Zones of interaction: Roman and native in Scotland

Abstract

There is a clear distinction between what became the civil part of the Roman province of Britain, and the military zone. After initial resistance the former was rapidly conquered by Rome and, judging by the paucity of Roman forts, does not seem to have required much in the way of long-term military control. Thereafter the southeast shows all of the characteristics which typify a developed Roman province in the western empire, with administrative control vested in major urban centres, an extensive road system linking a range of smaller urban settlements, a hierarchy of Romanized rural sites, including villas and temples, and the ubiquitous presence, even on lower-order rural settlements, of a distinctive Romanized material culture. By contrast, the north and west was much slower to succumb to Roman arms and remained dominated by the military presence. Urbanization was slow to develop and limited in nature and extent; rural settlements exhibit little sign of Roman influence, with only three villas known north of the Tees; and away from the military sites, the distribution of Romanized material culture is relatively sparse. It has been argued that these different patterns of occupation in the Roman period are a direct reflection of pre-existing levels of socio-economic and political development, for the civil zone coincides almost exactly with those areas in the pre-Roman Iron Age which exhibit signs of a more developed socio-economic system, with the appearance of a complex political hierarchy, proto-urban centres (oppida), independent coin use, and long-term diplomatic and trading contacts with the Roman empire (Hanson forthcoming b). There was a north-south, or rather a north-west-southeast, divide in the later prehistoric and Roman periods. This should not be seen in terms of simplistic geographical determinism, but in relation to difference of ethnic identity, ideology and modes of social reproduction. Nor should these differences be taken as a value judgement to indicate that the north was economically peripheral or some sort of cultural backwater. The peoples of north Britain were merely exhibiting a different trajectory of development within which Roman cultural norms and values, and Roman material culture, were seen as less relevant to the majority of the population.