Galenson White Servitude and the Growth of Black Slavery in Colonial America
Archaeologies of Slavery and Servitude (1)
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rchaeologies of slavery and servitude
bringing
ew World perspectives to Roman ritain
Jane Webster
Vegetus, assistant slave of Montanus the slave of the august emperor, has
bought the girl Fortunata, by nationality a Diablintian, for 600
denari i.
She
is warranted healthy and not likely to run away. (Wr iting tablet, London);
A likely yellow girl about 17 ar 18 years old, has been accustomed to ali
kinds of house and garden wark. She is sold for no fault. Sound as a dollar.
(Broadside 1833,Charlestonl.é
Modern historians and sociologists, knowing full well the need to make
every allowance for particular variations in one society after another, have
disclosed nevertheless the universalist features of slavery across time and
place: to pretend otherwise is futile. (K.Bradleyl.é
This contribution addresses the archaeology of slavery, not as Roman archaeologists now
know it, but as 1hope it might one day appear. 1explore some of the approaches to material
culture developed by archaeologists who study slavery in the New World 4 a nd argue that
similar strategies might help us to see more clearly some of the least visible persons in the
Roman world: slaves and other servile groups.êI take Roman Britain as my starting point and,
to illustrate some of the things that New World approaches to the complex material world of
the unfree might offer, 1develop a case-study on slave-quarters (accommodations) that moves
from the plantations of Virginia and the Carolinas to prisons
erg astula
and roundhouses in
Roman Britain.
The proposals made here are offered in the hope of encouraging a revival of interest in an
inexplicably moribund field. Slavery, colonialism and empire have always gone hand in hand,
and the archaeology of slavery is in the ascendant from South and West Africa to Brazil, the
Caribbean, and the former slaving-ports of Britain. These are places, of course, where slavery
has a continuing legacy, and where descendant communities have fought hard for the experi-
ences of their ancestors to be acknowledged and articulated. No similar imperative exists to
promote the study of slavery in the Classical world, and perhaps for that reason an Archaeo-
logy of Roman slavery has never emerged as a sub-discipline in its own right. It is time it did,
and here 1put forward some suggestions, all informed by work on modem historical slavery in
N America, that 1hope will stimulate debate.
In the Roman world, and throughout the American colonies, slave-worked estates, gang
labour, rebellions, slave markets and auctions, and legal frameworks for bondage and manumis-
sion were facts of everyday life. Put this way, it does not seem at all surprising that an intel-
lectual c ross fertilisation go es on between ancient and modem
his torians
of slavery, and has
done since the 19705.Today, many ancient historians regard the comparative study of slavery
Writing tablet from No. 1 Poultry, London, dating to A.D. 80-120:see R.Tornlin, T he girl in question :
a new text from Roman London,
Britannia
34 (2003)41-5l.
From a broadside announcing a Public sale of Negroes , offered by Richard Clagett of Charleston, S.e.
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6
Webster
as a stimulating pursuit, not a misguided one. Archaeologists, unfortunately, take quite the
opposite view. It is remarkable that the bibliography of the most recent Roman archaeological
synthesis? does not contain a single reference to New World slavery studies. But a lack of cross-
fertilisation is notable even among N American classical archaeologists, who might have been
expected to foster comparative
strategies f
Where is the archaeology of Roman slavery?
The archaeology of Roman slavery is clearly in the doldrums.? This is so even with refer-
ence to Roman Britain, a province for which the textual evidence is so limited that it is only
via the study of material culture that we can hope to gain some understanding of slave owner-
ship and slave experience. Despite this, the recently published 'roadmap' for the future of
Romano-British archaeologyl'' contains only one reference to slavery.' and makes no specific
reference to archaeological strategies for studying the enslaved. Part of the problem, no doubt,
is that slavery is an unpleasant subject - one at odds with the kind of Roman world that (even
today) many archaeologists wish to envisage. This is very noticeable with reference to Roman
Britain. For example, in
Roman villas and the countryside
(a book in which slavery is mention-
ed just three times), G. de Ia Bédoyere remarks that
'slave' is an emotive word and one to which we exclusively, and understandably, attach negative
connotations. But it was part of Roman life and not necessarily abused in the way we interpret it.1
2
It is hard to envisage any historical
context
in which slavery and abuse were not entwined, yet
many archaeologists instinctively suppose, as de Ia Bédoyere seems to do, that enslavement
was less awful in the Classical world than, say, in 19th-c. South Carolina.l '
6 Amongst ancient historians, interest in modern slavery has stimulated some explicitly comparative
work: see, e.g., H. D'Arms, SIaves at Roman convivia, in W. Slater (ed.),
D ining in a clas sica l context
(Ann Arbor 1991) 171-83;W. Phillips, Continuity and change in western slavery: ancient to modern
times, in M. Bush (ed.),
Serfdom and slavery: studies in leg al b ondage
(London 1996)71-88; and Bodel
in this issue.
