Fall of Roman London

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I'm currently in East London at Spittlefields Market and this might feel a bit of a random place for me to do this little introduction, but it's not because it was here that archaeologists discovered an extraordinary late Roman cemetery.

Burials dating let's say to the 4th century AD in the latter stages of Roman London's story.

And that is what we're exploring today.

We're exploring the fall of Roman London.

What has archaeology revealed about the end of Londinium?

Well, we're delving into all of that today in detail with Dr.

Dominic Perring, Emeritus Professor from University College London and one of the leading experts on the topic.

Let's go.

London was originally a Roman city.

For more than 300 years, it was the administrative and economic centre of Roman Britain, of Britannia.

At its height, Roman London had an estimated population of around 30,000.

And you can still see the remains of some of these Roman buildings beneath the city of London today.

But by the beginning of the fifth century, London had become little more than a ghost town.

So, what caused this city's decline?

How did London transform during the later decades and centuries of Roman Britain?

What is the archaeology revealing?

This is the story of the fall of Roman London with our guest, Dr.

Dominic Perry.

Dom, you've been on the podcast twice before, also about different parts of Roman London's story.

It's wonderful to have you back.

And it's lovely to be here.

Always my pleasure.

I guess we do this in the past, but it's always important, I feel, with Roman London, which is the first of all, it's to highlight the great wealth of archaeology that survives right beneath our feet in London for its Roman story.

People have been looking into the past of Roman London, digging holes into it for centuries, and we've been studying it for almost longer than it was lived in.

And the city nowadays, with all its big skyscrapers, generates hundreds of detailed excavations.

The volume of information is incredible, the wealth of data.

And what is it about the soil of London that allows so much extraordinary archaeology to survive?

Well, in part, it's simply having been occupied for 2,000 years, ground levels rise rather like a tell in the Middle East.

It's got 11 meters or so of stratigraphy, and stratigraphy is great for archaeology.

but also the River Thames creates these rather splendid, anaerobic, waterlogged conditions.

So when you get close to the waterfront, you've got excellent timber survival.

And that lets us look into all sorts of things that don't necessarily survive elsewhere.

Beautiful things like tablets as well with records of business transactions from thousands of people.

Yes, London's writing tablets from the Bloomberg HQ are a stunning resource, very much to the earlier period.

But the waterfronts themselves, just the timbers that get brought in.

And the great thing about London's archaeology is each of those timbers...

has a felling date and dendrochronology gives us precise dates for when bits of London were built, when it was changed, and also gives us gaps and the gaps are sometimes just as interesting as the bits we have.

So with the story of later Roman London, can we also at times also pinpoint certain events and certain building changes?

We can up until the fourth century when we start to see less coming in in terms of timber supply and that in itself is an interesting question.

Why is less timber coming in?

But up until the fourth century, there's pretty good dendrochronology for most major phases of urban change.

And a bit of background to London's story.

So it's founded very close to or in line with the actual Roman conquest of southern Britain with Emperor Claudius?

Yes, there's debate about that amongst professional circles.

I'm very much an AD 43 chap and I think that there is a military presence here contemporary with the conquest, but the evidence for that is not conclusive, it's indicative.

And others would see it perhaps as being a few years later.

But it's in those 40s AD, somewhere between 43 and 50 for sure.

And it experiences quite a rapid rise, if I'm not mistaken.

It does.

And it's very early on.

It's a major hub for introducing the supplies that the advancing troops need.

It gains administrative roles relatively early.

We know the procurator in charge of the emperor's property and supplying the troops.

Financial interests, we know the procurator is based here by the Neronian period.

And of course, when Boudicca and her rebels sweep through the southeast, it's one of the targets of that rebellion.

And at that time, London is already a pretty substantial site.

But also it revives pretty quickly after that.

There seems to be something really resilient about Rome and London, too.

Yes.

I mean, that resilience is from the top down, I think.

It's to do with the agents of Rome needing to quell the rebellion, needing to re-establish control of the province.

And London is the obvious focal point.

for them to both bring in the support mechanisms, to bring in the supplies.

So they enhance and rebuild the waterfront.

And there's a lot of construction activity, not not immediately after the revolt, but a year or two afterwards.

And it gets busy again pretty quickly.

It grows and grows and grows.

And we were discussing where to kind of begin our chat on the fall of Roman London before recording.

And we decided on the mid-third century AD.

So can you give us a sense of what Roman London looks like at this time and how prominent, how big and prosperous this city has become?

London has become a walled city in probably early third century.

Probably Caracalla, a member of the Severan dynasty who took control of the Roman Empire when his father died in York.

And so I think probably the town walls are early third century.

And there is a busy period of building in London at around that date.

So London is quite prosperous.

Things like the Temple of Mithras is coming in a few decades later on.

So we have a wealthy centre and probably by then a formal capital.

Caracalla or Severus before him have divided Britain up into two halves, there's two provinces.

One is made capital at York and the other, Britannia Superior, is almost certainly has its capital at London.

So we think this is a major period of investment in the architecture of public munificence and power.

Do we know much about the population itself at that time, in the beginning of the third century?

London has shrunk since its height.

The peak period for London's population is probably the late first, early second century,

which is when it is most involved in the supply, the making and mending that's needed by the people based here.

London may have gone through a plague event in the second century.

I think the odds of that having happened are pretty strong, the Antonine plague.

But what we do know is that whether it was the plague that caused it or not, the city has significantly contracted in population.

Not in size, people still occupy a larger area, but instead of lots of closely packed timber-built and clay-built structures, we've got rather larger townhouses, some built in stone, some still in timber.

So there's a prosperous but genteel site rather than a busy throbbing heart of the province.

But with the prosperity of London at that time, should that be centered around the harbour area, around the maritime routes?

