Towns in Roman Britain

by Julian Bennett

Many of Britain's towns and cities originated in the Roman period, established as part of a systematic programme to urbanise the island. Why imperial Rome initiated this programme is the first of many topics examined in the third edition of this popular introduction to the towns of Roman Britain. Written for the interested amateur and undergraduate student, this book assumes no specialist knowledge of the instead, it explains the terminology and concepts to be found in other more detailed works, especially those concerned with how Roman towns were organised and administered. The principal purpose of the book, however, is to explain how the towns of Roman Britain appeared and functioned, and what happened to them during the four centuries of Roman rule.

Genres: Archaeology

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Dr. Julian Bennett was a British archaeologist.
After leaving secondary school, Dr. Julian Bennett worked as a freelance archaeologist in England and Germany, before entering the University of Durham as a mature student where he graduated with a BA (Hons) in Archaeology in 1978. After preliminary graduate study at Newcastle University, he was appointed an Excavations Director for English Heritage, continuing with part-time graduate studies to eventually be awarded his PhD in 1991. The title of his PhD thesis was The Setting, Development and Function of the Hadrianic Frontier in Britain. From 1985 to 1995, Bennett worked for a New York travel company, guiding for institutions such as the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and working as Tour Leader and Archaeological Guide Lecturer on boat cruises around Europe and Scandinavia, the Mediterranean World, and South America.
In 1995 Bennett became a professor at Bilkent University in Ankara. His areas of expertise were: provincial and military Roman archeology, late Roman and Byzantine architecture in Turkey, the Roman Empire and the Roman army and the study of Late Antique and Medieval architecture. He published numerous monographs and articles on various aspects of Roman and Medieval Britain and the Roman army, and was the author of two books, Towns in Roman Britain (1980) and Trajan. Optimus Princeps. A Life And Times (1997). The latter has been translated into Romanian and Russian.
Bennett's fieldwork experience extended from rural and urban salvage excavations in Britain, Romania, and Germany to a later research project, studying the architecture of the Moldavian and Ottoman castle of Belgorod-Akkerman, in Ukraine. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2002, becoming only the third person in Turkey to receive that distinction. Bennett appeared in many TV documentaries for the BBC, The History Channel and National Geographic.

Reviews

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dedicating this summer to Roman Britain, and highly spooked by how quickly its cities were dismantled and how little was left, something this short book registers well.

[Lee Broderick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Shire Archaeology guides are well regarded by British archaeologists for offering concise overviews of specific topics and this one does not disappoint.

I recently read Roman Britain and expressed concern that the text of that book had remained unchanged between initial publication in 1984 and its printing in 2002. This book, too, was published in 1984 (although the first edition was issued in 1980) and this (3rd) edition published in 2002. In his introduction, the author is at pains to point out that the book has been completely re-written owing to the archaeological research that took place between those dates.

Short chapters cover the process of urbanisation as Roman politik, public buildings, private residences, industry, religion and urban decay. I would have liked to have seen more about diet, environment and lifestyle, but such omissions probably reflect the interests of Roman archaeologists rather than any decision on behalf of the author.