A lot of us would have learned at school that the Romans invaded Britain in AD43 and while
this is true it suggests that this is the beginning of the Roman story in Britain rather
than the culmination of almost a century of Romano British exchange, starting at least
as early as Julius Caesar’s expeditions into Britain in 55 and 54 BC. In this video
curators Julia Farley and Richard Hobbs will discuss five archaeological finds and investigate
Britain before and after the Roman invasion. When we look at the archaeological evidence
from the first century BC we see communities in Southern Britain getting closer and closer
relationships with the Roman world. What I’m standing next to here is a reconstruction
of a burial from the late 1st century BC so perhaps a generation after Caesar's expeditions
into Britain but decades before the conquest. So what are these doing here? These are imports
from northern Italy that have come into Britain. You'll see standing along the back here five
amphorae. Now these are something that we more typically associate with the Roman world
but this burial was actually found at Welwyn Garden City and the reason why the people
might have been importing that material is because they were using connections with Rome
and connections with the Mediterranean to show off their wealth and status. So importing
all of this nice Italian wine to drink and having all of the equipment that you need
and to drink it in something a bit like the Roman style might have been a way to show
how powerful and important and well connected you were. Some of the other objects here that
this man was buried with might have been imported too. One of them is this white flagon here
which might have been used for serving drinks like wine. And another is this silver cup
which is probably used for drinking wine. Right at the front here we have something
that we call a strainer that works a little bit like some teapots that you might have
today which have a strainer behind the spout and this is used for mixing and serving wine.
The wine that they're serving at this time, they might be doing something a bit more like
mulled wine. You're not pouring it straight from the amphora into your glass and drinking
it but you're heating it up with spices and herbs and then pouring it out. You don't necessarily
want to pour those herbs and spices into your glass and so this is probably an imported
Roman vessel but after it arrives in Britain it's been changed and augmented with these
extra little fittings that allow it to be used as a strainer vessel. And the strainer
plate itself that little sieve is decorated with swirling Celtic art design. Many of the
other things in the burial might actually have been made in Britain but they're still
copies of Roman or Gaulish ways of serving up food and drink. The way that you have a
fabulous dinner party in late 1st century BC Britain is to eat and drink like the Romans
do. And that's how people are showing off their connections. So what are the local people
of Britain trading for all of these wonderful imported Roman goods and this northern Italian
wine? We have some accounts from the classical authors Roman writers who tell us that things
like corn and hunting dogs and even slaves are being exported from Britain but the Romans
are also aware clearly that Britain is very rich in natural resources things like metals,
tin and lead. And it may be a desire to get their hands more directly on some of those
natural resources that it causes some of the reasons for the actual boots on the ground
conquest of AD43. So this lead ingot bears a stamped inscription which tells us two things.
Firstly that the ingot is derived from lead found in Britain and secondly that it belongs
to the emperor Nero. Mineral resources were one of the key reasons why the Romans invaded
Britain in the first place because it was known to have good mineral resources and it's
no accident that within 10 years of the invasion AD43, the Roman army was in control of the
Mendips lead mines which are around the area of Bristol in the West country. Lead was also
found in the Pennines and the peat district and parts of Wales. Lead was obviously important
in its in its own right as a mineral resource for example it was used for lead pipes, it
was also used to make objects like a tableware but also lead was found with silver and analysis
of this particular ingot has shown that the silver had been extracted during the production
process so the silver obviously was of huge importance as the lead itself. This lead pig
also bears another inscription which is the name C Nipius Ascanius. Now he was someone
who would have been a lessee, someone basically licensed to do mining. This was one way in
which the Roman administration operated they, basically granted licenses to people to extract
metals and he would have been in charge of no doubt a number of slaves who would have
done the mining. It was very unpleasant and dangerous work and there was a high mortality
rate in any of the mining regions in the Roman Empire. To be sent to the mines was certainly
something considered to be a punishment. Interestingly this particular individual is later named
on another lead pig found in Wales during the time of Vespasian, which is a little bit
later so it shows that he was still operating as a lessee later on during this period. Now
this particular ingot weighs a hefty 73.5 kilograms now this equates exactly to 230
Roman pounds. One of the key legacies of the Roman occupation of Britain and indeed the
rest of the Empire is the standardization of weights and measures and things like coins
and metals and so on are regularly found to conform to quite precise units of measurement.