Because if I'm thinking of the early third century with the Severance, you know, this is an empire stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia, to modern-day Iraq.

We have lots of evidence for early third century waterfront rebuilding in London.

and not quite as grand as the earliest waterfronts, but still busy.

And a lot of that waterfront rebuilding can be dated quite closely.

and it does look as if some of it may just have been actually associated with Clodius Albinus a usurper before the Severin dynasty but when the Severans regain control of Britain they start rebuilding the waterfront and then the Severans are campaigning in York no York in Caledonia through York and that also seems to be a period of waterfront renewal so yes London's waterfront is is busy and important into the middle of that century the middle third century can you also give us a bit more sense of the layout of Roman London at that time so should we just be thinking north of the river?

I mean, how big an area are we thinking?

The square mile, the city of London is still the main part of the Roman settlement.

This is where the forum is, where the public baths are, other major buildings.

But south of the river, there is an enormously important suburban settlement, which has urban characteristics.

In Southwark, it's just as complicated archaeology, based on the islands that are now beneath Borough High Street.

Borough Market, that sort of area.

And there's a bridge.

There's a main, the London Bridge of today, there was a London Bridge of Roman times.

And London Bridge is key.

It is London Bridge that makes London the site it is.

The combination of having a tidal river so the ships can come up river and a bridge that crosses this river, which was a major barrier, is what brings all the road network.

You know, Rome's famous for its Roman roads.

And whilst they all go to Rome, most of those going to Rome go through London, sorry, from Britain.

Most of those from Britain go through London on their way to Rome.

Watling Street and Stain Street, all of those ones kind of end up in that area.

And probably you just mentioned amphitheatre, we know where that was beneath Guildhall.

Guildhall Yard, and that's you can visit that in the Guildhall art gallery in the basement.

Lovely bit of presentation there.

Theatre?

I think there must have been one.

Just chat about that earlier on.

I think there must have been one.

We don't quite know where it is, although I've got a guess.

And big bathhouses on the riverfront?

Several bathhouses.

We've got a major bathhouse, I think.

People used to think it was the governor's palace, but I think some of the more recent work there continues to build up evidence that it's more likely to have been a bathhouse not proven but we've got other bathhouses there's some quite recent work going on that shows that there are four or five bathhouses in roman london and being a port town and i know we'll probably revisit this later as we explore this later in london story as well but i also want to ask it here do we know much about the population makeup at that time or should we be thinking largely romans or largely immigrants or largely local britons from all over i think that the native british component of the population was not substantial.

We've got ancient DNA, isotopic analysis.

We've got epigraphy through the tombstones.

We've got the letters you talked about from Bloomberg with documented names and identities.

And most of that suggests that we've just got a very cosmopolitan place, probably dominated by both the administrative infrastructure, partly military, but also administrative, and even more so by the support.

mechanisms that sit beneath it in particular the merchants the traders the importers the exporters the shippers and their guilds we know are present here in london as well so that brings in people from all over and just as with hadrian's wall where we know of people from all over the roman world london is is the same north africa eastern mediterranean lots from gaul quite a few from the germanies and as you get into later roman london we've even got adna which suggests the presence of ancients we've got some possible chinese people in in london in in the roman period wow that certainly whets the appetite for when we get to that point in in the chat today don But I feel we've now nicely kind of created an image of what Roman London looks like in the beginning of the third century.

When we get to the mid-third century, I mean, elsewhere it's called the third century crisis, but it also feels like this is a big turning point in London story as well.

What happens in the mid-third century?

Very much so.

I've talked about that.

There might be a second century contraction, perhaps associated with plague events.

There is also a third century contraction, less well-defined.

The reasons for it, partly tied up with economic changes of what's called the crisis.

Not everyone agrees with the term.

There's also another plague event that hits our own world at that time, the plague of Cyprian.

And we've then got changes going on in the urban landscape, of which the really significant one is the change to the waterfront.

And just as we've been talking about how important the waterfront was in the earlier city, there's an exercise in crudely hacking back the timber revetments that formed the quays and making what looks more like a bank, perhaps even a bank and ditch, but certainly destroying the keysides as useful keysides and perhaps defensive in nature.

Dating imprecise because we're talking about damage to something rather than something we can date from its own internal evidence.

But that does look to be broadly coterminous.

We're talking about 250s, that sort of period.

So their main, well, the main source of maritime ships coming to London, you know, the main area that they would go to and congregate and bring trade into Roman London, they get rid of that.

I mean, why?

They get rid of most of it.

Not necessarily all all of it, because we've not dug every little bit of that waterfront.

And I suspect that probably a few locations for beach landings were kept, but the bulk of it has gone.

That is in part because of how unusual the port was in the earlier periods.

You've got major campaign activities requiring very significant levels of shipment of goods.

You've got a large urban population.

As you get into that later period, there is less need for that, as it were.

But also

the carving back of the waterfront is a positive act.

Somebody's done it.

It's not simply letting it go to decay and being abandoned.

It's not neglect.

It is positively changing its use.

And the idea of a defensive feature there obviously begins to make us worry about the security on the seas at this time.

We've got the rise of piracy as an issue in the third century.

It's much debated amongst historians and archaeologists how much this is a lament of the written sources or something that's really happening.

But we know about the the Saxon shore being developed with its forts in late antiquity.

So there is a sense that something major is changing and it might have been involving some level of threat or anticipated threat.

But also you get that almost division of the Roman Empire at that time, don't you, where little bits are kind of taken away, Zenobia in the east, the Gallic Empire as well.

The Gallic Empire is very material.

And of course, the Gallic Empire...

both changes the political structures that apply to London because London falls within its remit, but also it's interrupting access to the Mediterranean world as a whole.