7
F. Thompson,
The archaeology of G reek and Rom an slavery
(London 2003).
8 An interest in New World plantation archaeology flickered briefly in Italian archaeology in the 1980s,
notably in the work of A. Carandini at Settefinestre
Settefinestre. U na villa sch iavist ica neil Etruria
romana. Vol. 1. La villa nel suo insiem e [Modena 1984]),which he concluded with a chapter entitled
Schiavitü antica e moderna a confronto . In it he examined plantation sites in Virginia, South Carolina
and Louisiana. Although he suggested (188-89)that the study of N American plantation buildings might
potentially help us to identify ancient slave-quarters, comparative archaeology was not the central
focus of his discussion; as a Marxist scholar, Carandini primarily looked to the New World for evi-
dence to support his contention that slavery was the mainstay of the Roman economy, and that, when
slavery declined, Rome's economic fortunes also declined. Nevertheless, his explicit comparison ofNew
World and Roman archaeological data remains unique. The nearest anyone has come to this approach is
T.Smith, who notes briefly, in his Roman villas: a stu dy in social eiructu re (London 1997)229, that the
rows of identical buildings sited along one side of the villa courtyard at Levroux-Trégonce (Indre) are
spaced apart just like a Virginia plantation . Since the 1970s, very little compara tive work has
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Archaealagies af slavery and servitude
163
This observation goes part of the way to informing the absence of a fully-developed
arc haeology of Roman slavery . A more fundamental factor, perhaps, is that many scholars
believe slaves to be beyond the reach of archaeology. Most Romanists assume slaves to be
arc haeologically invisible , leaving no clear fingerprint (other than shackles, collars and
buIlae 4 for excavators and finds specialists to identify. Indeed, the oft-repeated assertion of
slave invisibility pops up in R. P. [ackson s Epilogue to E. A. Thompsori s recent synthesis, even
after 260 pages of archaeological data.l Classical archaeologists still appear to believe that
slaves must remain invisible in the archaeological record because, as a body, they do not
leave a
specific
material fingerprint. A similar assumption once pervaded slavery scholarship
in the New World, but archaeologists there have long since accepted that they must study
slaves through the imposed material culture of their owners - a material fingerprint that
makes them (at first sight) barely distinguishable from the poorest European-Americans. They
have developed innovative strategies to help them interpret the artefacts they do find -
strategies which are grounded in a willingness to regard the form an artefact takes as being of
less importance than the logic informing its use. This understanding has helped New World
archaeologists not only to identify the
presence
of slaves in the archaeological record, but to
say something meaningful about slave
experience .
A more detailed look at work going on in N American slavery forms a prelude to examining
the approach taken in the Roman world. What do our New World counterparts do that we do
not, and what might we learn from them?
Seeing slavery the New World
The archaeology of African-American experience first emerged in the Americas in the
1960s.1
6
Some important plantation Great Houses had been excavated before this point, but
the Anglo-élite owners of these colonial homes, not their slaves, had been the target of that
work. Attitudes began to change in the 1960s and 1970s, as both the black consciousness and
Ne w History m ovements began to impact upon historical research in the U.5.A. In the 1980s,
African-American slavery emerged as a major research theme in American historical archaeo-
logy, and the topic remains a dominant one. The archaeology of slavery is particularly strong
along the eastern seaboard, home of the original 13 colonies established by the British after
1607. Much important work has focused on the tobacco plantations of Virginia and on the cotton
and rice plantations of N and S Carolina ?
N American work focuses on the complex ways in which slaves brought beliefs and practices
of African origin to bear upon the use and interpretation of slave-made or European-Amerícan
material things. One term commonly used to describe this adaptive mixing of Anglo-American
and .African cultural elements is creolization - to denote the varied processes of multicultu-
seeking archaeologists taking a comparative approach to Roman slavery. Several respondents informed
me that slavery in the classicalworld was better than inN America.
