353, 367, or 357? Splitting the Difference or Taking a New Approach?Author(s): Richard ReeceSource: Britannia, Vol. 25 (1994), pp. 236-238Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/527003 .

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236 NOTES

All three are divided horizontally and vertically by herringbone bands into the same number of similarly- proportioned panels ad panels and bear related roundel decoration. There are small differences - the herringbone bands of the 1971 tank are narrower, the roundels of the 1939 tank are more domed, and on both the later finds the rims are everted above cable rather than over herringbone - but all three tanks are clearly from the same workshop. The most significant difference is that the later finds both carry Christian symbols: the 1971 tank bears a chi-rho in the centre panel of both front and back, while the 1939 tank bears on one side a chi-rho and on the other a chi-rho flanked by reversed alpha and omega. As with the plain vertical strip decorating the tank from Burwell,129 the significance of the 1725 tank's A-motif cannot be ascertained: it seems unlikely to denote a measure, and may well be purely decorative, but is certainly not in the repertoire of Christian symbols.

The 1939 and 1971 tanks were both found in Horselands Field, the former 150 yds/137 m from a Roman villa site, the latter associated with a late Roman inhumation cemetery, but the findspot of the 1725 vessel, apart from being on eighteenth-century arable land, cannot be established. Rivets inside both the central and inner left back panels indicate wear and repair in antiquity, but all that has been traced of the tank's history either before or after Salmon's account is that it was exhibited in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge for an unspecified period until it was deposited in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1914.130 Nor has anything further been discovered about the treasure to which Salmon referred: while it might, of course, have been apocryphal, it is interesting that no other Romano-British tank has been reported to contain anything of value and that most appear to have been damaged, some deliberately, in antiquity. While pairs of decorated tanks are now known from several findspots, the presence of at least three tanks in one small settlement, all made in the same workshop in the same period, two bearing unambiguously Christian motifs while the third apparently lacks any religious symbolism but may have contained a treasure, raises more questions about the function of Romano-British lead tanks than the rediscovery of the lost Icklingham vessel has answered.131

Department of Archaeology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

353, 367, or 357? Splitting the Difference or Taking a New Approach? Richard Reece writes: In a recent volume of this journal Professor Frend published an article which convinced me of the soundness of its main message, while leaving me unconvinced of the validity of each of its constituent arguments.132 His basic point was that Romano-British Christianity flourished like its Empire-wide relations during the early fourth century, but, by the end of the century, was failing sadly.

He tried to explain the change in fortunes by citing the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367. My objection to the application of such a historical snippet to explain the ills of later Roman Britain has, up to now, been four-fold. I object to the 'extractive' use of historical sources, the selection of details from historical sources to prove points of Romano-British history when other details point in different directions. I object to the glorification of the very few historical snippets which do mention Britain, the use of the very few remaining references, and the forcible attachment of any and every event in Roman Britain to these fortuitous survivals from a once much more coherent historical narrative. I object to the application of historical references which deal mainly with concepts being tied to material events such as the building or taking down of stone walls; I find it marginally more likely that a Roman villa was dismantled after a normal brutal business take-over (usually unrecorded) than after the confiscation of an

129 C.J. Guy, PCAS lxviii (1978), 1-4. 130 University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 3oth Annual Report of the Antiquarian

Committee to the Senate (1915), 18. I am very grateful to Mr R.R. Milne, Sub-Librarian of Trinity College, for

searching the Library's records on my behalf. 131 1 am very grateful to Steven Plunkett and Catherine Johns for making available to me the records of the 197 I and

1939 tanks respectively, and in particular to Robin Boast for not only giving me access to both the 1725 tank and its records, but also for arranging for it to be manoeuvred out of storage in order to be photographed.

132 W.H.C. Frend, Britannia xxiii (1992), 120-31.

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NOTES 237

estate by the emperor (sometimes recorded). The written sources deal with ideas and political and military events which rarely should be expected to show up in the material record. My final objection is usually a matter of dispute as to whether the material cited in order to press an archaeological event towards a historical date is either relevant or appropriate. But the point of this note is not to develop old arguments; it is to thank Professor Frend for showing me that not only is the use of such snippets wrong, but all the objections which have been made against the practice to date are equally wrong. We are simply going about things the wrong way, whether historicists or materialists.

Our former practices have used written sources to set up historical points of explanation; these have then been severely criticized and if the criticism has been judged valid, not only the explanation, but the event has been forgotten. It is as if any material event which cannot be tied to a historical snippet or date did not happen. Well, we have to admit that it happened, but it was no more than a local event with no wider implications. If a fire in a villa could not be attributed to the dreadful events of 367 then it was not part of a provincial event, but due to a drunken brawl which knocked a lighted candle into the straw.

Frend quoted, as evidence of the 367 blow to Christianity, the Silchester church and the Water Newton hoard of silver plate.133 The actual coin evidence for the end of the Silchester church, when taken at face value, suggests desertion in, or by 360 at the latest.134 I still find it strange that I feel I have to give the warning that this direct use of the evidence is controversial. The burial of the Christian hoard of silver plate at Water Newton is not itself dated, but there is another hoard from the same site, of gold and silver coins which is very closely dated to the 350s.135 The changes in the coinage at about that time are such that it would be almost impossible to keep that hoard open and available for burial until the troubles of 367.

Frend provided two suggestions which did not fit with 367, but could be made to fit with 357, and a word is needed for the introduction of yet another date to which to attach fourth-century disasters. 356 or 357 seem to be years of vital change for the Roman coinage, though this seldom makes strong waves in the commentaries.136 The actual denominations in use for silver and gold did not change, and the bronze coinage continued its changeable course. But, we now know from chemical analysis that most bronze struck after 357 does not have the small amount of silver which had been the previous basis for its face value. When silver was withdrawn from the bronze coinage both pure silver and good gold were minted, or distributed, in much greater quantities than had been the case for the previous fifty years. A major change took place in or around 356 in the whole business of minting coins, distributing them, using them, and losing them. The structure of the coin-using economy went on to a new footing.