So the northwest provinces have been separated from the Roman Empire.

And some of that may well indeed be in response to the problems of security, particularly on the Rhine, but throughout the North Sea and that part of the world.

So there's a sort of sense in which the breakup of Rome at that time is as local arrangements are coming to the fore in trying to deal with the political and security situation.

And also as Rome Central is worrying about other things, as it were.

But does it almost feel that, as you say, it's an evident, deliberate decision

that archaeology is happening there with the harbours and more focus on defences.

But do you think then, if there was perhaps a bit of a, there was less trade coming from the Mediterranean to London at that time, do you think it was still a big sacrifice to do to kind of change it from commercial harbour front activities to having more defensive stuff?

The shift from harbour to defended site is key.

And of course, it's going in two directions.

One of them is simply, do you need to marshal supplies through a big hub?

Do you need everything to come into London's port?

Or can you start to arrange for more local supply?

So we've got troops stationed

in the northern parts of the province.

Perhaps they are better supplied through South Shields, through arrangements along the coast.

So London is perhaps no longer as essential as a supply hub.

And the same goes the other way.

What you're extracting extracting from the province can be taken out in different ways.

But also just, yeah, centralizing as opposed to localizing.

And I think London becomes less vital as a place for the marshalling of goods.

But as this third century goes on, you've had that division of the Roman Empire with the Gallic Empire in the northwest, Zenobia in the east.

Then Aurelian comes along, defeats them and reunites the Roman Empire under one figure again.

As this is all going on, how does London fare as the decades pass in the third century?

It actually does quite well in the late third century.

And one of the features of this is exactly that of when the Gallic Empire is reabsorbed by Rome Central, as it were, by Rome itself, and Aurelian is the emperor largely responsible for that.

It's a fairly peaceful exercise, actually.

Aurelian, who we know, of course, from Rome, his Aurelian walls, is perhaps, or perhaps probis later on, but at that rough time, London's waterfront, which had previously been a rather crude bank and ditch arrangement, I say ditch, it's the River Thames really, but a fairly crude arrangement, is then enhanced by the creation of a riverfront wall.

Oh, okay.

The walls around London that were put there in the early third century, probably by Caracalla, certainly Severin, those walls don't enclose the waterfront because the waterfront's important and you want access to it and you want a long set of keys.

But in the late third century, the waterfront having diminished in importance, you can then wall along that facade, as it were, the riverfront side of it too.

And at that date, then the port of London is clearly not functioning in quite the way it used to.

But physically, getting a big wall, a riverside wall there, doesn't that sever Roman London from the River Thames?

It does.

I think, as I said, we probably have a select number of water gates left.

There are clues from the later distribution of seals that people have put on goods that were exempt from port taxes, which get knocked off and end up on the foreshore.

And they do suggest that some of the places that became the first ports of medieval London were also used as water gates and places where beaches could be used for shipping.

But we're talking much smaller scale, much more focused and high status prestige goods rather than large scale supplies.

So how significant would you say that these moments are, you know, the building of more defences and then ultimately the building of a riverside wall in almost

like setting the foundations, laying the base for an ultimate decline of Roman London?

I think we have to go a little bit later in the cycle of what's going in London

to see that.

I think that what's going on in the late third century is in a sense a revival.

The building of the riverfront wall is attended by new arrivals of new kinds of supplies of ceramics, which suggests new networks of provisioning.

Things like Alice Holt pottery from the Alice Holt forests in Hampshire are being imported in.

perhaps associated also with timber supplies at that date because there are forests in those areas and other supplies.

So there's a rebalancing of the regional economy associated with London's, I would call it a revival in the late third century.

And the cemeteries are getting busy as well at this date as well.

A more locally acquired goods coming into London, a more locally produced network.

A more regional framework of supply, a more regional basis of the economy.

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We must also talk about those later decades of the third century where you have

Simon Elliott's called him the pirate king, but you have these breakaway Roman leaders in Britain.

Can you tell us about London at that time and who these people are?

Well, we've mentioned the fact that Frankish piracy and other forms of piracy may have been an issue in the mid-third century.

And this is certainly seen to be an issue as you go into the later third century.

And we know that the Menapian Corausius, from North Gaul, Carausius is given command of the attempts to suppress piracy in the area.

And there's various panegerics and other documents which go into this at quite length.

And he is accused of having

taken for himself some of the booty he was recapturing from pirates,

probably a device simply to push him down a bit because he he was getting a bit too powerful.

So he sets up a breakaway empire, as it were, sometimes referred to as the British Empire, or I think that probably is a modern construct

as a term.

But Perausius is succeeded by a chap called Electus.

They're involved in additional building works along the Saxon shore, because we've got dendrochronology timber dating showing that there's building works at that time.

And the craftsmen involved, the engineers involved in that exercise, were brought into London in the, and here I'm going to forget my exact date, date, let's say the 280s, 280 something,

to build something, something quite big and chunky by what's now the Millennium Bridge in the foothills of St.

Paul's Cathedral.

But there we go.

But the dendrochronology of that is excellent.

I suspect that what they're building is a palace complex

and possibly the foundations found there underneath the City of London Boys School are probably the foundations of a temple structure that was never finished.

So there's a building it programme as the British Empire, the Carausian and Electus episode is going on, and using the same craftsman because the building techniques are identical and the dates are the year after to the things that have been going along on the Saxon shore.

But that's interesting, like the 280s, of course, you get the emergence of Diocletian and then the forming of the Tetrarchy elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

And they're defined by having their own great palaces at places throughout.

Do you think Electus saw that and thought, oh, hang on, I'd like something similar in London?

As we know from the coinage of the period, there's a very strong sense that people based in Britain saw themselves as partners in a Roman Empire where Augustae were emperors in charge of different parts of the empire.

