From Roman Civitas to Anglo-Saxon Shire

Topographical Studies on the Formation of Wessex

Bruce Eagles

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781785709852
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is the culmination of the author's lifelong interest in the Roman to medieval transition in England and in the analysis of the historic landscape of Wessex. It begins with a focused, referenced, and critical exploration of the thorny, but crucial, issues of post-Roman personal and group identity, employing linguistic, historical, archaeological, and toponymical evidence. A series of integrated studies seeks to elucidate changes in the territorial organization of the Wessex landscape, from Somerset to Hampshire, from the Roman period to the emergence of the historic counties. It is shown that the defined limits of the self-governed Roman civitates had a significant impact upon subsequent historical developments, not least on the early English settlements. In eastern Wessex - Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire – the Roman boundaries broke down piecemeal, but continued to influence political developments and patterns of settlement into the seventh century. It is argued that those three counties acquired their medieval and later form only at the time of the Viking wars. In western Wessex, Dorset and Somerset, by contrast, the core of the territories of both the southern and northern Durotriges in the Roman period has persisted until the present day. The book also includes a re-examination of the formation and extent of the kingdom of the Jutes in southern Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. The chronology, history and archaeology of the fifth century, set alongside the many changes of the later fourth century, and vital to our understanding of the momentous events of that time as Saxon control took hold in the east, are here the subject of a separate, detailed study. Place-names across Wessex with a bearing on the presence of the Britons, and the changing nature and distribution of archaeological sites in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, are discussed in their historical context.

1

The boundaries of the Roman civitates of central southern Britain: some possibilities1

Introduction

This paper seeks to address the difficult issue of the definition of the limits of the Roman civitates south and south-west of the River Thames (Fig. 4). It is argued that Brittonic and Old English place-names and the boundaries of early Anglo-Saxon ‘small shires’ in Hampshire, together with archaeological evidence from the Roman period, do, however, allow us to gain some more precise indication, if still only partial, of the extents of these administrative units (Figure 4, cf. Rivet 1964, fig. 9; for a suggested allocation of individual Romano-British sites to civitates, Union Académique Internationale 1983). In some places in Gaul the civitas boundaries are marked by surviving boundary stones, and knowledge of their definition may also benefit from the known limits of the post-Roman dioceses, which often had direct links to their Roman predecessors (see below). In Britain, by contrast, boundary markers have not survived and the dioceses only came into being in the seventh century and later. There is, however, a general resemblance in the extents of a number of the Roman civitates here and the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Only passing reference is made to the patterns of distribution of the latest Iron Age coinage in Britain. Although these coins have traditionally been used in support of arguments for the bounds of the Roman civitates, a recent re-evaluation emphasises the complexities of their production and circulation, best considered in relation to the ebb-and-flow of the power and influence of individual rulers, with implications for the acceptability of their coinage (and therefore its loss or hoarding) outside their own territories. For the present, at least, it appears to be impossible to relate them to the ‘tribal’ names assigned to the civitates by Ptolemy in the second century AD. We may also note that Caesar (De Bello Gallico, 5.20, 5.21), in the mid-first century BC, provides the names of six tribes in the south-east. Of these the Ancalites, Bibroci, Cassi and the Segontiaci (for the latter name, Rivet and Smith 1981, 453–4) are not subsequently recorded. Only the Trinobantes and perhaps the Iceni – if they were Caesar’s Cenimagni – reappear under the Romans. Such mismatches, together with the evidence from the coinage itself, appear to emphasise the great fluidity in the political and military situation at the time of the Roman conquest in AD 43, an instability which the Romans doubtless used to their own advantage (Leins 2012, whose analysis includes the large numbers of Iron Age coin finds in the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database: see also Rivet 1977, 161–7). We should note, for example, that the later Iron Age ‘South-Western’ coinage – to which the name of the ‘Durotriges’ has also been applied (Leins 2012, 147–53, figs 4.66 and 4.67) – spreads eastwards as far as the Salisbury Avon and the southern parts of Salisbury Plain for some time prior to the Roman conquest, a pattern complemented by settlements associated with multiple ditch systems and by pottery styles. These distinctive settlement forms, mostly concentrated on Grovely Ridge west of Salisbury, appear to be a very late Iron Age Durotrigan expansion into the Salisbury area (Corney 1989). Other evidence, however, discussed below, suggests that their Roman boundary was well to the west, partly coincident with the Dorset county limit. The fact that these coins continued to be used after the Roman conquest adds to the difficulties in interpreting their distribution (the late Dr Paul Robinson, pers. comm.).