If the great change in economics which belonged to 357 was the prime cause of late fourth-century troubles, then it would take time to cause hardship, desertion of land, demolition of villas, weakening of frontier posts, invasions either due to weakness, or plunderable prosperity. There may well have been something at work, but it was a process, not an event.

A fire in a villa may be Disaster in 367, or it may be a drunken brawl; but if the material evidence is even one year too late, then the historical event is cancelled out and the drunken brawl becomes more likely. Our fault has been to avoid the aggregation of material events. Ten Roman villas with fires dated severally, but conclusively to 370 at the earliest cannot belong to events of 367. Taken one by one the drunken brawl wins as an explanation, yet taken together it is even less likely as a constant recurring event than 367. But there would clearly be a process at work.

I think that something is happening in the fourth century in Roman Britain which is changing religions, towns, villas, holdings of gold and silver, even the army. But the recognition of a process at work sets me free from the worry about gnat-bites from Paul the Chain, or the Picts and Scots, and fits such things into their proper place, as elements and enablers caught up in economic, social, political or ethnic changes far beyond their comprehension or control.

I suspect that there will be two types of reaction to these suggestions. One will welcome the suggestion of moving from the study of discrete events to the study of processes; the other will try to avoid the issue

133 Frend, op. cit. (note 132), 130, 124. 134 R. Reece, My Roman Britain (1989), 130-1; S.S. Frere, 'The Silchester Church', Archaeologia cv (0975),

277-302. 135 C. Johns and R.A.G. Carson, 'The Water Newton Hoard', Durobrivae iii (1975), 10-12. 136 R. Reece, Coinage in Roman Britain (1987), 20-I.

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238 NOTES

completely by saying that we have all been aware of processes at work in later Roman Britain for years, and that such assumptions hardly need making explicit. Yes, of course we have all been aware of processes at work; but it is certainly not true to say that the study of Roman Britain is at present based on the study of processes. While at the beginning of Roman Britain, the process of Romanization may be catching on, the end is still seen very much as a set of events - or non-events.

The change that I am suggesting is to try to gather information on events so that there is a bank of observations on which ideas about processes can be constructed, and against which they can be tested. At first sight it would be good to include both written and material information, provided it is accepted that a written source is only evidence of what its writer was thinking rather than what actually happened. But we are dealing with Roman Britain, so we want from written sources what people in Roman Britain were thinking about events. What Ammianus Marcellinus wrote about Roman Britain is excellent evidence for Roman historiography, but probably totally irrelevant to our matter in hand. So we are limited to material observations.

Each archaeological event therefore ceases to be evidence of a known historical event, and becomes a building block in its own right which can help to form the materially based picture on which ideas about long-term trends may be based. I could re-state this argument in a more philosophical way; but I prefer to leave it in simple (or simplistic?) English, even at the risk of being dismissed as 'totally untheorized'.

The elements of change in the fourth century which I think need attention and consolidation are fairly well known. Frend has put forward a convincing case for changes in Christianity.137 Lewis had much earlier outlined ideas about changes in pagan temples and differential changes to pagan religion in the town and the countryside.138 I attacked towns in theory,139 and now Neil Faulkner is demolishing them in fourth-century detail.140 Villas have usually been raided for specific purposes,141 though Tamara Lewit has approached them with a more open mind.'42 Change in the use and loss of coins on different types of site has recently thrown up ideas on the fourth century,143 and Going has brought pottery quantitatively into the picture.144 The size,145 accommodation and disposition of the army have recently been under scrutiny,146 though smaller settlements seem to remain neglected.

In all these areas changes have been noted, but there has almost always been an attempt to attach them to single historical events. Criticism of the material basis of dating is so easy that they often end up floating. This, as far as historical dates go is exactly the right result. But the changes and trends can be related to one another, if not completely tied down, through the associated material. Pots, coins and brooches can give indications of date brackets rather than dates. Similar material associations suggest similar date brackets. If we cease to worry about the year in which an event happened and start to concern ourselves more with the date bracket within which certain changes took effect we might start to make better sense of the present muddle.

Although I have no idea at present what was happening in Britain in the fourth century, I now feel much more freedom to try to find out.

Institute of Archaeology, University College London

137 Frend, op. cit. (note 132). 138 M.J.T. Lewis, Temples in Roman Britain (1966). 139 R. Reece, 'Town and country; the end of Roman Britain', World Archaeology xii/i (I980), 77-92. 140 N. Faulkner, 'Buildings in Colchester', Oxford Journ. Arch., 13/I (March, 1994), 93-120. 141 G. Webster, 'The future of villa studies', in A.L.F. Rivet (ed.), The Roman Villa in Britain (1969), 217-49. 142 T. Lewit, Agricultural Production in the Roman Economy 200-400, BAR Int 568 (1991). 143 R. Reece, 'British sites and their Roman coins', Antiquity 65/257 (December 1993), 65/257 (December, 1993), 863-9. 144 C. Going, 'Economic long waves in the Roman Period?', Oxford Journ. Arch. xi/i (1991), 93-117. 145 S. James, 'Britain and the late Roman army', in T.F.C. Blagg and A.C. King (eds), Military and Civilian in

Roman Britain, BAR 136 (1984), 161-86. 146 D.A. Welsby, The Roman Military Defence of the British Provinces in its Later Phases, BAR i o0 (1982).

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