And they wanted to see themselves as equals in that exercise.

And so, yes, it would make enormous sense for them to have seen a palace complex in London to match the palace complex in Trier, to match what's going on in Milan, in Thessalonica.

These are the big sites of late antiquity of the Tetrarchy.

And I'm sure that those ideas would have been inspirational in in Britain at the time.

It doesn't end well for Electus, though, does it?

He doesn't rule for very long.

It doesn't.

And we get Constantius Torce, who is one of the official emperors, although I call him official, he's always a bit, you know, it's the ones who win, the ones who are official.

But

reconquers Britain.

There's a detailed account of the reconquest, and we have the splendid Arras Medallion, which is the first visual representation of London.

No way.

Yay!

Can you tell us a bit about this coin?

What is the Arras medallion?

There's a series of special,

they're not everyday use coins.

These are bullion in beautiful medallion, big coin shape.

And a whole horde of these, containing various other quite important objects, were found in Arras in northern Gaul, probably accumulated by someone who had been part of the campaigns of reconquest of Britain.

And this particular medallion shows Constantius arriving London.

And you see London on its knees.

Lund L-O-N is written at the base of the medallion, marking the city as the city.

And you can see its turreted facade.

It's all a stock image.

I'm sure it's not an attempt to actually portray what was really here in London, but it is representing London as submitting to

the light of Rome being restored.

That is the first ever depiction image of London in history.

That we're aware of, yes.

And so London is brought back into the Roman fold, and it's certainly not on its last knees.

It's certainly not on its knees by the end of the third century.

So how should we be imagining it as we get into the beginning of the fourth?

Well, what we have, of course, is Constantine being declared emperor in York

and returning to reunite the Roman Empire.

The Tetrarchy we've been discussing that Carausius wished to be part of was the idea of an empire which essentially had regional commands.

There were emperors of East and West, there were junior emperors of East and West, and there was Carausius and Electus over in Britain.

But Constantine is a little bit impatient with the risks of such fragmentation of power and is quick to try and pull all the threads back together under his control.

So Britain initially

is probably going to be rather benefiting from the fact you've got an emperor based in York.

But his interest is moving quickly across to consolidate power and control.

He moves across to Trier and then he moves further east.

And essentially, he withdraws the need for more regional, local government structures back into a Rome-centric and a Constantine-centric system.

And that probably contributes to a bit of a decline of interest in London.

So as we get into the fourth century, following

Constantine's elevation, we get less in the way of architectural activity going on in London.

Because the early fourth century and the fourth centuries general, outside of the walls of London, it's a bit of a booming time though, isn't it, for villas?

But that's not

countryside is doing well and there are different phases of that activity and quite how much that's Constantinian is another matter.

I think

quite a lot of that

is later, some of it's earlier.

But London itself doesn't seem to be a particularly strong beneficiary of Constantinian influence.

We've got I think the last dendrochronology dating from London comes from some refurbishments down to quite a handsome rear extension with mosaics in a house at the site underneath the site now one poultry next to Bank Station.

And again, I don't offhand remember the exact date of that, but I think I'm fairly sure that's Constantinian, but that that dendro is the last imported significant timber we see being used in London.

I want to say there aren't later imports, but archaeologists haven't found them.

Do we hear anything if it is a bit of a time of change for London at this time?

Do we have any names of any administrative figures or any people who were big in London at that time?

There's a shortage of the level of documentation that we have in the earlier imperial period.

We do not, I mean, we don't have a Tacitus writing about what's going on.

Our sources are more concerned with activities elsewhere in the empire.

So we don't have a full list of chronology of who was in charge of Britannia inferior, Britannia Superior.

And more of the information we have comes from the war where we've got quite a lot of people being commemorated, but that's now part of a different province.

So the division of Britain into smaller provinces, which a process which had started as early as Caracalla, is continuing to shrink the political base of each site.

But Britain is then brought back into a single command structure under a vicar.

So you get a vicarious.

Under a vicar.

Vicarious.

The term vicar, I mean, they are borrowing from the same source.

So, and at that date, we do have some names, and I'm going to struggle to remember them offhand.

Where we're better off is we do know of some of the first church councils are drawing on people from the different bishoprics established in Britain.

And we know of, I think it's Restitutus, is the one who attends the Council of Ireland 314 AD.

So that is Constantinian and fits with what's going on.

Restitutis, is he based in London or is he based in a Christian community?

Yes, London is, again, I've forgotten that the Latin definition, but we've got two references to what could be London in the bishops who attended that council.

but one of them is thought to be a misspelling for Lincoln, although I'm not entirely sure.

It's unlikely that London could have generated the need for two bishops, but

maybe Southwark is seen as a separate diocese, who knows?

Unlikely.

But we've definitely got these church figures beginning to appear on the scene, because of course, after Constantine, Christianity is

on its way to becoming the religion of state.

Well, I hope you don't mind then if we look at religion now in Roman London.

It feels appropriate then that we do start with Christianity.

So do we know much about Christianity in Roman London at this time?

Yes and no.

Archaeologically, Christianity is not particularly well attested in Britain.

And that's partly when we get to what happens at the end of the fourth century, that the sites of Christian worship are not perpetuated into later periods.

And therefore, we don't have the grander architecture that emerges.

Early Christianity, the main practices of the early church can take place in the house.

I mean, you have your Eucharist, your meal in the dining room, you have your baptisms in the bathhouses, and all of the nice houses have dining rooms and bathhouses.

You don't need to consolidate those activities more centrally.

But as Christianity becomes a religion of state, the control of those practices becomes more important.

So second and third century Christianity is probably present in Britain, but as a virtually invisible private practice.