Now another important metal that Britain was known for was tin, particularly from the West
country for example in Cornwall. Tin was very important because it was one of the main components
of bronze which is an alloy of tin and copper. Why was it so important? Well bronze was one
of the key metals used for the Roman military to make things like arms and armour and so
that's why the tin resources of Britain were so important to the Romans. This is the Meyrick
helmet. It was probably found somewhere in northern Britain and if you look at it closely
it's actually got some very interesting patterns and designs and decoration. We often think
of helmets as being quite a functional piece of armour but they're doing a lot more than
that as well. If you look at the very top of the helmet you can see a mark and a hole
where once there would have been a crest or perhaps a plume something like that and down
the side we see areas where there were once cheek pieces fixed there which have there
the beginnings of some swirling decoration that we can see. And around what's actually
the back of the helmet, this is the neck guard you're looking at what might be intended to
look a little bit like a carry handle for this helmet but is in fact just a little piece
of repousse decoration picked out in the sheet of the helmet neck guard with beautiful swirling
designs. Now the form of this helmet is very Roman. Roman legionaries and auxiliaries in
the first century AD would all have been wearing helmets just like this one but the decoration
isn't Roman at all. The decoration with these swirling designs and insets of red glass where
you see those textured areas on the back of the helmet that's where red glass insets would
have been fixed on. These are elements of design that are really calling on pre-Roman
British art what today we call Celtic art. So whoever commissioned this helmet or had
it made or had it decorated has chosen a helmet that's a Roman form but decorated with much
more iron age pre-Roman style British art. And that perhaps makes us wonder who might
have been wearing and using a helmet like this. Is this somebody from the Roman army?
Is this an indigenous Briton? There's another little clue on the helmet that might help
us answer that question and if we look at the side and towards the right hand side of
the back of the helmet, there is a little engraved Roman numeral ‘two’. And so that
implies that somebody who was using this helmet perhaps you know labelling it is this the
equivalent if several people have similar helmets of having the name tag in your clothes
when you're at school. It's a way of marking out this particular helmet and obviously there's
an element of perhaps literacy or at least numeracy there with whoever's done this and
that's pointing us a little bit more towards the Roman world perhaps. So is this a helmet
that's being worn by a Roman legionary or a Roman auxiliary perhaps, but if it is they
have commissioned it in a very local British style and this is helping us to answer some
of these questions that we have I think when we wonder about you know what people were
wearing into battle in the conquest of Britain or in something like the Boudiccan revolt
where we have people on the Roman military side fighting people on the indigenous British
side and the kit that they were wearing and using might actually have been quite similar.
And that's partly because military kit is quite widely shared at this time and that
people tend to see things and pick up on ideas and designs. It's the kind of technology that
travels quite far and quite fast but also people are taking inspiration from what they
see. If this is a Roman legionary then this is somebody they're serving in the province
of Britannia and they want to emphasize that in their battle kit they're not trying to
look distinctively Roman non-British they're trying to actually look like they belong in
the province of Britannia and this is part of what we see in the first century AD and
beyond that we're not looking at Britain just becoming Roman like there's some kind of cookie-cutter
template for what it is to be Roman we're actually looking at the people of Rome and
Britain many of whom will never have been to Rome creating a new way to be a new kind
of identity which is distinctively Romano British and draws on elements from the Mediterranean
world from other parts of the Roman empire but also on elements from Britain and traditions
in Britain from the pre-Roman time as well. This tombstone was found in Lincoln and is
one of the earliest known from Roman Britain. It commemorates a soldier by the name of Gaius
Suafeius and he was a soldier in the ninth legion his spanner we learned that Gaius Suafeius
originated from Irakleia which is in modern-day Macedonia. We learned that Gaius Suafeius
died at the age of 40 after 22 years service. Given that he died around about AD60 he may
have been caught up in the events known as the Boudiccan revolt. Now this was the only
really major uprising against Roman rule. This is one of the earliest tombstones known
from Britain it's also part of what we call the epigraphic habit which is basically writing
on stone writing on monuments and recording important details obviously in Latin. And
one of the biggest legacies of the Roman period in Britain is of course writing itself. There
is very little writing that we get before the Roman period the only writing that we
have in the Iron age the period that precedes it is on some iron age coins. After the boots
