Land
of the Iceni: The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia. Edited by John Davies
and Tom Williamson.
Centre of East Anglian Studies. 1999. 217
pages, 17 photographs, 53 maps and illustrations. ISBN 0-906219-47-7.
This volume is the result of a one-day conference held at the Centre
of East Anglian Studies, University of East Anglia, in 1995. Readers
who are familiar with collections of essays that originate from conference
contributions will recognise that it is often the case that the title
promises more than the book delivers, and 'Land of the Iceni: the Iron
Age in Northern East Anglia' does not deliver a cohesive approach to
the region, or the tribal entity that inhabited it. However, the eclectic
nature of such volumes in general, (including this one) is their principal
strength, allowing a variety of new insights and advances some new approaches
to be surveyed. The overview of on-going work which this volume provides
makes it a valuable contribution to the scholarship of East Anglia,
and each of the contributions has something of interest to add to the
general picture of an area where vigorous scholastic interest is alive
and well.
That said, I would like to consider an issue raised by Land of
the Iceni, and of relevance to all such local studies, that of regionality.
It is a developing trend in archaeology to consider the nature of regional
identity, rather than attempting to interpret areas in the light of
broad national models or hegemonic interpretaive frameworks (e.g. Mattingly
1997 for a good idea of the state of the debate for the Roman period).
The Iron Age has perhaps suffered from this to a greater extent than
some other periods, with broad assumptions about the nature of settlement
derived from few individual sites (like the key role played by Little
Woodbury), though this is common for other periods too. For Roman archaeologists,
the debate about breaking down such monolithic models is well advanced
and the benefits to our understanding of breaking down overarching models
are clear. By looking at the detail of an area, we can begin to see
the detail of how people lived, and how the individuality of such 'sub
regions' was maintained, even amidst the superficially homogenising
environment of Roman Britain. In the Iron Age, where no such homogenising
political entity as the Roman administration existed, such 'regionality'
was, surely, just as significant, and, as the editors of the volume
under review point out (pg 8), Iron Age culture should be studied in
its own regional terms rather than seen as 'pale reflections of a 'typical'
Iron Age represented by Wessex
or Hertfordshire and Essex'. For
a Romanist, taking the view that regional detail is important, such
well considered studies of Iron Age Britain become very important. They
inform our understanding of cultural patterns before the conquest, and,
help us know what to look for beneath the surface of 'Roman' material
culture afterwards. In this aspect the study succeeds admirably, not
only with more general summaries of the archaeological data (Edward
Martin provides a useful summary of the archaeology of Iron Age Suffolk
and Trevor Ashwin for Norfolk, but there also good contributions on
material culture, like coinage (Amanda Chadburn) and pottery (Sarah
Percival). John Davies' contribution entitled 'Patterns, Power and Political
Progress in Iron Age Norfolk' perhaps goes the furthest towards meeting
the stated aim of the volume, to consider the Iceni in their own regional
light, and Hill offers an interesting perspective upon the area, using
the techniques of landscape archaeology to explore the structure of
Iron Age society. As well as all this, Andrew Rogerson provides us with
two parish studies (Barton Bendish and Fransham) and Patricia Wiltshire
and Peter Murphy consider the environment and the agrarian economy.
The approach, however, of considering a region in its own terms,
although accepted in principal, is not carried to its logical conclusion.
If we are to attempt to inject regionality into our understanding of
the past, we have to first establish the nature of that regionality:
we must create it in a meaningful way. It is not my intention here to
consider how identity may be recovered from the archaeological record,
but the first step in that direction must be to consider the nature
of our study area. If we are to consider the Iceni, or anyone else from
the past, where should we start to look?
The basic problem is that of the county study. This is a format
which is common to such work, and is one of the principal vehicles for
generating 'regionality' in archaeology, perhaps because it reflects
the structure of the archaeological profession, and to a large extent
the organisation of our data (people with 'county' wide interests, county
archaeological officers, SMRs organised upon a county by county basis).
Whilst this may be convenient in terms of access and organising our
data, is it a suitable interpretative framework for attempting to understand
the past? The answer is yes, if that period of the past is one where
such county boundaries had relevance to those who inhabited the landscape.
If not, if for example, we are looking at the Iron Age, or the Roman
period, we are simply imposing arbitrary and irregular divisions upon
our data, and this causes two principal problems. Firstly, their familiarity
as divisions, their identity as counties, leads us, I suspect, to transferring,
subconsciously, a little of that identity to the data. In studying,
for example 'Roman Oxfordshire', or 'Prehistoric Derbyshire' we are
in danger of generating a spurious sense of social cohesion and historical
relevance for such study areas, that they do not merit. Worse, by severing
one part of a functioning social landscape from the past from another
part, just because they lie on either side of a modern local government
boundary, might actually obscure our understanding of the data that
we are examining.
A good example of county orientated thinking, and the effect
that it can have, is that of Breckland, discussed in this current volume
(Davies 40 - 41). Here, Davies early on in his paper defines the 'land
of the Iceni' as Norfolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, but
within a few paragraphs the emphasis has changed to 'Iron Age Norfolk',
and the paper proceeds upon this basis. This impacts, upon the way in
which the data are interpreted, most clearly in the case of the western
parts of the county. The concluding parts of Davies paper includes consideration
of the impact of the Roman conquest, and in this context Davies notes
the decline in the political power of west Norfolk from the Iron Age
to the Roman period, citing the Boudican Revolt as a possible reason
for the population to have fallen 'out of favour' with the Roman authorities.