Fourth century Christianity, yes, we've now got a bishop.

Do we also have episcopal basilicas?

the things that become cathedrals being built at this time.

Possibly, I think, is the answer to that.

There is

a building of the mid-fourth century, dated by Pottery, to probably after AD 350, that

sneakily does look as if it could be a basilical church.

And that would be the episcopal church where the bishop would have been able to practice.

And that would be more useful for the higher state-level political acts of Christianity.

The building itself, it was excavations not that far from the Tower of London, just up and across a bit, Colchester House.

And there, it's a basilica.

Various foundations have been found.

It's associated with quite high status decorative work.

We've got bits of marble, bits of window glass.

Some of the finds from the site, a particular kind of Tatsa cut vessel, are often associated with ritual sites.

It has an unusual coin profile.

And there's lots of little hints that there's something slightly ritual about the building.

But the main reason for believing it to be,

I'm going to call it a cathedral, the term is not necessarily the best.

The main reason for believing that is simply it's a large basilica built at a time when other public buildings are being quarried for stone.

They're not being used.

You know, if we go across to the forum, that falls out of use early in the fourth century.

Wow.

And the forum basilica has roof collapse.

It has some robbing of floors.

We know it's still there in the late third century, but somewhere in the first half of the fourth century,

probably the the earlier decades of the fourth century, the Forum Basilica is largely demolished and abandoned.

So and do you think that is a reflection of the change in administrative habits that's occurring in the Roman Empire at that time?

Yes, it's both it's a change in need of how

the public life is performed.

You don't need quite the same large public buildings.

More power is being exercised through individual officers who are using their private properties, their villas, their mansions.

So that's part of it.

It's also that the forum forum itself was built as an engine for the storage and redistribution of goods.

It relates in a sense back to what's going on at the port.

If the port is no longer needed in quite the same way, the forum is certainly over-provided with storage facilities.

And that over-provision can take a while to feed through into people saying, well, actually, let's borrow some stone from this and rebuild.

So there is a question mark as to why a basilica is being built.

in the mid to late fourth century when these sorts of buildings have been going out of use earlier in the fourth century.

century, and you try and think, well, what's the special use that's coming in at this particular date?

And that would merit high-status decoration.

So, could it be a granary,

nice ball veneers,

and window glass?

So, the feeling is it could be, but it, but it's entirely speculative in the sense.

We've got no epigraphy, we've got no fines for site which pin it down exactly.

I mean, and of course, given that Christianity is bigger in the East at that time, anyway, and much less in the West, I mean, is there, well, they're frowning a little bit.

Yes, I am frowning.

I mean, we see the evidence of it more clearly, as I've said, where where it carries on.

And when you've got fifth century and the Eastern Mediterranean, some of its best architecture dates to the fifth and sixth centuries, these complexes become decorated with lovely mosaics and we see them.

But that's because they're later, just not by a lot, but a bit.

Yes, we've got more documentary evidence for what's going on in Christianity in the East, but that's because we've got more documentary evidence for what's going in the East.

full stop.

You know, we don't have the source material from Roman Britain.

So yes, it may well be that there is a residual paganism.

Yes, it may well be that there is a lot more going on in Britain that we don't know about.

But I think it's premature to say that Christianity isn't a significant issue, particularly in towns like London, because London still, despite shrinking, despite changing in character and shrinking population rather than area, despite those changing character, it's still an important, important, important place for important people.

And the vicar of Britain we get in the fourth century is here alongside other departments of state.

They're described in the Netitia Degnitatum, admittedly a later source, but it just doesn't bother to cross out the British bits of it.

So it still describes the treasury here.

It describes various commands and secretaries and administrators and other things.

And London is almost certainly continuing to be home to

high status administrators, many of whom have forging careers which are not just based in Britain, and many of whom we know are Christian.

They have lives in the Christian world as Christian is on its way to becoming the religion of state.

I'm going to jump around a bit chronologically here because I know you're going to want to talk to me about Magnus Maximus later on, I'm sure.

But Magnus Maximus is a general in Britain who becomes a usurper and takes control of his forces to become an emperor, trying to repeat the Kharos' exercise, as it were.

And in 383,

he heads off to the continent to force his claim for power.

But he writes, I think, to a pope, although I haven't actually checked the primary source in detail.

But he writes that he has taken baptism just before he goes off to do these things.

And this is the sort of person who goes straight from baptism to the imperial throne.

And he was in Britain at that time and likely to be using sites such as London as the main seats of power.

We've got other sorts of references to other people we know passing through Britain who are, again, shifting a little bit later in time.

We've got a bishop in constantinople in the early fifth century who'd previously been a vicar of britain so he's a bishop so someone suspects his christianity is quite a strong part of his his makeup and we've got direct evidence we've now got several cairo this little yes the greek i and and rho from the first letters in christ's name yes and we've got potchab was found in brentford in the 1970s and was put in a box with other finds.

And only about five years ago were a group of volunteers going back to these boxes and cleaning them up and tidying them up as part of the London Archaeological Archive system and spotted that there was one of these original early scratched Cairos on this shoe of poultry from Brentford.

Recent excavations in Subbark produced another and for a long time we've known of one from Coptol Avenue on a pewter vessel.

So there's a variety of bits and pieces that tell us there are Christians here, which is what we'd expect.

So I think I mean, I've gone a limb here.

Britain may not have adopted Christianity in quite as vigorous a fashion as other parts of the Roman world, but I do think London would have been essentially, administratively, at any rate, a Christian city.

Wow.

I guess slightly related to that then is shall we quickly talk about the cemeteries?

Because outside the walls, you have lots of cemeteries, don't you, like from Spitalfield and elsewhere.

And I'm presuming that quite a few of the skeletons, the bodies, do they date to this time, to this later period in Roman London story?

