Waving to the neighbours? Patterns of settlement in the Cambridge region during the Roman period
A Fen Edge Archaeology Group Event
Village Hall, Rampton, Cambridge CB24 8QA
Speaker: Oscar Aldred
Oscar Aldred and his colleagues Christopher Evans and Anwen Cooper recently published an article in the journal Antiquity, marking the centenary of Cyril Fox’s 1923 book The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region. They explored Fox’s approach to landscape and how perceptions of the Cambridge region’s archaeology have changed over the intervening century. In this talk Oscar will compare Fox’s understanding of the Roman settlement in the region in c. 1923 with what we know now. This will include assessing the impact of the last 30 year’s fieldwork on our understanding of past landscapes, especially Roman settlement, and our ability now to compare low- vs high- densities of settlement. This new knowledge is helping us to understand Roman-period settlement and to explore with more confidence the meaning behind the variations in land-use and social relations across a regional and sub-regional level.
Oscar is now based in the Cambridge Archaeological Unit where is involved in writing and research, alongside landscape-scale developer-led excavations. He studied for his PhD at the University of Iceland and has held academic positions at the University of Iceland and Newcastle University. He has also worked for Historic Environment Scotland, the Institute of Archaeology, Iceland, and Somerset County Council.
His main research interests are in landscape archaeology, excavation, post-excavation, and archaeological method and theory, and the archaeology of the North Atlantic and the UK.