Several issues are raised, purely by the drawing of the study area along
county boundaries - events in the past cannot neatly be contained by
modern administrative boundaries, and one possible explanation of the
decline of Breckland, and in general the area of West Norfolk, is to
be found by casting our net a little wider, and looking into the fens.
The area of the central fens is that around the modern town of
March, and includes the late Iron Age earthwork at Stonea Camp. The
Camp was certainly firmly of 'Icenian' character by the time of the
Roman conquest, the vast majority of IA coins found there being of Icenian
type. One of the main economic activities in this region was the probably
the production of salt, an important activity that could bring great
wealth. As such the central fen islands (otherwise marginal, and of
little direct interest) would have been valuable assets. We can envisage
'raw' salt making its way back into Norfolk and Suffolk, much to the
benefit of the people through whose hands it passed.
This area would thus have remained free of Roman control during
the Client State period, but what about after the annexation of the
Icenian Kingdom? There we see a sudden shift in emphasis, which is illustrated
in both regional communications of the early Roman period, and in the
pottery from the area. The central fens suddenly changes from looking
east, to looking west. The salt industries, once controlled by the Iceni
seem to have then fallen under the control of those living to the west
of the Fens, the Corieltauvi, later, perhaps, being controlled from
the Roman town of Durobrivae. One possible hypothesis to explain this
is that salt, as important to the Romans as the Iron Age Britons, was
placed under the more the reliable control of a tribe that had not taken
part in the revolt (Fincham 2002: 72-73). This explains not only the
rather 'sullen' feeling about the central fens, the people there reluctant
to engaged with Roman culture, but is also of great significance for
Eastern Norfolk. The people here may suddenly have found that any role
that they had had in the salt industry of the fens reduced drastically
to just the salterns in their immediate vicinity on the Norfolk Fen
edge. The early Roman period must have been a lean time for an area
which had been politically important before the conquest.
If the sudden changes in the economy of West Norfolk are coupled
with the equally sudden closure of major ritual centres like Thetford
at around the same time, we have a broad based explanation for the decline
of East Norfolk in the Early Roman period. Major sources of power and
wealth that underpinned the status of the area had been removed. This
illustrates two things, firstly the importance to Roman Archaeologists
of good regional studies of Iron Age Britain, and how they can throw
light upon developments in early Roman Britain. More importantly, it
demonstrates, simply by way of being an example, how distorting 'county'
based studies can be. Light is only thrown upon the full picture by
flexibly considering the changing boundaries of what the Iceni may have
considered to be their 'land'. To do otherwise is to allow the parameters
of our studies to be driven by mechanistic elements of our data collection,
writing county studies, because our data is collected by county.
The problem may also be seen to descend to a lower level, with
the format of the Parish study. Much data from the fens (principally
that collected by the Fenland Survey) is in this form, but the format
is extended to Norfolk in the current study with Rogerson's 'Arable
and Pasture in Two Norfolk Parishes: Barton Bendish and Fransham in
the Iron Age'. The issues here are by now well rehearsed, but I will
simply note that all the failings of county studies are inherent in
parish studies for any period other than for which the parish had meaning:
principally the medieval. To talk in terms of a 'parish' in the Iron
Age is anachronistic. It may be argued that these are simply convenient
sample areas, but if data is to divided arbitrarily, good sampling practice
surely dictates that these areas should be comparable - say, of the
same size and shape, Fenland in Roman Times (Phillips 1970) being a
good example of this, using a grid based upon that of the ordinance
survey to organise and discuss the data.
In conclusion, we might note that if we are to attempt to understand
regionality in the past the first step must be an attempt to understand
something of the social structure of a region. In effect we must ask:
'what would some one living at the time under scrutiny have understood
as their community?' and then base a study area upon that understanding.
Such understandings will always be uncertain, and open to debate, but
in that way we are at least making the effort to understand the landscape
in the terms of the people who inhabited it, and in that way have a
fighting chance of understanding how they related to their surroundings.
If we are to study, for example, 'the land of the Iceni', we must determine,
as best we can, what geographical area we are looking at, and then base
our study area upon that - not the nearest approximate county.
These issues are generic - and this is a criticism levelled not
at this study specifically, but the whole genre. It is also a criticism
which should not be seen as invalidating the work presented in this
volume, and those like it. As mentioned at the outset, Land of the Iceni
contains much information which is useful. At a broader level, it presents,
as conference volumes often tend to do, a snapshot of on-going research,
allowing the reader to quickly gain a sense of which issues are currently
seen as important, and where work is currently being conducted. The
book is well produced and presented, and contains many interesting maps,
diagrams and photographs. It is a must for anyone interested in the
region, and will appeal to both the professional and more casual reader.
References:
Fincham, G., 2002. Landscapes of Imperialism:
Roman and native interaction in the East Anglian Fenland. Oxford: BAR,
British Series 338.
Mattingly, D.J., 1997. "Dialogues of Power and Experience in the
Roman Empire." In Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: power, discourse,
and discrepant experience in the Roman Empire, ed. D.J. Mattingly. Journal
of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series, no. 23: pp 7-26.
Phillips, C.W. (ed), 1970. The Fenland in
Roman Times: studies of a major area of peasant colonization with a
gazetteer covering all known sites and finds. London: Royal Geographical
Society, Research Series No. 5.
Garrick Fincham.
Review Submitted: October 2002
The views expressed
in this review are not necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews
Editor.
|