Yes.

Most of our cemetery evidence comes from a later period simply because there's a broad shift towards inhumation from cremation.

Early burials, I mean, there's always cremation and there's always inhumation.

It's not all one or all the other.

But the favoured method of dealing with rich people's burial was to cremate them in the early Roman period.

And in the late Roman period, it is to bury them.

And that's not just about Christianity, that a whole series of different belief systems also begin to see bodily resurrection as part of

the suite of things that you might expect.

So rather than having your soul liberated by the cleansing fire, your body can physically carry you into the next world by being buried in an appropriate fashion.

So our cemeteries, the weird thing about Roman London is that when you dig it, as an archaeologist, the houses are all early and the dead people are all late.

And that's because the city has shrunk, so therefore more early houses, but the burial grounds have grown because burying dead people for resurrection, you've got to lay them out in rows, you've got to worry about not too much intercutting, or that there is intercutting.

So there's a much greater survival of that evidence in the later period.

And what are we learning from these burials about the people?

I've got the Lady of Spitalfield is a name that comes up straight away.

Yes, and

there's wealth displayed in the cemeteries.

And there's a lot of excellent work being done by Rebecca Redfern and other colleagues on the dead of that period.

They're doing so much research and publishing so well that I'm bound to be a little bit behind the curve on some of the things that they're up to.

But again, this is reverting back to things like the isotope analysis to look at where people grew up and through the enamel in their teeth and also the ancient DNA analysis that we can now get some information from.

And this reverts back to what I was saying about having such a cosmopolitan population.

Of course, one of the things that I know Rebecca Redfin is working on right now is the incredible bias towards male burials in some of the earlier parts of these cemeteries.

This is more a feature of the third century than the fourth century, but those burial grounds are something like four men to every woman found in these cemeteries.

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Well, let's move on towards the latter half of the fourth century then.

So London is still an important place at this time.

You've got the key important officials, as you say there, a Christian city as well.

So extraordinary story of London in the fourth century.

But if we get to that figure of Magnus Maximus and London in the later fourth century, do you start to see a transformation once again in its architecture at that time?

Yes, we do.

There are cycles, and this is why I hate the term decline.

London does decline, but then it revives, then it declines.

Yes, it's not a straight line, it is not linear.

And that's very important to get across.

So, for instance, we've got in the middle of the fourth century a period of renewal of sorts.

Not majorly, not massive new population, but this is when, for instance, they put the bastions on the city wall.

Now, those bastions are not, I mean, they have a defensive purpose, but as with the earlier city walls, it's as much about status and it's as much about the state saying, we still love you, we still care, we're still investing.

Simon Esmond Cleary

has studied the sorts of defences in Roman Gaul very closely and comes up with the close relationship between places that are important to the administration and the provision of defences.

So the addition of bastions to London's wall fits with what I've just been saying about the Netitia Dignitatum and the administrators being based here.

And those bastions are dated to the, I'm going to guess, 360s.

It could be a little bit earlier.

It could be a little bit later.

There's coin dating beneath one of them showing it certainly isn't there before the 350s.

They're semi-circular, right?

And they add them to select locations on the city wall, primarily those that are facing on to hard ground.

So they don't tend to bother so much with the soggy stuff around Morkgate or the riverfront or the fleet.

But in particular, that stretch on the east side of the wall where the Tower of London is now and up from there.

Yes, because you can see an example in the Barbican Gardens today, can't you, near there?

Those are later.

Ah, okay.

There are medieval additions to the line of bastions.

There are Roman bastions, which are the solid ones.

I'm oversimplifying here, but most of the solid ones are shown to be Roman in date, and most of the hollow ones have been shown to be medieval in date.

There you go.

Thank you for correcting me.

So not all, but the solid bastions, little platforms perhaps for artillery, but as I say, more about defining this as a restored site.

And that neatly ties in with both what I've been saying about the administrators and officials in the Notitia Dignatum and what's happening in Gaul, but it also ties in with, for instance, our burial evidence.

You've been talking about cemeteries.

We've got a fascinating burial in the Eastern Cemetery from Mansell Street, where someone of a male of importance has been buried with one of these chingulum, these belt and buckle sets, which were part of the official insignia of being important,

be it in the military or in the administration.

And these crossbow brooches and belts with their chip carving

are rare and important finds, usually thought to be much later.

But from this one, I believe that a yet-to-be-published carbon-14 dating on it which actually i do refer to in my book so it's not it has been published but but badly by me rather than by the people who are doing the real work but that that that date places it again in that 360s sort of period bastions perhaps that 360s sort of period so we've got rich and important people in the cemeteries we've got bastions we've got an otitia we also have a known historical interlude I always get into trouble for making things a bit too closely related to history, but the so-called barbarian conspiracy.

I was about to ask you about the barbarian conspiracy 363 about that time yep 363.

now rather than say it's because we're afraid of barbarians but if we do say that imperial interest in britain is raised by the fact that they've had to send over a smallish but significant detachment of forces under count theodosius who arrives immediately starts settling some of the problems in the southeast and he overwinters in London before then going on and sorting things out in the the rest of the province.

And the documentation of his activities in Britain referred to the restoration of cities and defences.

So not so much because the barbarians are at the gate anymore, but because empire is making it clear to the people in London and elsewhere that it's back in business, that it's regained control, and this is what a proper city should have, is those bastions, make it a better marked, better defended, better more prestigious site.

So the 360s carry that kind of going on.

There may be a different historical cause for those bastions.

I'm not going to pin all of my money to the barbarian conspiracy.

I was taught by a first-class archaeologist called Richard Rees, and Richard has written very important papers explaining how

explaining everything as having been caused by the barbarian conspiracy is an archaeological fallacy and should be avoided.

