Knowledge and understanding of Roman County Durham has been transformed over the last 20 years, thanks to an increased pace of both commercial and research-driven fieldwork, in some cases still unpublished. As a County Archaeologist who has overseen commercial work and developed and participated in many research projects within the county (e.g. Binchester and Sedgefield), Mason is well placed to bring together published and unpublished information in this comprehensive, lavishly illustrated, book-length treatment of the Roman archaeology of the county, the first of its kind.
The volume extends into North Yorkshire in order to give full coverage of the emerging evidence from the Tees Valley. On the other hand (and wisely) it omits South Shields, in the historic county of Durham but now usually covered in the many works dealing with Hadrian's Wall. Until the late twentieth century, the Roman archaeology of the County Durham was seen as largely military. This has changed with the arrival of developer-funded archaeology, and we can now say much more about Roman-period rural settlement, both of the traditional Iron Age type and new site types such as villas, small towns (e.g. East Park, Sedgefield) and agricultural and pottery production sites (e.g. Faverdale). This wholly new insight into the rural settlement of the county is richly documented in the book. We also get a glimpse of what the rural settlements of the non-elite population looked like in the late Roman period, e.g. Symmetry Park, near Darlington (p. 427). For the long-known military sites this will become a standard work of reference. It gives comprehensive coverage of the excavated and geophysical evidence which has transformed our knowledge of the forts in recent decades, synthesising information from long-delayed publications of sites examined in the 1970s and ’80s (Piercebridge, Binchester) and from more recent but unpublished fieldwork (Lanchester; Binchester again).
Although rich in empirical data from structural and historical sources, Mason admits direct material culture analysis is minimal as he ‘is not an artefact person’ (p. 6). Some aspects seem somewhat old-fashioned: the book relies heavily on concepts such as ‘Romanization’, which some academic readers will find problematic, although often the terminology and concept is hard to avoid. It also sees the development of an infrastructure of military supply in the area as a benign development for the indigenous population, assuming that they prospered by supplying military needs. Despite increasing knowledge of the rural settlements and villas in the region, we cannot be sure to what extent the population might have been exploited by the Roman army and other immigrants.
The book demonstrates beyond any doubt the wealth of archaeological remains and rich Roman heritage of County Durham, giving new insights on the interactions between the diverse frontier communities, as well as the lasting legacy of the sites, infrastructure and populations. Roman County Durham is an attractive production, but the length of the volume has perhaps caused several editing oversights. There are some repetitions, and some references in the text are missing from the bibliography (e.g. Herz 2011 on p. 65). The hefty weight of the book means this is not a volume to carry around the county when visiting sites, but it combines easy and enjoyable reading with the quality of a reference book or gazetteer packed with informative and thorough analysis. Mason has done a great service in making our current state of knowledge available in one convenient place to professional archaeologists, academics and the general public alike.
