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To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
In this lecture we will present the preliminary results of the AHRC-funded Manifestations of Empire project. The extent of social and political change occurring at the end of Roman imperial control in Britain during the early-fifth century AD has been widely debated by scholars, with opposing theories arguing either for abrupt change or degrees of continuity into later centuries. Palaeoenvironmental evidence has contributed to this debate, but has largely relied on upland peat bogs that are a considerable distance from core settlement zones, and sequences that have poor chronological resolution. To address this imbalance, the Manifestations of Empire project examines spatial variation in land use through pollen analysis within a Romanised lowland study area in south-east Wales. The results of this research focus on Romano-British and early medieval pollen sequences, with specific emphasis on examining patterns of arable and pastoral land use in association with indicators of woodland expansion and and decline. Evidence for an increased intensity in farming is seen within the Roman period, but this is followed by relatively stable levels of woodland and farming indicators from the fourth to the sixth century AD. This divergence from the traditional view – of a widespread contraction of farming in the post-Roman period – raises questions over the uniformity of cultural changes following the end of Roman Britain
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