Not this fantasized idea of Franks and Saxons and Frizzy in their boats coming up the Thames and at the same time you've got Scots and Picts outside the walls and a concerted attack trying to level London to the ground.

Leave that to historians.

Nasty things went on quite often in the Roman world, and I think one should expect them to.

Rome was not in the business just to be nice to people.

Rome was in the business to tax and control, to govern.

So it made enemies along the way.

And

both people outside the borders, but within the borders could be quite ready to rebel and revolt and whatever.

And we underestimate, we go back to Boudicca earlier on.

But those things don't stop.

It's not as if Britain has been made, I mean, it has high points, there are peaceful periods when Britain's doing quite well, but it's not the happy place that people sometimes think it might have been.

So rebellion, yes, not necessarily that particular one.

Relating to this, we've got some quite nice bits of architecture.

Let's explore that.

Let's explore some detail.

But just, for instance, there's a very handsome mosaic found in Broad Street, I think.

with Bacchus on his leopard in the in the middle, Polychrome.

And that is stylistically part of what's called the Corinthian Southire School, which we think is a late fourth century school.

There's some comparable mosaics, probably by the same mosaicist, which are coinedated after AD 350.

Corinium, did you say?

And is that elsewhere in Britain?

Yes,

West Country.

But London being London, it's perhaps got the palatial establishments of important people from other parts of Britain.

This is the sort of person who might have brought a

mosaicist, if I can say it, with him.

So, but

one of our better, bigger, more handsome mosaics is late 4th century.

We've got some of these townhouses have little towers added to them.

I say little, quite chunky towers, which were probably several stories.

So the architecture is looking different.

So there's an elite architecture in the fourth century.

And that is, again, perhaps of this 350s, 360s, and potentially into the 370s sort of period.

We're getting really close to the end of Roman Britain and still, it's really interesting with the archaeology and also showing that there is an official Roman investment in Britain even at this time and places like London.

So what happens over the next few centuries when you have figures like Magnus Maximus emerging?

The key changes I would suggest occurring in the 380s.

And this is not just going off to historical sources and going, oh, we've got this big event with Magnus Maximus, which everyone talks about and the Welsh talk about to

consider detail.

But not just that we have this important historical event that people have written about and Bede talks about and so on, but actually the archaeology of London is pointing to the 380s as being significant.

And it's significant because of what's going on at excavation sites and in particular the excavations at One Poultry.

That's the site next at Bank Station, Tube Station.

Also though in Southwark during the works on the Thameslink.

And in these two areas we have the main roads that are going towards the town centre.

And those main roads, both the one in One Poultry is now essentially that of Cheapside, but it becomes Oxford Street.

It's our Great West Road.

It's what ties London to places West, be it Silchester, be it Roxeter, be it St.

Albans, it's Watling Street and all the rest.

That's a very major routeway.

And people are digging holes into the road to extract gravel.

Now, they're extracting gravel for purpose, so it's not as if nobody's around, but the dating for that is...

that sort of this coin dating up until the 360s 370s We don't have the later issues.

Now, although coins beget in shorter supply in later Roman London, there are still coins around until the end of the fourth century.

They're not present.

The later types of issues are not there, but are found in later deposits in those broader areas.

So that gravel quarrying is going on probably in the 380s, going on in that sort of period.

At the same time, the houses next to the street, on the north side of that street, look to be abandoned.

Now, abandonment horizons are very difficult, but you end up with slightly different finds assemblages from occupation horizons.

When you live in a house, you sweep the floor, you keep it clean, you build a new floor.

Some finds get introduced with that, but they are the very eroded bits of rubbish that might get introduced in a new floor.

Whereas the very latest surfaces in those houses underneath demolition debris include far more in the terms of bits of jewelry, bits of coin, there's a shale tabletop.

There's a variety of of things that you would not expect to end up normally in archaeological assemblages.

And Hilary Coole and others have done some very good work at identifying these as being somewhat different assemblages.

So we've got changes on the north side of the street.

We've got the street itself having holes dug into it.

And those holes aren't just, you've taken a bit of gravel, all right, next week the street's back in use.

Once you've created an enormous soft-filled pothole in that street, you are really damaging the ability to move ox-drawn cars and goods across it.

And as I say, we've got similar sorts of evidence, not quite so well dated, but similar sorts of evidence coming out from the Thames Link work along Borough High Street in Southwark, the road to London Bridge.

I mean, they don't get more important in terms of route accesses than those two roads.

On the south side of that same street, an early fourth century building had been given a large conduit.

And that large brick-lined conduit was part of managing some water that came down from springs in the Gresham Street area near Guildhall.

And those springs had been arrived through in underground conduits all the way through from AD 48 all the way down into the fourth century.

That conduit ends up with rubbish in it and a decapitated skeleton of, again, that broad dating into the 380s around that.

Not precise, but certainly not 390s, 400s.

and certainly later than the 350s sort of thing.

So focusing in on things going on in and around the 380s, I think those are very important changes to London at that time.

Very mysterious as well.

But yes, if you're not looking after the roads, then that does hint at something quite big.

And this is where one says, the changes we've seen going on in London in earlier periods have been this progressive diminution of the importance of London as a place for the shipping of goods.

Port, gone.

Forum, gone.

Different dates, but progressive.

Roads, gone.

You're gone.

And at that stage, we're also beginning to see local coin supply into 380s and 390s diminishing, that we're not seeing the import of fresh coinage into Britain, creates enormous problems for the dating of what's going on.

But the very fact of it is important, that coinage is not such ready supply.

In earlier Roman London, in periods when there had been shortage of small change, we find local manufacture.

People start forging, and they're called forgeries, but they're making very low value coinage.

