The Trading and Consumption of Roman Glass in Britain 43-500CE by David Lindsay Marsh offers careful and extensive coverage of the place of glass in Roman Britain during its occupation and beyond. It considers the Romano-British economy, the realities of transport in the ancient world, and the differing roles of settlements within the province. It also collates glass data from a wide range of archaeological reports and organises them into typologies. The volume elucidates the evidence for domestic glass manufacture in the province, demonstrating that it was small-scale and largely relied on imports of raw glass.
This volume is a welcome addition to the broader research environment concerning the economy and logistics of Roman Britain; crucially, it addresses glass sherds as its primary focus, a relatively understudied aspect of material culture despite their presence in so many archaeological sites and their reports. Through collating and studying glass fragment data from archaeological reports, Marsh is able to use glass to investigate wider trends in the economy, transport, and glass industry. This is well-placed within the broader research environment concerning the economy and logistics of Roman Britain. Relatively recent projects such as the Rural Settlement of Roman Britain series (Allen et al. 2016, 2017, 2018) offered much to the field, yet it has now been a decade since the first volume of this project, making Marsh’s work a valuable addition to the research corpus.
Marsh lays out the method, data, its presentation, and the knowledge gained carefully; his arguments closely follow the data as it is presented. He details a typology framework and organises glass into a hierarchy, loosely based on whether the vessel would have been open or closed and secondary aspects such as colour, decorations, and manufacturing marks. Marsh then deals with taphonomy, an important aspect to cover to help contextualise the glass fragments. Indeed, Marsh utilises this approach to address potential biases in disposal methods, the object’s fragility, the size of the excavated area and methods employed, and the occupancy period of the site in antiquity. The statistical analyses are clearly laid out, consisting of quantitative and qualitative analyses, comparative proportional analysis, and correspondence analysis. This data is presented and assessed in the subsequent chapter. The figures for the relative cost of transport, however, were taken from Greene (1986), a rather dated work. These figures also group all land transport as a single entity, rather than a collection of methods along various different quality roads and tracks; a pack mule on a gravel track, for example, would entail different costs and capabilities than an ox-drawn cart. This is more problematic in the case of Britain, as Greene’s figures are approximations for the whole empire. It is still broadly applicable that sea and river transport would be cheaper than land, but more nuance would be welcome; it would be useful to consider whether military demand and state-subsidised transport costs could have reduced the relative cost of some land journeys, and whether such differences are detectable in the glass assemblages.
The work is arranged into seven chapters. An introductory literature review succinctly lays out the aims of the study and the current understanding of the glass industry and Romano-British economy. Marsh considers vessel glass only and outlines three analytical techniques that were used: comparative proportional qualitative analysis, correspondence analysis, and a ranking system of site scores of his own creation. This section could perhaps benefit from increased use of more recent literature regarding the Roman economy, with much of the referenced works dating to before 1990. Chapter 3 is the Methodology, in which Marsh outlines the data and statistical analyses being used in detail. Chapter 4 is the largest, laying out the data collected; it is rich in tables illustrating the data, with a small selection of maps. Chapter 5 deals with the characteristics of the profiles of these site categories, introducing Marsh’s scoring system to compare glass and its distribution between sites. Chapter 6 uses this scoring system to investigate the thematic goal of the book: the trading and consumption of the glass and the capability of the industry to make, move and trade glass throughout the province. It addresses regional distribution patterns and explores why these might have existed, with accompanying graphs and maps. The chapter then deals with proposed transport routes and considerations of relative costs, concluding that coastal sea shipping was the cheapest, followed by riverine transport, and road transport. In summary, Marsh argues that glass demonstrates that large cities were centres of trade, with military sites also attracting large quantities of glass as well as civilian sites connected to the military supply network. The final chapter deals with conclusions drawn from the previous chapters, in which the research questions outlined in the introduction are returned to. Conclusions about the Romano-British economy are covered as well as the utility of glass as a source of insight into Roman Britain, its economy, and its people. Five appendices close the book, complementing the previous chapters. The book’s content is accompanied by 61 figures (of which 12 are maps) and 112 tables; the appendices contain 7 figures and 5 tables. An extensive bibliography rounds out the work.