4 Bullae are small bronze plates bearing an inscription. These were attached to collars worn around the
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164 e ster
ral adjustment through which African-American society was created. Several classes of creole
artefact and behaviour have been identified in New World slavery contexts, including colono-
ware pottery, architecture, tobacco pipes, and dietary practices.l''
At this point, it must be admitted that New World archaeologists do have one significant
advantage over their Classical counterparts: New World slaves were sourced mainly from W
Africa and from the are a of the Congo and Angola; though these places are characterised by
great ethnic diversity, they are all, to put it simply, African As a result, archaeologists and
anthropologists have been able to identify some broadly similar pattems of culture and belief
that, in the southem states of the U.s.A. in particular, inform the recognition of African
'survivals' (known as Africanisms ) in the creole material-culture of slaves of African des-
cent. In the Roman world, contrast, it was unusual for slaves of a given household or estate to
share a common ethnic origin; thus, it might be assumed, we cannot look for the Roman
equivalent of Africanisms .
One possible response to this problem is discussed below. In the meantime, I need only
emphasise that the majority of the artefacts used
y
N American slaves were of European-
American derivation, and that Africanisms (where present) reflect both a dialogue with,
and a manipulation of, European-American objects. At times, the explicitly African part of
that dialogue was quieter than at others. In Virginia, for example, where centuries of inter-
action preceded segregation, even slave-made artefacts, such as colonoware pottery vessels,
frequently took Anglo-American forms.ê? Crucially, New World archaeologists do not see this
as a problem inhibiting the study of the material world of the unfree: on the contrary, the
acceptance that African-Americans documented themselves through manipulation of a largely
'given' material culture is a
starting point
for analysis of the material world of slaves. Take,
for example, L. Ferguson's commentary on the work of [ohn Otto:
[ohn Otto ... shows that in the nineteenth century, slaves on Georgia's Cannori's Point plantation
were eating from glazed and decorated English bowls; on the other hand the planter's family were
using predominantly plates. Otto argues that slaves may have been using these bowls for eating
African-styled meals; Africans had been utilising ceramic bowls as their primary serving dishes
since long before colonial times. Thus, while the artefacts or 'lexicon' of slave meals at Cannori's
Point were European, the shape of those artefacts implies a foodways structure, or 'grammar', that
was strongly African. An ignorant visitor might observe that sIaves had adopted European
tablewares but didn't know quite how to handle them, preferring bowls to plates; a more informed
observer might see West African rules of etiquette employed with a new kind of bowl.
21
Central to creolization theory is the understanding that slave experience is best grasped
focusing on the ways slaves
used
the material things at their disposal. This is bome out by a
detailed look at slave-quarter architecture, the most relevant category of New World creole
material culture in terms of the concems of this article.
The architecture of slave-quarters has long been a major point of interest for plantation
archaeologists. Studies begin from the recognition that plantation slaves were usually required
to build their own accommodations. It has become clear that, although slaves were generalIy
expected to follow (to a lesser or greater degree) a European architectural blueprint, the
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Archaealagies of slavery and servitude
165
results - a fascinating mixture of Anglo-American and African forms and techniques -
represents a truly creole hybrid. Important studies of slave-built accommodations have been
made throughout the plantation belt, but particularly in Virginia and the Carolinas. As early
as the 1970s, archaeologists working at the Yaughan and Curriboo plantations (Berkeley
County, SC) showed that the builders of the slave houses here employed cob-wallíng , a tech-
nique for building in day common in W Africa.P Since then, others have demonstrated further
similarities between W African homes and S Carolina slave-housing, including a preference for
gabled roofing and twin-roomed, rectangular floor plans; use of porches and verandas;
maintenance of African
y rd
systems for the organisation of shared social spaces; and the
preference (in the earliest slave-quarters) for outdoor hearths. American archaeologists have
also explored the origins and development of the 19th-c. hotgun house - perhaps the most
explicitly African-derived architectural form in the U.5.A.23 Others again have shown that
at least two aspects of African-derived architecture - southern timber framing and the use of
the veranda or porch - were gradually adopted by Anglo-American builders, becoming part of
the Anglo-American vernacular.
