Roman Britain

Two thousand years ago, the Romans sought to absorb into their empire what they regarded as a remote, almost mythical island on the very edge of the known world Britain. The expeditions of Julius Caesar and the invasion of ad 43 brought fundamental and lasting changes to the island. Not least among these was a pantheon of new Classical deities and religious systems, along with a clutch of exotic eastern cults including Christianity. But what of Britannia and her own home-grown deities? What cults and cosmologies did the Romans encounter and how did they in turn react to them? Under Roman rule, the old gods were challenged, adopted, adapted, absorbed and re-configured.

"Water and Roman Urbanism" provides an innovative archaeological perspective on the Roman urban experience in Britain through its focus on the cultural implications of the crucial relationship between water and settlement and the important development of this relationship over time.