on the ground Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43 we see some really dramatic changes
in what's happening in southern Britain and these would have had a big impact on local
populations there. So we know already that some of these people had had quite close connections
with the Roman world even before the actual conquest but that had always been on their
terms. We're talking about trade and exchange and people traveling and moving around. What
happens after the military annexation of Britain is really different and we see this perhaps
most clearly in Colchester. Colchester had previously been an indigenous capital called
Camulodunum and this was an important place where the local elites lived and ruled from
but after the invasion a Roman city is instead set up on this site and this is what's called
a Colonia. So after the Romans conqueror a province they settle it in part with veterans
and this is what we see at the Colonia of Colchester. We know there are a lot of veterans
living here and they also will have been bringing their families with them perhaps settling
down perhaps getting married starting to transition into normal civilian life, but what we're
seeing in terms of the architecture of Colchester is like nothing that the indigenous inhabitants
of Britain would ever have seen before. In pre-Roman Britain people are living mostly
in thatched wooden round houses they live in fairly small villages or perhaps slightly
larger settlements sometimes with earthworks like hillfort. But what we're looking at here
really is a proper Roman town. It has stone-built architecture and it also has a large temple
to the deified emperor Claudius who's now died. And this is something which would just
have looked completely out of place to the indigenous inhabitants of Britain. And Tacitus
writing about it later calls it an ‘alien stronghold of Roman rule’ describing how
it must have looked to the local people. So there are going to be tensions here and this
really comes to a boil at the time of the Boudiccan revolt. After Boudicca starts rallying
her troops and this is in AD 60 or 61 she sets out to make a mark against the Romans
and she chooses to do this by attacking this ‘blatant stronghold of alien rule’ at
Colchester. So her forces rise on the Colonia and raise it to the ground. There's evidence
of deliberate fire setting and burning and the whole city is decimated. Archaeologically
we can start to see traces of this in places like Colchester and later London which Boudicca
attacks later. And we see something called the destruction layer. This is a thick black
layer of soil from the burning of these cities. In Colchester excavations in 2014 we're looking
at this destruction layer in Fenwicks the department store the foundation's there and
immediately under that destruction layer just below this area of burning they found a horde
of jewellery and this is now known as the Fenwick Horde When you look at this you'll
see really two different sets of materials. So we've got some gold jewellery rings earrings
and bracelets and these would have belonged to a woman and we also have some silver jewellery
specifically some arm rings or armuline and these would have belonged to a man. We think
that this is the jewellery the kind of you know joint treasure if you like of a Roman
couple probably a man and wife who lived in Colchester at the time of the Boudiccan revolt
and they have taken their most treasured their most valuable possessions and they've buried
them in the floorboards probably of their house or just tuck them away somewhere to
keep them safe probably then going to the temple or seeking safety somewhere else. They
never come back to collect these objects we can't say for certain what happened to them
of course but it's most likely that they died in the temple probably and certainly as a
result of the Boudiccan destruction of Colchester. So what do we know about these people we can
look at the armlets that would have belonged to the man probably a veteran and start to
see some of the designs here. This is the equivalent of getting a medal in the Roman
army. These are probably awarded for bravery so not everybody would have had these. There's
a suggestion here possibly that this man would have risen above just the rank of legionary
that he might be quite important the most complex one of these hinged sections does
have a specific decorative design and that emphasizes this military connection and we
see here in the central panel the figure of Jupiter flanked by Victory with an obvious
military connection and also Fortuna the goddess of fortune or good luck and that's a common
military motif around the sides is a hunting scene with panthers which is another probably
you know kind of masculine connotation here. What about the other jewellery what about
this this gold jewellery? These would have belonged to a woman and the closest parallels
for a lot of these actually come not from anywhere else in Britain but from Pompeii
and there are depictions and jewellery from that first century AD Italian world of women
wearing very similar jewellery to this so either this is a woman who wants to dress
like she's Italian and from the Mediterranean or most simply and straightforwardly this
might be the Italian wife who's moved to Britain of this veteran.
To find out more about the Roman empire during the reign of Nero check out our latest exhibition
Nero the man behind the myth. Details are on your screen now