For the purposes of civil administration, the western Roman provinces were subdivided into self-governing civitates,2 run by an ordo, or council, whose members (curiales/decuriones), hereditary from the third century, belonged to the wealthier elite of their particular canton. The main, crucial, function of the council was that of tax collection on behalf of the imperial government. In the later empire the curiales, especially those of more modest means, were finding their obligations increasingly irksome and there was constant imperial legislation to keep them in post (Jones 1964, 724–5, 737–63; for the significance of local affairs, Brown 2012, 20, 64, 358, 378, 490). For Britain we know little of these men. We can, in most cases, identify the capitals of the civitates.3 The Dumnonii occupied the western part of Somerset and Devon and the Cornovii were in Cornwall (Rivet and Smith 1979, 325, the latter probably being a sub-group within the civitas Dumnoniorum). This civitas was centred upon Exeter, Isca Dumnoniorum. Eastern Somerset and Dorset belonged to the Durotriges. In the later Roman period their civitas appears to have been subdivided. Its southern part continued to be focused upon Dorchester, Dorset, Durnovaria (although this name never appears with the suffix Durotrigum, its large size, comparable to that of other civitas capitals, and its walled defences indicate that this was almost certainly its role: Frere 1987, 194). In the north, Lindinis, probably Ilchester, Somerset, appears to have served as the capital, for inscriptions from Hadrian’s Wall refer to the Durotriges Lendinienses (Stevens 1952; Hassall 2010; see also Fulford 2006: other civitates are also thought to have been subdivided, Rivet 1964, passim; Frere 1987, 194; but cf. Bogaers 1967, 233 and Leach 1994, 5). To the Durotriges’ north-east lay the civitas Dobunnorum, based upon Cirencester (Corinium Dobunnorum) in Gloucestershire. The civitas Belgarum was administered from Winchester (Venta Belgarum) in Hampshire, with the civitas Regnorum,4 its capital at Chichester (Noviomagus – ‘the new market’ – Regnorum), Sussex, to the south-east. Finally, the civitas Atrebatum was centred upon Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), now on the county boundary separating Hampshire from Berkshire, and bordered on the east by the civitas Cantiacorum, with its capital at Canterbury (Durovernum Cantiacorum), Kent.

The civitates were themselves divided into pagi, about which little is known. Durocornovium, the Roman name of a settlement on Ermine Street and beside the Dorcan stream (a Brittonic name, that appears in charters as Dorcyn, Dorcan, or Dorternebrok (VCH, Wiltshire, I, ii (1973), 482), a minor tributary of the Cole, which rises at Chiseldon, near Wanborough in north-east Wiltshire, however, appears to mean the ‘fort of the Cornovii’, who perhaps occupied one of these lesser territories, within, as argued below, the civitas Dobunnorum (Rivet and Smith 1979, 350; Gelling 1997, 48; Burnham and Wacher 1990, 160–4). The early Anglo-Saxon regio of the ‘Andovers’ (Andeferas) may also be of some relevance in a discussion of the pagi. The antiquity of this land unit is hinted at by the British place-and river names, and the means of their transfer to the English, at its core. Professor Richard Coates has noted that the Brittonic name ‘Andover’ ‘appears to be a plural form in OE, representing a form like Brit.[ish (pre-Roman or Roman-period Celtic)] *Onnodubrī or Pr[imitive] W[elsh (c. 400-800)] *Ondïßr ‘ash streams’, with reference to the River Anton and an un-named tributary, but perhaps to the area itself too. ‘Translation at the grammatical level is implied, suggesting bilingual contact.’ ‘Anna’ (?PrW *onn, ‘ash-trees’) in Domesday Book subsequently encompassed the nearby Abbot’s Ann, Amport and Little Ann along the Pilhill Brook and may also have originally been applied to a district, not the stream (Coates 1989, 19, 23; for ‘Andover’, cf. Jackson 1953, 285). Attention may also be drawn to the signifi cant Roman settlement (Leucomagus?), just to the east of Andover, at the crossing of the roads from Winchester to Mildenhall (Cunetio) and from Old Sarum (Sorviodunum) to Silchester; it was quite probably the centre of a pagus. The settlement was also at the centre of a notable concentration of villas.5 A Stützarmfibel (supporting-arm brooch), which could have been worn by a Germanic woman of the middle third of the fifth century, was recovered, along with hand-made potsherds, some in a sandy fabric, others in a smooth paste, from one of the latest occupation layers at one of them, at Fullerton.6 In north-west Wiltshire, the first element in the name Pewsham (Forest), immediately south of Chippenham and east of the Wiltshire Avon – it recurs in Pew Hill in Langley Burrell on its west bank and in Pew’s Hill in Slaughterford (Gover et al. 1939, 14), 14 km to the west – derives, it may be noted, from Latin pagus (Breeze 2015). No Roman settlement of consequence, which could have served as its administrative centre (vicus), however, is known within this area.