A robust collection and cataloguing of data support Marsh’s original hypotheses: namely, that the cities, as large bases of urban consumers and well connected to transport networks, attracted the most glass. Despite this, the data also revealed subtle differences between these sites likely relating to differing military versus non-military origins, allowing for social insight into the material culture of their inhabitants. This aspect was also demonstrated by Marsh for shrines, wherein their glass assemblages appeared to reflect local customs and rituals. Industrial towns also had relatively high amounts of glass, but patterns were less clear than with the larger sites, with no consistent range or type compositions. Military fortresses also demonstrated profiles similar to cities, suggesting economic power and well-connected supply lines; fortresses appear to have operated as relatively self-contained micro-economies within the wider provincial economy and landscape. Marsh also convincingly argues that unexpectedly high amounts of glass at the military site of Carlisle reflect a changing purpose of the site, demonstrating the utility of his research in assessing the history of sites, an aspect that can perhaps be expanded by further research on glass. Rural settlements had variable distributions, with some substantially better equipped than others, which Marsh postulates relates to distance from large economic centres. Together, all sites are defined by the range of vessel types and forms, their origins, and associations with trade, rather than specific types of settlement. As such, the origin and location of a given settlement could be more important for its perceived prosperity than any intrinsic status. This has interesting implications for the agency of native Britons and their ability to amass wealth absent of ‘Romanised’ features, especially as Marsh argues that the value of ownership of glass was related to social interaction and identity. Marsh argues that the army supply routes were utilised for the transport of glass vessels, evidenced in similar glass profiles between the large cities and fortress sites. This is well placed within broader coverage on the topic, in which it seems that civilian merchants likely took advantage of state subsidised locatio-conductio supply contracts to move other goods for profit.[1]
Some reference to more recent coverage concerning the economic role of Roman Britain’s major towns would have been welcome. More recent coverage has indicated that rural sites were obtaining pottery without interacting with towns, indicating that the major towns had a more limited economic role to their hinterlands, with minimal impact on the distribution of goods reaching rural sites in their environs.[2] Marsh’s work reinforces that these cities were consumer hubs, but some exploration of their relationship to rural sites in their hinterland may have helped to elucidate the patterns in glass acquisition by rural sites observed by Marsh. Likewise, Marsh hypothesises that it was proximity of sites to large towns that was responsible for their prosperity, reflected in high glass scores, arguing that the data reinforces that for rural sites to generate surplus wealth they needed to be located close to towns and cities, this prosperity being responsible for higher glass scores. However, other work has demonstrated that the prosperity of villas in the Central Belt and South regions was not dependent on proximity to major towns.[3] Locations along river valleys, coastal sites, or those with easy access to the road network appear to have been the most important factor,[4] in which case it would be the connectivity of these sites to consumer hubs that allowed them to generate surplus wealth. This perhaps has implications for the dataset, as it suggests that rural sites obtained goods such as glass from merchants passing through on the way to a town, rather than at the town itself. It also highlights the dynamic nature of studies concerning Roman Britain’s economy and the need for new studies such as Marsh’s. Marsh concedes that the sites selected are likely not representative of the whole of Britain and that further work is needed, which is a welcome attitude.
Adding to this, a greater range of sites would have been useful. Some inclusion of major towns less entangled with London and its supply lines may have improved the analysis: sites such as Cirencester, with its later economic boom, Exeter with its fortress origin and geographic isolation, or cities like Winchester, Dorchester, or Chichester close to other major ports come to mind. Likewise, a more diverse range of small towns would also be welcome, such as roadside settlements on routes connecting major hubs; it would be interesting to see how these sites compare to the military supply-oriented sites of Walton-le-Dale and Wilderspool. However, it should be noted that Marsh’s work is already of an impressive size and scope and that these are perhaps directions for further study; indeed, Marsh notes that the study could be extended with more sites and more data.
In conclusion, the work provides catalogues, typologies, and taphonomic analyses for glass in Roman contexts, outlines the evidence for its manufacture, recycling and transport throughout Britain, and ties these aspects into wider discussions of the economy and transport in Roman Britain. Marsh’s work also demonstrates the utility of analysing material culture such as glass to glean information about consumer habits of Britons, their social groups and the prosperity of their settlements; such a bottom-up approach is valuable, and Marsh’s work will hopefully provide a useful foundation for similar studies of other materials. Indeed, his aim to create an open access database of small finds is commendable and will be an excellent tool for researchers interested in Roman Britain in widening this research.
Bibliography
Allen, M., Brindle, T., Fulford, M. & Smith, A. (2016). New visions of the countryside of Roman Britain, vol. 1: the rural settlement of Roman Britain. London.
Allen, M., Brindle, T., Fulford, M., Lodwick, L. & Smith, A. (2017). New visions of the countryside of Roman Britain volume 2: the rural economy of Roman Britain. London.
Allen, M., Brindle, T., Fulford, M., Lodwick, L., Rohnbogner, A. & Smith, A. (2018). New visions of the countryside of Roman Britain, volume 3: life and death in the countryside of Roman Britain. London.
Fulford, M. (2017) ‘Conclusions’ in Fulford, M. & Holbrook, N. (eds.) The rural economy of Roman Britain. London: 358-364.
Greene, K. (1986). The archaeology of the Roman economy. London.
Taylor, J. (2011) ‘The idea of the villa. Reassessing villa development in South-East Britain’ in Derks, T. & Roymans, N. (eds.) Villa landscapes in the Roman north: economy, culture and lifestyles. Amsterdam: 179-194.
Timby, J. (2017) ‘What’s on the table? A review of Roman Pottery in the Western Central Belt’ in Fulford, M. & Holbrook, N. (eds.) The rural economy of Roman Britain. London: 305-337.
Notes
[1] Legal sources indicate that merchants undertaking these contracts took advantage of the subsidies by intermixing their own goods (see Whittaker 1994: 111-117)
[2] Fulford (2017: 360-1), building on conclusions by Timby (2017: 330).
[3] Fulford (2017: 361). Likewise, in the South East, villas do not cluster around the major towns. See Taylor 2011: 183.
[4] Taylor 2011: 183.