The Romanization of Britain: An Essay in Archaeological Interpretation

The Romanization of Britain was greeted, on first publication, as an innovative study of cultural change and interaction, offering a bold new perspective on Roman Britain based on archaeological evidence. It set out to explore the social dynamics of cultural change from a local perspective by looking at the patterns of interaction between provincial peoples and imperial power. Drawing together a wide range of excavated data as well as textual evidence, it provided a new synthesis of the province whilst offering an alternative way of understanding cultural change in the Roman Empire more widely. Its publication served to catalyse debate, stimulating very considerable discussion and generating a wide variety of responses in a range of publications. This revised edition adds a new introductory essay exploring the genesis of this classic work and reviewing the subsequent debate, while also recalibrating the author’s perspective on cultural change within the wider Roman provinces.