Lisa Lodwick

The practices of data sharing, data citation and data reuse are all crucial aspects of the reproducibility of archaeological research. This article builds on the small number of studies reviewing data sharing and citation practices in archaeology, focussing on the data-rich sub-discipline of archaeobotany. Archaeobotany is a sub-discipline built on the time-intensive collection of data on archaeological plant remains, in order to investigate crop choice, crop husbandry, diet, vegetation and a wide range of other past human-plant relationships. Within archaeobotany, the level and form of data sharing is currently unknown.

Archaeobotany, here taken as the study of archaeological plant macrofossil remains, is a mature and widely practised area of study within archaeology. However, plants are rarely seen as active participants in past societies. Recent critical evaluations of the field of archaeobotany have focused on methodological issues, chronological and regional overviews and biomolecular developments, rather than theoretical approaches or research practices. This article aims to reflect on future agendas in archaeobotany, which may improve the use and communication of archaeobotanical data, and invigorate discussion. First, the article briefly reviews the development of archaeobotany in Britain, before focusing discussion on the areas of data publication and archiving, and the application of archaeological theory to archaeobotanical remains. Opportunities provided by the 'plant turn' in social sciences and humanities are explored in relation to plant materiality. The use of the Internet in training and analysis is considered, before reflecting on how archaeobotany has been successfully communicated to broader audiences.

Agriculture is a vital component of social practice, yet it is often overlooked as a key aspect in the social organisation of the communities resident at urban settlements. This paper uses the example of late Iron Age oppida, a type of settlement at the intersection of the Iron Age and Roman worlds where research has focussed upon elites rather than community. Drawing upon studies of human–plant relationships, particularly that of ecological temporalities, this paper shows that considering the capacity of plants to affect people through ‘planty agency’ renders annual rhythms of human–plant relationships perceptible. The utilisation of archaeobotanical data in this novel way provides new insights into social practices and the formation of communities at late Iron Age oppida.

The ability to provenance crop remains from archaeological sites remains an outstanding research question in archaeology. Archaeobotanists have previously identified the movement of cereals on the basis of regional variations in the presence of cereal grain, chaff and weed seeds (the consumer–producer debate), and weed seeds indicative of certain soil types, principally at Danebury hillfort. Whilst the former approach has been heavily criticised over the last decade, the qualitative methods of the latter have not been evaluated. The first interregional trade in cereals in Britain is currently dated to the Iron Age hillfort societies of the mid 1st millennium bc. Several centuries later, the development of urban settlements in the Late Iron Age and Roman period resulted in populations reliant on food which was produced elsewhere. Using the case study of central-southern Britain, centred on the oppidum (large fortified settlement) and civitas capital of Silchester, this paper presents the first regional quantitative analysis of arable weed seeds in order to identify the origin of the cereals consumed there. Analysis of the weed seeds which were present with the fine sieve by-products of the glume wheat Triticum spelta (spelt) shows that the weed floras of samples from diverse geological areas can be separated on the basis of the soil requirements of individual taxa. A preliminary finding is that, rather than being supplied with cereals from the wider landscape of the chalk region of the Hampshire Downs, the crops were grown close to Late Iron Age Silchester. The method presented here requires further high quality samples to evaluate this conclusion and other instances of cereal movement in the past.

In tandem with the large-scale translocation of food plants in the Roman world, ornamental evergreen plants and plant items were also introduced to new areas for ritual and ornamental purposes. The extent to which these new plants, primarily box and stone-pine, were grown in Britain has yet to be established. This paper presents a synthesis of archaeobotanical records of box, stone-pine and norway spruce in Roman Britain, highlighting chronological and spatial patterns. Archaeobotanical evidence is used alongside material culture to evaluate the movement of these plants and plant items into Roman Britain, their meaning and materiality in the context of human-plant relations in ornamental gardens and ritual activities. Archaeobotanical evidence for ornamental evergreen plants elsewhere in the Roman world is presented.

Postprint: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/68336/

Article: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X17000101

The development of oppida in the late first millennium BC across northwestern Europe represents a major change in settlement form and social organisation. The construction of extensive earthwork systems, the presence of nucleated settlement areas, long-distance trade links and the development of hierarchical societies have been evidenced. These imply that changes in the style and organisation of agriculture would have been required to support these proto-urban population centres. Hypotheses of the subsistence bases of these settlements, ranging from a reliance on surplus arable production from local rural settlements, to an emphasis on pastoral activities, are here reviewed and grounded against a wider understanding of the expansion of agriculture in the Late Iron Age. These agricultural models have not been previously evaluated. This paper presents archaeobotanical data from six well fills from large-scale excavations at Late Iron Age and Early Roman Silchester, a Late Iron Age territorial oppidum and subsequent Roman civitas capital located in central-southern Britain. This is the first large-scale study of waterlogged plant macrofossils from within a settlement area of an oppidum. Waterlogged plant macrofossils were studied from a series of wells within the settlement. An assessment of taphonomy, considering stratigraphic and contextual information, is reported, followed by an analysis of the diverse assemblages of the plant remains through univariate analysis. Key results evidence animal stabling, flax cultivation, hay meadow management and the use of heathland resources. The staple crops cultivated and consumed at Late Iron Age and Early Roman Silchester are consistent with those cultivated in the wider region, whilst a range of imported fruits and flavourings were also present. The adoption of new oil crops and new grassland management shows that agricultural innovations were associated with foddering for animals rather than providing food for the proto-urban population. The evidence from Silchester is compared with other archaeobotanical datasets from oppida in Europe in order to identify key trends in agricultural change.

