Exeter: A Place in Time

The relationship between town and country has played an important role in shaping British society for much of the past two millennia. Britain's assimilation into the Roman world led to the creation of a network of towns as centres of administration, trade, industry and service provision although the decline of Roman Britain led to the disappearance of urban life in most areas. It was only from around the 10th century that true towns once again re-emerged, and they have been integral to British life ever since. This project will examine the fluctuating fortunes of the most important town in SW England - Exeter - and how it interacted with its local, regional and international hinterland.

Exeter began in the Conquest period (c.AD55) as a Roman legionary fortress, and following its abandonment (c.AD75) it was transformed into a town (civitas capital) serving the local region of Dumnonia. Unlike many other lowland areas, Dumnonia was slow to adopt aspects of Roman life, there being very few villas and other forms of Roman influence in the countryside. As such, this project will use Exeter as an example of the development of urbanism at the fringes of Romanised Britain. Although large parts of the town appear to have been abandoned in the early medieval period, a thread of continuity is indicated by radiocarbon-dated burials from the Cathedral Close. Urban life in Exeter resumed around the 10th century, and the town continued to flourish throughout the medieval period when it established extensive trading connections with Atlantic Europe, once again demonstrating a model of urbanism that was different from the centres of power to the east that looked towards NW Europe.

Exeter's archaeological importance is two-fold: firstly, it is representative of urbanism in western Britain, well away from the political, social and economic centre of London; and secondly, there have been particularly extensive excavations the results of which have only partly been published. The 'Exeter: A Place in Time' project therefore aims to produce the first ever synthesis of the archaeology of Exeter and undertake a series of themed research strands, based upon scientific analyses of previously excavated assemblages (animal bones, pottery, and metallurgical debris) that shed light on how the city developed and interacted with its hinterland. The project will be strongly collaborative and involve:
1. the Universities of Exeter (already undertaking the post-excavation analysis of the Cathedral Close cemetery) and Reading
2. English Heritage (through their Centre for Archaeology, and funding for Cotswold Archaeology to write up key unpublished excavations)
3. Exeter City Council who run the City's Historic Environment Record and Royal Albert Memorial Museum

A partnership with English Heritage and Cotswold Archaeology will enable selected unpublished excavations to be studied, along with a programme of radiocarbon and dendrochronological dating and metallurgical analysis. AHRC funding will use existing excavated material to explore Exeter's relationship to its hinterland through further analysis of animal bones and pottery. In particular scientific analysis will be used to characterise where animals were grazing before they were brought to Exeter, and the extent to which livestock were moved from the fertile lowlands onto the uplands during the summer. A new analysis of the pottery will explore Exeter's trading networks both within the SW of Britain and continental Europe. Key outputs of the project will include two books and an academic conference presenting an analysis of Exeter's development and its relationship with its hinterland from the Roman period through to the 16th century, a conference session aimed at professional archaeologists that highlights this innovative partnership approach, a one-day workshop for the public, and enhancements to the Museum's Making History gallery, online Time Trail, and Historic Environment Record.

Due to the pressures of 'rescue archaeology' in the 1970s/80s many important large-scale excavations in British urban centres are unpublished and Exeter is no exception. The traditional approach towards writing-up this backlog - one organisation attempting to prepare full reports - has been extremely complex, costly and often unsuccessful with projects grinding to a halt. This partnership project will provide a new research-driven way forward in which the writing up of stratigraphic sequences (funded by EH) is only carried out for carefully selected sites, while summaries are produced for the rest. This selective approach will also be adopted for artefactual and environmental material as an EH-funded assessment by Cotswold Archaeology (CA) has highlighted the animal bones, pottery, and metallurgical debris as having the greatest potential for further work.

Progress has already been made in making existing archive reports available via the ADS (a CA project funded by EH) and to write up the excavated cemetery within the Cathedral Close (through a collaborative AHRC studentship at the Univ. of Exeter with Exeter City Council (ECC)funding). The aim of this new project is to fully realise the potential of this work by conducting new research into the relationship between Exeter and its hinterland through an innovative partnership between the Universities of Exeter and Reading, and three non-academic organisations (EH, CA, and ECC including its HER and Royal Albert Memorial Museum). Such is the recognised importance this project, that EH have agreed to fund CA to write up the key sequences of the excavations in Exeter as part of their commitment to realise the potential of the 'rescue archaeology' backlog in England. EH see this partnership as piloting a new way of working (see Letter of Support): rather than grant aiding a single organisation to carry out a limited programme of work, the 'Exeter: A Place in Time' Project will provide a model for more holistic partnership working involving the higher education, national and local government, and commercial archaeology sectors, providing maximum benefit by enabling additional world-class research within a wider research agenda. In order to promote this new partnership-based approach towards dealing with the backlog of unpublished urban excavations, the project will organise a session at the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists' annual conference.

Other non-academic impacts will be achieved through engagement with ECC whose Chief Exec Karime Hassan and Deputy Leader Rachel Sutton were involved in planning this project. The project will update existing HER GIS layers and database entries, and Andy Pye, Principal Project Manager for Heritage at ECC, will be a full member of the project team. The enhanced HER will improve advice given by ECC as part of the planning process at a time when increased development within the city centre is expected. Exeter is the leading urban centre in the South West which has had, and will continue to have, considerable commercial and residential development. This project will assist in the more effective management of redevelopment within the city's historic core, such as plans currently being developed for the regeneration of the Bus Station, South Street, and for the permanent display of the Roman legionary bath house by Exeter Cathedral. The latter will not only generate further archaeological work but will also provide a regenerative stimulus in the surrounding area, and future planning decisions will greatly benefit from the enhanced HER that this project will provide.

Wider public engagement will be achieved through a one-day workshop jointly hosted with the Museum (including presentations, a panel discussion, and artefact displays), enhancements to the Museum's permanent Making History gallery including a digital interactive panel, and enhancement of their existing online TimeLine (http://www.rammtimetrail.org.uk/).