references when it would have been better to have had a concordance of
where to find the
reports
on the
many
excavations described in the text.
Lincoln has been fortunate to have someone of J.'s
ability
in
charge
of its
archaeology,
and while one
senses a little
regret
that
(as
he terms
it)
the 'heroic
age'
of
discovery
has now
passed,
this book is testament
to the fact that the
energy
which he associates with that era has not.
Cotswold
Archaeology,
Cirencester NEIL HOLBROOK
Inhumation Rites in Late Roman Britain.*
the Treatment
of
the
Engendered Body. By
S.L.
Keegan.
British
Archaeological Report
British Series 333.
Archaeopress, Oxford,
2002.
Pp.
vi +
137,
illus. Price: ?44.00.
ISBN 1 8417 1305 8.
This
study,
which is an almost direct translation of a D.Phil. thesis to the
published page,
offers an
analysis
of the burial ritual at four
urban,
late Romano-British
cemetery
sites in southern Britain. The data from these
sites -
Lankhills, Winchester; Poundbury, Dorchester;
Bath
Gate, Cirencester;
and Butt
Road,
Colchester-
are used to
identify
the
ways
in which
'gender'
is
(or,
as it turns
out,
is
not) presented
in the burial ritual.
Chs 1-5 offer a vehement and
challenging
assessment of
archaeological
attitudes to
gender negotiation
in
the
mortuary
ritual. The writer makes clear her
passionate
and
personal questioning
of
processual approaches,
taking particular
issue with those who have
argued
that
mortuary
rituals are carried out in a
'fixed, prescribed
and thus
predictable manner',
and
criticising
those who have failed to
identify people
as 'active'
components
of the
system.
Her determination to
argue
for the role of the individual within the
funerary process
is
bravely
tested on a set of cemeteries which show
every sign
of
having
been laid out and controlled
by
a bureaucratic
system.
In ch. 5
archaeological
method comes under the
microscope.
What a terrible
trap archaeologists
fall into
by
not
taking fully
into account the inaccuracies inherent in
sexing skeletons,
and
failing
to
separate biological
gender
from the social construct of
gender.
As
Keegan points out, quite rightly,
it is
archaeological practice
to
'expect
the
body
to fit in to
[sic]
either of the two sex
categories'. However,
chs 6-8 offer a
surprisingly
traditional
analysis
of a
mortuary
dataset. Just like
many
before her who have carried out a
computer-based
study
of
mortuary ritual,
K. has found that it is all
very
well
having
new theories about how the evidence
should be
read,
and
having grave misgivings
about the
accuracy
of
archaeological
methods used to
identify
REVIEWS 359
sex
through
skeletal
remains, but,
in order to construct
your dataset, you
have to
rely
on these methods
anyway.
At one
point,
K. even includes the
'probable'
males and females
(i.e.
those sexed on the basis of
grave goods,
a
practice
she earlier
criticised),
because it
'markedly
increased the volume of data'. Welcome
to the cruel world of
mortuary analysis.
The
only
statistical method used to
analyse
this dataset was the chi-
squared test,
which was
employed
on
every variable,
even when
sample
sizes were
very
small indeed.
K.'s
conclusion,
based on the
archaeological evidence,
is that
gender
was not
particularly
visible within
the burial ritual at these selected late Romano-British sites. Evidence for a
weakening
of
family
ties and the
greater emphasis
on masculine and feminine identities at Lankhills alone
might
be
associated,
she
suggests,
with the Christianisation of the
population.
University of Birmingham
SALLY CRAWFORD
La mort des notables en Gaule romaine. Edited
by
C. Landes. Editions
Imago-Musce
de
Lattes, Lattes,
2002.
Pp. 256, pls 12,
illus. Price: ?28.00.
ISBN
2 9516679 0 6.
Pratiques funeraires du Haut-Empire
dans le Midi de la Gaule. La
necropole gallo-romaine du
Valladas a
St-Paul-Trois-Chdteaux
(Dr6me). By
V. Bel. CNRS UMR
154, Lattes,
2002.
Pp. 539,
illus. Price: C45.00.
ISBN 2 912369 01 0.
Since the
emphasis
of La mort ... in fact lies on the
funerary
architecture of southern France in
particular,
the volumes under review
give complementary
views of
mortuary
culture in southern Gaul in the first two
centuries
A.D.,
one of
above-ground monuments,
the other of the dead below and the traces of burial rituals
excavated with them.
La mort ...
accompanied
an exhibition on Gallo-Roman
mortuary
rituals at the Musee de Lattes held in
2002. The
catalogue
documents c. 50 items of
funerary sculpture,
each set in its monumental context. As well
as better-known
pieces (e.g.
from the Trion
necropolis, Lyons), important
new material is also
represented,
most
spectacularly
from the 1999 excavation at Fourches-Vieilles
(Orange)
of a street of tombs to rival those
of
Italy
or the Rhineland. The other
major component
of the volume is an
inventory
of Roman mausolea from
France,
individual entries
being
of uneven
length
and detail
depending
on the
bibliographic
sources from
which
they
are drawn.
Images comprise plans
and elevations of
standing
remains
(including
valuable new
illustrations of
'piles
fundraires' from
Aquitaine)
and
antiquarian drawings
of monuments no
longer
extant.
It is unclear
why
some
surviving monuments,
for
example
the
Pyramide
de Couhard from
Autun,
are
only
illustrated
by
the latter. In
addition,
four
stimulating essays
discuss
funerary
rituals
(Tranoy),
the location of
monuments
(Lafon), epigraphic
evidence for the
organisation
of
cemetery space
and
elite
commemoration
through inscriptions
in the South
(Christol
and
Janon). Tighter
editorial control should however have been
exercised.
Tranoy's
contribution is
unreferenced,
for
example,
and Lafon concentrates on
Italy
rather than
France. The
repetition
of the excavation
plan
from
Fourches-Vieilles (155, 243)
illustrates the
imperfect
integration
of the volume's different elements. Save for Christol and
Janon,
the
identity
or status of the
'notables' is left
implicit, yet
the monument of the sevir
Turpio
from
Lyons
demonstrates that the
capacity
or motivation to erect
exceptional
mausolea was not confined to civic
elites.
Nor is the variation in the
'monumental habit' across Gaul addressed.
Thus, although valuable,
La mort ... does not
replace
Hatt's
survey (La
tombe
gallo-romaine (1986))
as an introduction to
funerary
monuments from Gaul.
Foundations of
funerary
monuments were documented
during
the excavation of the roadside
cemetery
at
Valladas,
St Paul-Trois-Chateaux
(Augusta Tricastinorum)
but the focus of Bel's
report
lies on the evidence
for
funerary
rituals documented from 245 burials
(predominantly cremation).
This excellent
report
is of
more than local
significance, being
the
only
substantial
early imperial
urban
cemetery published
from
Narbonensis.
Augusta
Tricastinorum was founded
during
the
Augustan
centuriation of the middle
Rh6ne
valley, represented
in the Flavian
period
in the
Orange
cadaster
(B),
to re-settle an
indigenous group
whose
lands had been confiscated. The earliest burials at
Valladas, immediately
south-east of the town
wall,
date to
a
generation
later than the foundation. The
diminishing
use of the
cemetery by
the late second or
early
third
century
A.D. mirrors the fortunes of the town.
A
comprehensive inventory
is
provided
for each
burial, integrated
with illustrations of the
grave
and
of artefact
assemblages (the only major
omission
being
full documentation of the cremated human
bone,
unavailable at the time of
publication).
However the
report's primary
aim is
analytical.
It seeks to establish