Seeing slavery in Roman Britain
In 1994, K R. Bradley challenged ancient historians to try to penetrate the psychological
world of the Roman slave ,24 and, in so doing, help others to understand what it meant to be a
slave. Approaches to Roman slavery by Old World archaeologists, however, tend simply to
seek indirect evidence for the pres ence of slaves. We assume their presence (in the apparent
absence of direct evidence) in quarries, mines and mills, on agricultural estates, and in other
work-places demanding large labour forces; and, serenely unaffected by the advances made by
New World archaeologists, we continue to believe that the
ex perience s
of these invisible
work-forces lie beyond our grasp, in places that archaeology cannot reach. For that reason, few
have sought to ask how Roman slaves might have used the objects at their disposal.
In Roman Britain, we have looked for sl aves principally in agricultural contexts, the
rationale being that large villas would probably have relied on field and domestic slave-
labour. Imperial estates would certainly have used slave labour, but few specific candidates
have been suggested for Britaín.P As in Gaul and Germany. some very large villas have been
síngled out as possibly employing large bodies of slaves or estate-workers, accommodated
either in the main villa complex or in associated non-villa settlementsP At Gatcombe, it has
22 Good intraductions to plantation architecture can be found in: Ferguson ibid. 63-82; S. [ones, The
African-American tradition in vernacular architecture, in Singleton 1985 (supra n.16) 195-213;Deetz
(supra n.17) 212-3l.
23
The seminal studies here are
Vlatch, Shotgun h ouses, N atural H istory 87.2 (1977)50-57 and id., The
A fro American tradition in d ec or ative art s (Cleveland, Ofl 1978).For a more general overview, see Deetz
(supra n.l7). Entered through the gable end, the shotgun house derives from WAfrican exemplars in both
plan and dimensions: even the name probably comes frorn the Yoruba (Nigerian) word io gun meaning
place of assembly. Shotgun houses first appeared in New Orleans in the early 1800s,brought there by
emancipated blacks from Haiti. They amalgama te French building techniques (Haiti was formerly a
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166
Webster
been proposed that slaves (or other workers) may have occupied some of the many subsidiary
buildings located inside the walled villa enclosure, along with the non-villa settlements loca-
ted within the boundaries of this 6000-ha estate. A related argument is that aisled buildings
sited alongside winged corridor and courtyard villas could have housed labourers, tenants or
slaves.ê? 1 return to this below. Finally, it has also been suggested that overseers or bailiffs
could have managed large, slave-run, villa estates for absentee landlords. This was proposed,
for example, at Llantwit Major, where a 4th-c. villa was converted to bailiff occupation.ê'' In
all of these Romano-British cases, the presence of slaves has been inferred, rather than demon-
strated. Worse still, the interrogation of the material culture found within putative slave-
accommodations has had little or no part to play in making, or supporting, these inferences.
Putting New World lessons into practice: ergastula (slave-prisons)
Let us try to put some of the American ideas into practice by looking briefly at a category of
'slave specific' building known 'to have existed in the Roman provinces: the
ergastulum.
In the
Roman world, as in N America, many men and women actively resisted slavery. Troublesome
Roman slaves were often confined in purpose-built slave-prisons. In addition, private
ergastula
(or
carce resv
were a feature of many agricultural estates and rural villas. In such contexts,
er gast ula
served as communal work-houses for chained slaves
se rvi vin cti
who worked in the
fields.F In the 1st c. A.D. Columella described ergastula as semi-subterranean structures lit by
narrow windows, placed high enough above ground-level to prevent egress by
inmates.P
Few
such slave prisons have been positively identified (I return to this below), and only two
buildings in Britain have tentatively been placed in this category.
The first of these lay within Colchester, at the corner of Insula 15. Measuring 24.6 x 14.2 m
and set within its own walled enclosure, it was a semi-subterranean rectilinear building. The
principal building appears to have been constructed in the mid-2nd C.
34
It was partitioned into
four internally, with two larger rooms to the north and south being separated by parallel
partition walls enclosing a narrow inner chamber and a wooden staircase. With exterior walls
lm thick, and concrete floors 0.5 m thick in the larger rooms, this was a very solid structure. In
the largest and most subterranean of the inner spaces (room
D
timber beam slots were cut into
the concrete floor. No small finds were recovered from the unsealed floors, which were covered
with later rubbish deposits of varying dates. In his discussion of the purpose of this enigmatic
structure, M. R. Hull observed that the presence of a sunken chamber (room
D
containing beam
slots to which shackles might feasibly have been attached, might suggest the building was an
ergastulum .