The first large-scale archaeobotanical study in Britain, conducted from 1899 to 1909 by Clement Reid and Arthur Lyell at Silchester, provided the first evidence for the introduction of Roman plant foods to Britain, yet the findings have thus far remained unverified. This paper presents a reassessment of these archaeobotanical remains, now stored as part of the Silchester Collection in Reading Museum. The documentary evidence for the Silchester study is summarised, before the results are presented for over a 1000 plant remains including an assessment of preservation, identification and modern contamination. The dataset includes both evidence for the presence of nationally rare plant foods, such as medlar, and several archaeophytes. The methodologies and original interpretations of Reid and Lyell's study are reassessed in light of current archaeobotanical knowledge. Spatial and contextual patterns in the distribution of plant foods and ornamental taxa are also explored. Finally, the legacy of the study for the development of archaeobotany in the 20th century is evaluated.

Concept
The ‘Making practice perfect’ workshop will be a one-day event focussed on ‘practice theories’ in Roman archaeology and beyond. The day will be organised into three sessions: ‘Structuration and related traditions’, ‘Practice theory and materiality’, and ‘Comparative perspectives’, the first two focussing on Roman case-studies, and the third aiming to develop dialogues between Romanists and archaeologists of other complex societies. This will be the inaugural TRAC Workshop, and it is intended to be a new kind of event which complements the highly successful annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference by providing an in- depth investigation of a particular topic in a more informal format, mixing traditional paper presentations with group discussions and activities.
We invite offers of 15-minute papers for any of the three sessions, particularly those which foreground case-studies in the application of relevant approaches. Titles and abstracts of up to 250 words should be sent to [email protected], by Friday 30th October, though prospective speakers are also welcome to contact us to express interest and discuss their contribution. We particularly welcome contributions from postgraduate students, and from non-Romanists interested in engaging in the ‘comparative perspectives’ session. Keynote speakers for the sessions will be Andrew Gardner (UCL), Astrid Van Oyen (Cambridge), and Bill Sillar (UCL). Registration to attend the event will open at the start of November.
Academic abstract
Practice theories offer some of the most powerful ways of transforming patterns of archaeological material into animated interpretations of past life. Constituting a broad and diverse tradition, different forms of practice theory have been influential in archaeology since the late 1980s. Initially the works of sociologist Anthony Giddens and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu were most prominent in archaeological discussions about practice, but a range of other thinkers have been marshalled to illuminate the way humans act in the world, from Marx to Heidegger and from Wittgenstein to Goffman. More recently, the increasing interest in ‘materiality’, drawing upon theorists like Gell and Latour, also has a practice dimension. A number of scholars are currently engaged with these kinds of approaches in Roman archaeology (e.g. Eckardt, Gardner, Lodwick, Revell, Van Oyen).
The aim of this workshop is to bring out some of the similarities and differences across the spectrum of practice approaches, and to share ways of making practice theories applicable in the archaeology of the Roman empire and of other complex societies. In their focus on what people do, such approaches have huge potential to enliven our accounts of the past, yet there are numerous differences in the way particular theories handle issues like intentionality, material interactions, and the relationships between practices and social structures. As the inaugural TRAC Workshop, the goal of this one-day event is firmly to debate the ideas, with less time devoted to formal presentation and more to discussion and participant interaction. Position-papers and case-studies will still be important to prompt debate, but longer discussion sections and workshop sessions will facilitate more active dialogues about the issues. We hope that these will foster increasing critical application of practice approaches across Roman studies and beyond.
Organisers: Andrew Gardner (UCL) & Lisa Lodwick (Reading) Email: [email protected] Website: http://trac.org.uk/events/workshops/practice-theory-2016/

Our understanding of the introduction and adoption of new plant foods in Roman Britain is currently limited by a lack of data from a group of Late Iron Age settlements commonly referred to as oppida (large pre- Roman towns). This paper presents the first evidence of several imported plant foods from Late Iron Age Britain in the form of waterlogged plant remains from the oppidum at Silchester. These were recovered from the basal contexts of two wells, dated to the early first century A.D. One olive stone and several seeds of celery, coriander and dill were identified. The results are compared to archaeobotanical data from elsewhere in Britain and northwestern Europe, demonstrating that Silchester is part of the wider phe- nomenon of the adoption of new flavourings and fruits in Late Iron Age Europe.

Whilst european wide-narratives of changes in animal husbandry are available for the later prehistoric and Roman periods, with a shift towards cattle husbandry and an increase in animal size widely observed, the picture for crop husbandry remains fragmented. The study of crop choice and farming practice are crucial for examining how societies interacted with their landscape, and how these practices were shaped by changing climatic, and socio-cultural factors, namely the expansion of Phoenician and Greek influence, and later, of the Roman empire and the subsequent establishment of villa agriculture systems. In terms of crop choice and cultivation practice, the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods have long received the bulk of attention in archaeobotanical analysis. However, after decades of archaeobotanical analysis in some regions of Europe (France, Germany, UK), and the more recent introduction of systematic sampling and analysis in other areas (Croatia, Bulgaria), large quantities of data are available in order to establish the major changes in crop husbandry across the first millennia BC and AD. Recent large-scale research projects in the UK (Roman Rural Settlement Project), northeastern Gaul (RurLand), and Iberia have begun to draw undertake syntheses of crop data, providing regional narratives including shifts in some regions from an Iron Age focus on hulled wheats towards the Roman cultivation of free-threshing wheat, while in the Western Mediterranean, free-threshing wheat and hulled barley are already the most common cereal species from the beginning of Iron Age. This session aims to bring together researchers working across Europe to present regional syntheses in order to establish where and when the key shifts in crop choice took place, and to begin to evaluate the reasons why these changes happened-was the development of market-orientated crop production, shifts in culinary tastes, or local environmental factors more important for crop choice decisions.