So it's more about just lubricating small scale exchanges.

The cash economy needs it.

So people, officials probably, but not from an official mint, generate sufficient coinage to keep things going.

So if you have to pay your taxes, you come into and out of town, you can.

Payment can be made in cash.

And that reduction in coin supply is not accompanied.

by an increase in alternative mechanisms enabling those cash transactions.

So that again would suggest that something significant is changing.

And this is all, I say all to do, I would argue that these are all features of this cyclical move towards an economy that doesn't need these things.

But that is in turn is because of potentially a shrinking in the role of London for serving the rest of Britain.

And then its horizons draw closer.

And that's why a date in the 380s gets quite exciting, because of course, Magnus Maximus was heavily criticized in later times for being responsible for having withdrawn the flower of Britain's youth, for having withdrawn the troops because he, as usurpers have done before him, heads off to the continent to make his claim for power stick.

So does it almost feel that this is almost a point of no return after this?

There's no revival after the 380s.

I mean, how do we get from here to ultimately London disappearing, the decline when the Romans leave Britain?

It's not as if everything is drawn to an immediate full stop.

A diminution isn't an end, and we still see activity going on in properties in London to circa 400.

Once we get into the fifth century, we are running out of material culture to play with.

We do not have the coinage.

We do not have the ceramics.

And it is disputed amongst archaeologists how early in the first half of the fifth century it ceases to be a place of importance, a place at all.

I find,

yes, we've got a coin hoard at Billingsgate Bathhouse.

Yes, we've got some coins of Arcadus and Honorius from the Tower of London.

So into the very first years of the fifth century, possibly.

But as you get into the later fifth century, we do find things of that date, but not in the city of London.

We find them in the areas around London.

We've got a clip silica in Southwark.

We've got a coin hoard in the old cemetery at Spittlefields to the north of the town.

We've got some individual finds along the fleet near Cripplegate.

But within the city, virtually nothing.

All that we can positively pin down in the city is a fairly significantly later 450 plus brooch at Billingsgate.

So I see little evidence that the houses in fifth century London are still being occupied.

And I would go back to the events of the 380s and then the significant diminution of presence, Roman presence in Britain, as the Empire is too busy with matters elsewhere.

When Rome goes, London goes as well.

It doesn't have to be.

And the process of that isn't just about London, it's about the places that London is sort of in the orbit of.

Trier ceases to be a major capital city from circa 395.

Mints are shifted to Arles.

So Roman emperors are no longer seeing the northwest provinces as critical to their hold on power.

They are no longer basing themselves in those locations.

They're no longer winning prestige by campaigns in those areas.

Stilico may have sent over some support into Britain in the last decade, but everything then, our full stop from a historical point of view, is of course the events of

406 to 409.

And those events are historically argued over in detail, but are pretty clear in their broad outline.

And their broad outline is we have another series of usurptions in the 406, almost Marcus, Gratian and Constantine

III.

That's right.

And they are British based.

They are, again, in this business of saying, we're not being looked after by Rome Central.

We've got problems on the Rhine.

We know that there are barbarian incursions occurring elsewhere at this date.

And they are dealing with a dissatisfied army.

The failure of coin supply is attached to a disinterest of Rome with what's going on in its remote province.

They're too busy.

And so people get upset and the troops in Britain find

it appropriate to back a local commander in a bid for power.

And Constantine III is another of these leaders who ends up withdrawing troops from Britain in order to fight campaigns in Gaul.

And it's a question mark, how many troops are actually left in Britain.

There's a difference, of course, between those who are mobile, the troops that can actually go around and fight campaigns, and those who are manning forts and manning frontiers and who are the limitania, who are permanently based, have local families, and they're probably not going anywhere.

But the troops that you can actually put on a horse and actually wreak havoc with in contesting for power, they are being withdrawn from Britain.

And Dominic, just to finish this off, I will read almost like the last bit of your book where you kind of summarise it up, but I think it's a great way to end it.

And you say, London ceased to exist because Rome failed to maintain authority in Britain, and the city had no other evident reason for being.

Its disappearance is unlikely to have been a matter of widespread regret.

The rewards of economic growth gained from the Roman investment in productivity were unevenly distributed, offering few material benefits to the wider population.

The Roman administration was otherwise harsh and the demands of tax and rent unwelcome.

Whilst the achievements of Roman London were many, they failed to carry far and advantaged only the privileged few.

I stand by that very much though.

As a PS, the failure of the city doesn't mean to say the landscape around fails in quite the same way.

And perhaps somebody else can come along and talk to you all about the very exciting archaeology going on just by Trafalgar Square at St.

Martin in the Fields, where we've got things that do move into the fifth century and suggest continuity.

And of course, that is near to where Londonwich is later established.

So the countryside is changing at a different pace to the city because London is different.

That is another story indeed.

It said another chapter in the post-Roman London story.

Dominic, this has been absolutely fascinating.

Last but certainly not least, your book, which covers it, it is called?

Oh, London in the Roman World.

I could have read that myself.

I know.

Oxford University Press.

I'm still quite pleased with this.

I mean, there's things always that you go, oh, I could have added something there, but no, it says what I have to say.

It's a wonderful book which covers the whole Roman story of London.

Very up-to-date book as well.

Dominic, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.

My pleasure.

So here's a little bit of extra information that I found out from Dominic after we finished recording.

Now, in the interview, Dominic mentioned the archaeology of the 380s and how the roads were in bad shape by that point.

Well, he then told me, after we had to finish recording, how that probably implies that the bridges were also potentially crumbling at around this time.

So you may well have had an ancient case of London bridges falling down in the last decades of the 4th century when Roman London was breathing its final breath.

Just a cool little extra fact to finish this episode.

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