Creating Rural Settlements: New Perspectives on Roman Imperialism, Ontogenesis and Processualism in Britain

My PhD will investigate the rural settlements of Roman Britain by the application of recent advances in theory encapsulated under the 'ontological turn'. The term 'ontology' refers to the way the world is, as opposed to how people come to gain secure knowledge of the world (epistemology). Conventional studies of Roman Britain have focused on how the province was governed and how lives were transformed by incorporation into the empire. Building upon post-colonial approaches to Roman-Britain (Mattingly, 2006), my research into diverse colonial experiences as an ontological phenomenon will offer a new perspective on how identities were defined in rural settlements, as well as providing a dynamic account of change in the countryside under Roman occupation. By ignoring the 'Romans-Britons' dichotomy, I will investigate emergent and diverse identities. The focus on genesis (the creation, perpetuation and maintenance) of these ontologies is easily applicable to the broader aims of providing a historical account with a post-colonial focus, what I refer to as 'ontogenesis'.
The project's main aim will be to understand how these ontologies emerged within rural settlements in Roman Britain and how different 'Romano-British' identities emerged. Applying the concept of 'ontogenesis' I will re-evaluate the binary opposition of 'Romans-Britons' and reconceptualise the colonial experiences of those living in Roman-Britain. Part of this thesis will concern itself with defining 'genesis' and why it is useful for archaeology, especially considering scholarly neglect of ideas of 'birth' and 'creation' when discussing emergence and change in the wider literature. Studying genesis will reinvigorate a previously stale but important theoretical concept in archaeology.
The empirical data will include regional studies of two rural zones: The South and Wales, chosen for their wealth of data, variety of rural settlements and potential to perform a comparative analysis. My study will focus on three types of evidence: rural settlements, material culture and funerary practices to study ways that social, economic and political identities were formed. Using a rigorous methodological framework, I will synthesise data from the two regions, articulating an approach appropriate for the analysis of other regions. The project will benefit from the recent synthesis of the large dataset of The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain (Smith et al. 2016). I will contextualise the data in comparison to the urban settlements of Roman Britain, Later Iron Age Britain and post-Roman Britain. A focus on archaeological evidence will also counter traditional rural narratives about top-down Roman influence by using a bottom-up approach to provide a more nuanced picture.