Direct evidence for the survival of the civitates beyond the Roman period in Britain is limited (Dark 1994a, chap. 4 and passim).7 It may be noted that Patrick, in his Confessio, identifies himself in the traditional Roman manner, that is by reference to his curial status, to his father as decurio and grandfather – his descent (origo) – in a particular civitas (Charles-Edwards 2009, 107).8 The first Vita Sancti Samsonis refers to the continuing contiguity of Dyfed (formerly the civitas of the Demetae; cf. Brown 2012, 503, for the sixth-century Paulinus and his love of his patria, his native Dyfed) and Gwent, the successor of the civitas Silurum, which had been centred upon Caerwent (Venta Silurum), into the seventh century, a boundary later interrupted by the creation of Glywysing (Flobert 1997, I.1 (at 146); Charles-Edwards 2013, 18–19).9 The other Roman civitates in Wales can be shown to have been broken up in a variety of ways and at a variety of dates after the Roman period (Charles-Edwards 2013, 19–21). In England, the reference, in a letter of Sidonius Apollinaris of c. 471, to a Briton, who was ‘ortu Britannum, habitaculo Regiensem’, surely points to the continuing relevance of the civitas Regnorum (Paper 2, n. 53, and see below). Some of the warlords addressed by Gildas in the first half of the sixth century may have ruled territories which were based on the civitates, for Gildas himself wrote (c. 28) of Constantine of Dumnonia, whose kingdom may have approximated to the civitas Dumnoniorum, and of Vortipor of the Demetae (c. 31).

Figure 4 The boundaries of the Roman civitates (Harry Manley)

In France it has long been an academic commonplace that the medieval dioceses, and their constituent pagi, were the direct territorial successors of the Roman civitates (eg. Wightman 1985, 26). However, both the civitates themselves, and the pagi, were often subject to boundary changes over the centuries (eg. Lambert 2000, 159–60, with reference to medieval pagi in Brittany). Even in northern Gaul ‘the basic civitas organization endured into the Merovingian period in ecclesiastical and, to a lesser extent, secular organization’ (MacGeorge 2002, 71). In order to demonstrate continuity between the ancient and medieval limits of any one particular civitas, it is necessary to undertake a precise archaeological, historical, toponymical and topographical survey of its bounds. A study of this kind has been made by Professors Bernard and Roland Delmaire of the civitas Atrebatum in northern Gaul (Delmaire and Delmaire 1990). They have been able to show that its limits are almost identical with those of the bishopric of Arras, and this in an area very close to the limes, which, one might have thought, would have been subject to severe disruption from the third century AD onwards (Paper 2; but see also Delmaire 1996, 73–4, who notes the paucity of late Roman evidence at present available to assess dislocation or otherwise in the region). In Gaul Frankish kings, as it appears from Gregory of Tours, were often closely associated with individual civitates (Charles-Edwards 2013, 315) and they, and other barbarian kings, inherited some aspects of Roman taxation (Wood 1994, 62; cf. Wood 2007, 227–9. Lewis (2000) for a very positive view of continuing role of Gallic civitates). In Britain, however, the tribal suffix survived only for the civitas Cantiacorum (Kent), which points strongly to the loss of the legal significance of the tribal territories (Millett 1990, 223). The similarity in the apparent extent of a number of civitates and that of the successor ‘small shires’ and counties suggests, though, that their recognition as geographical entities was not always altogether lost and that where substantial changes in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The boundaries of the Roman civitates of central southern Britain: some possibilities
• 2 Wessex in the later fourth and fifth centuries, with an appended, numbered, gazetteer of sites datable to the fifth century
• 3.The archaeological evidence for settlement in ‘Berkshire’ and ‘Hampshire’ in the sixth and seventh centuries
• 4 A mid-fifth- to mid-sixth-century bridle-fitting of Mediterranean origin from Breamore, Hampshire, with a discussion of its local context: with Barry Ager: (updated from Eagles and Ager 2004)
• 5 A reconsideration of East Wansdyke; its construction and date – a preliminary note: with Michael J. Allen: (Eagles and Allen 2011)
• 6 Anglo-Saxon presence and culture in Wiltshire c. AD 410–c. AD 700: (updated and edited from Eagles 2001)
• 7 Britons and Saxons (AD 410–c. AD 800) in the Avebury area: (Eagles 2016)
• 8 The Jutes in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight
• 9 The Saxon settlement and takeover of Dorset and the conquest of Somerset
• 10 Augustine’s Oak: (updated and edited from Medieval Archaeology 47 (2003), 176–8)
• 11 The area around Bedwyn in the Anglo-Saxon period: (revised version of Eagles 1997)
• 12 ‘Small shires’ and regiones in Hampshire and the formation of the shires of eastern Wessex: with a contribution from Rosamond Faith: (reproduced from Eagles 2015)
• 13 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Plates