It has long been recognized that the landscape of Britain is one of the 'richest historical records we possess', but just how old is it? The Fields of Britannia is the first book to explore how far the countryside of Roman Britain has survived in use through to the present day, shaping the character of our modern countryside. Commencing with a discussion of the differing views of what happened to the landscape at the end of Roman Britain, the volume then brings together the results from hundreds of archaeological excavations and palaeoenvironmental investigations in order to map patterns of land-use across Roman and early medieval Britain. In compiling such extensive data, the volume is able to reconstruct regional variations in Romano-British and early medieval land-use using pollen, animal bones, and charred cereal grains to demonstrate that agricultural regimes varied considerably and were heavily influenced by underlying geology. We are shown that, in the fifth and sixth centuries, there was a shift away from intensive farming but very few areas of the landscape were abandoned completely. What is revealed is a surprising degree of continuity: the Roman Empire may have collapsed, but British farmers carried on regardless, and the result is that now, across large parts of Britain, many of these Roman field systems are still in use.

About the Author
Stephen Rippon is Professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Exeter. Chris Smart is an Associate Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter. Ben Pears is an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Exeter.

Reviews
[an] important new book ... I have no hesitation from an academice viewpoint in recommending it to students of landscape archaeology, as I suspect it will have quite a significant effect on the way we read the post-Roman landscape in the future. * Robert Waterhouse, Current Archaeology *
excellent and valuable piece of research * Andrew Fleming, Antiquity *
contributes solid support for the growing swell of research which suggests that most changes to the early medieval landscape represented evolution and innovation from a consistently Romano- British base. * Susan Oosthuizen, Medieval Archaeology *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199645824
Author Stephen Rippon
Format Hardback
Page Count 472
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 163mm * 33mm