Consuming Roman London (awarded 2017)

Roman London has seen decades of commercial archaeological excavation resulting in a vast dataset but it has proven difficult to produce London-wide syntheses of this data. This project will extract the finds and stratigraphic data from existing archives in order to address broader research questions about the identities of Roman Londoners. It will analyse selected groups of objects across the ancient city to fully explore the consumption practices of Roman Londoners and what they reveal about their origins as well as social, economic and ritual practices.

An initial assessment suggests that c. 160 modern archaeological interventions in the City of London undertaken since the mid-1970s have produced sufficient Roman evidence to make a substantial contribution to our understanding. The data from sites excavated within the last 10 years are accessible whilst the archives and databases for older sites are in differing states of development. Some are fully phased and digitised while others will require substantial time for data cleaning and to upgrade the information to current standards of software compatibility. The project will carry out a scoping study of these archives and carry out a pilot study on the comparative analysis of pottery assemblages from 16 selected sites.