14th October 2019:

This coming Sunday, CBA South Midlands will hold a conference focusing on Roman villa landscapes in the region. Martyn Allen, Senior Project Manager at Oxford Archaeology and co-author of the three volumes published as part of the University of Reading’s Roman Rural Settlement project, will be there to set the scene. 

The South Midlands has a rich history of villa excavations undertaken in many of its diverse natural landscapes, from the Nene Valley to the Chilterns and the Cotswolds. The conference will present the results of current work on a number of exciting villas across the region and seek to provide a narrative for how these enigmatic sites influenced and shaped the social, economic and political landscape over some 400 years of Roman rule. Attention will focus on understanding variations in architecture, structural development, wider settlement patterns, the role of artefactual remains in social attitudes to lifestyle and identity, and the importance of agriculture as identified through environmental evidence.

Martyn will open the conference with a talk entitled, 'Villas in context: landscape and economy of the Roman South Midlands'. This will provide an overview for the day's proceedings and draw on work by OA, as well as the results of the Roman Rural Settlement project.

The conference will be held at Winslow Public Hall in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, on 20th October from 10am. Tickets cost £18 for members of CBA South Midlands and its affiliated organisations or £22 for non-members. Lunch is included. Click here for more details.

(Image: aerial view of a villa at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire. Drone image copyright Nathan Allan)