35
He went on to reject this suggestion, however, because the room was faced with
good-quality tiles laid in pink mortar. This finish, Hull felt, was too elaborate for a slave
prison. He concluded, somewhat tentatively, that the structure was a mithraeum, built along
similar lines to that at Heddernheim (Frankfurt-am-Mainj.ê
A second possible
rg stulum
was excavated by
D
[ohnson at Chalk (Gravesend) in 1961
(fig. 1).37Measuring 13.9 x 3.9 m, this rectangular structure was smaller than the example at
28
Ibid.71.
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Archaeologies of slavery and servitude
167
r---·-··------···-----··---···--·-··-······--··-·····-- -- ---1
I CHALK,
NR
GRAVESEND, 1961 ,
I
: - - - - - _ _ _ _ _ / - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
-
1 I I
I r of..m l z : : : n m
< - j , 1
r
c h i m i iC H - r w l l ti l a r c r
\
, p U l 1 d
h«
I
, k u l l A 1 Iwl,
' I : p
------
n ic h e s J c r la m p s
1 5
• •
Fig. 1. Plan of erg stulum at Chalk, Kent after Johnson [supra n.37] 116,
by
kind permission of the author .
Colchester.ê It was two storeys high, but no further internal spatial divisions were noted. The
foundations were cut
c.2
m deep into the natural chalk, with walls
C . O . S
m thick raised on this
subterranean base. A row of niches (probably for lamps) was found high up on the E wall. The
first phase of use at Chalk could not be dated, but the building was modified some time before
the end of the 3rd c. and destroyed by fire in c.300.
39
Prior to its destruction (that is, during
Phase III), the upper storey functioned as a store-room, whilst a small group of people appear
to have been living and working in the subterranean basement area. The northwest (and best
lit) comer of the Phase-Ill basement floor produced 37 antler pins and a quantity of antler-
working débris, indicating that at least one person had been engaged in pin-manufacturing
here. He or she was not alone: pits cut into the basement floor contained the remains of 3
infants, allless than a year old. Johnson went on to suggest that the people working here might
have been slaves, and that during Phase III the building may have functioned as an erg stu-
lum
His case rested in part on the architectural details outlined above, and in part on the
unusual nature of the finds from the Phase-Ill basement floor. A total of 11 whole or fragrnen-
tary ceramic vessels were recovered, three of which bore cross marks, incised after firing.
Johnson reasonably concluded that these were marks of (illiterate) ownership. Yet literacy was
in evidence too, because 6 graffiti were aiso found, inscribed on ceramic sherds: four of these
were very fragmentary inscriptions in Latin characters, but one made use of Greek script
< l >1ÍÀtKt : to Fel ix ), and the sixth took the form of a trident, incised on a rouletted
beaker.t
On
the basis of these finds, Johnson concluded that at least one of the occupants of the Chalk
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8
Webster
basement dwellers here were preoccupied with naming, and even those who were not literate
felt a need to inscribe ownership upon their possessions. Unfree persons, in many historical
contexts, often share that concem, and bring it to bear upon the artefacts at their disposal. The
artefacts from Chalk thus seem to provide a tantalising glimpse of what it meant to be a slave
in Roman Britain. The identification of further
ergastula
(and the detailed interrogation of
their assemblages) should rightly be a priority for archaeologists interested in Roman slav-
ery.42
rgastula
were dedicated spaces for slaves; we know broadly what they looked like; and
we can be confident that they were widespread. Indeed, agricultural estates were provided
with ergastula as a matter of course .43 Why then, have so few examples actually been
found ?44It is surely a possibility that some sites have avoided identification simply because
slave prisons are something we are neither looking for nor expecting to encounter. Perhaps it is
time to look again at published semi-subterranean buildings similar in scale to Chalk, and to
re-assess their artefact assemblages through better-informed eyes. The group of excavated
subterranean features originally interpreted as villa cellars might offer a good starting
point.
If we could build up even a small corpus of likely slave prisons, we would have a group
of artefact assemblages that might - if we ask the kinds of questions New World archaeo-
logists favour - unlock the door to the material world of Britain s s er vi v in cti
Looking for enslaved Britons
As was noted above, households or estates in the Roman world potentially drew slaves from
diverse sources. It might be argued, then, that in the Roman provinces the diverse origins of
slave groups would make it very difficult to isolate the bedrocks of shared, pre-slavery tradi-
tions upon which creolization processes would necessarily be founded. Was not the Roman slave
body, in other words, too disparate to permit the approach I am advocating here?
