Water and Urbanism in Roman Britain : Hybridity and Identity

The establishment of large-scale water infrastructure is a defining aspect of the process of urbanisation. In places like Britain, the Roman period represents the first introduction of features that can be recognised and paralleled to our modern water networks. Writers have regularly cast these innovations as markers of a uniform Roman identity spreading throughout the Empire, and bringing with it a familiar, modern, sense of what constitutes civilised urban living. However, this is a view that has often neglected to explain how such developments were connected to the important symbolic and ritual traditions of waterscapes in Iron Age Britain. Water and Urbanism in Roman Britain argues that the creation of Roman water infrastructure forged a meaningful entanglement between the process of urbanisation and significant local landscape contexts. As a result, it suggests that archetypal Roman urban water features were often more related to an active expression of local hybrid identities, rather than alignment to an incoming continental ideal. By questioning the familiarity of these aspects of the ancient urban form, we can move away from the unhelpful idea that Roman precedent is a central tenet of the current unsustainable relationship between water and our modern cities. This monograph will be of interest to academics and students studying aspects of Roman water management, urbanisation in Roman Britain, and theoretical approaches to landscape. It will also appeal to those working more generally on past human interactions with the natural world. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgements 1 Water and urbanism Introduction Water and twentieth-centuryapproaches to Roman urbanism Justifying water networks Modern water supply and the urban setting The strange water of prehistoric temperate Europe Water and hybrid urban identity 2 Hybridity in classical accounts of urban water Meaning-ladenRoman water An entangled source Building rivers: hybrid water flow The hybrid baths Hybrid urban water networks Notes 3 Water in Roman Britain Establishing a context for water Lincoln (Lindum Colonia) St Albans (Verulamium) London (Londinium) Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) Dorchester (Durnovaria) Wroxeter (Viroconium) Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum) Colchester (Camulodunum/Colonia Claudia Victricensis) Chichester (Noviomagus) Winchester (Venta Belgarum) Canterbury (Durovernum) Cirencester (Corinium) York (Eboracum) Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) Caerwent (Venta Silurum) Other towns Manipulating urban identities: multidimensional approaches to water supply Notes 4 The value of water and new approaches to urban space Water and hybridity in the Mediterranean Hybrid motivations and functions for water supply in Britain Stranger things: defamiliarising Roman urbanism in Britain Changing environmental conditions and urban waterscapes Water and the identity of our urban future Conclusions Note References Index