One answer to this problem (for Britain at least) might be to begin any search for slaves and
other servile groups amongst those whose pre-conquest traditions
are
well understood:
indigenous Britons. Epigraphic and other textual evidence points clearly to the presence of
enslaved (and manumitted) Britons in Roman Britain. This is potentially good news for slavery
studies, because we know a great deal both about Iron Age lifeways and, increasingly, about the
maintenance of pre-existing traditions during the Roman period. It is important to grasp that
the desire to maintain pre-existing lifeways can often be especially deep amongst slaves and
servile or oppressed minorities, and that it is amongst these groups that creole adaptations are
most likely to occur. It follows from this that, if we can isolate instances in which pre-Roman
lifeways appear to be maintained and/or adapted in otherwise highly Romanized settings
(for example, within the context of villa complexes or forts), then we might, in some cases
perhaps, be glimpsing servile groups servicing civilian and military élites.
pigraphic evid ence
Epigraphy is an important source of information on slaves and, in particular, former slaves.
The latter are far more visible epigraphically than the former, and the epigraphic commemo-
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Archaealagies af slavery and servitude
9
be highly
complex.s
Little work of this type has been undertaken for Roman Britain, for the
good reason that epigraphic references here to slaves
servi
and freedmen
liberti
are ex-
tremely rare. Only a handful of references to servi survive from Britain.s'' and only 30 to
freedmen (most of those come from the military zone and refer to the former slaves of military
personnel, busy dedicating rnonuments to their patrons' ).
The British epigraphic record may be slight, but it points to the existence of enslaved
Britons
as well as foreigners.ê'' In theory, subjects of the empire could not legally be enslaved.
The enslavement of Britons within
Bri ta nnia
might therefore seem a surprising phenomenon.
But there were many ways in which Britons might have become slaves in their own land. First,
some may have been enslaved at the time of the conquest, during the steady expansion of the
province, or as a result of insurrection. Second, from the dose of the Republican era it was the
practice in many provinces to top up the slave supply from internal (rather than external)
sources; these sources induded vernae,5 l orphans, exposed infants and other íoundlíngs.V
children sold as a result of poverty, self-sale for debt, and penal condemnation to slavery. In all
such cases, Britons could legally have been enslaved.
Many pre-Roman lron Age archaeologists now accept that a slave trade existed in Gaul and
Britain before the conquest, and that this trade supplied the Roman market. Taking this point
a little further, it seems reasonable to assume (as was also the case in the Hellenistic world
and, much later, in W Africa) that those pre-conquest communities developing a slave trade
would have done so in part because forms of slavery existed at home. Textual evidence
47
For Roman Italy, see, e.g.,H. Mouritsen, Roman freedmen and the urban economy: Pompeii in the first
century AD, in F. Senatore (ed.),
Pompei tra Sorre nto e Sarno: A tti dei terzo e quarto ciclo
di
co nfere nze di
geologia, storia e archeologia , Pompei, 1999-2 00 0
(Rome 2001) 1-27, and Mouritsen (supra n.46).
48 The best discussion of Rornano-British epigraphy remains A. Birley, T he peo ple o f Roman Brita in (Lon-
don 1979)145-50.Birleyhighlights the difficulties arising from the common practice of bestowing Greek
names upon slaves. The following
RIB
inscriptions on stone mention
servi: RIB
21, a base from London
set up by the provincial slave, Anencletus;
RIB
717, a building stone from Malton, Yorks;
RIB
902, an
altar from Old Carlisle; and RIB 1436, a tombstone from Haltonchesters. The latter is particularly
interesting in that it tells us that the slave Hardalio's tombstone was set up by a guild
collegium
of
fellow-slaves.
RIB
560, a tombstone from Chester, was erected by a master
d om inus
for 3 slave
children in his household. One of 3 stamps on the inside face of a wooden barrel-stave from Aldgate,
London, preserves the name of the slave Onesimus. A defixio from Bath B ri ta nnia 1982,298-99) con-
tains a petition by a group of 11people, three ofwhom (Cunitius, Lavendus and Mallonius) are stated
to be slaves. To this very smal group of references to
servi
can be added correspondence between slaves
on Vindolanda writing-tablets: A. Bowman and D. Thomas, The Vindo/anda writing tab/ets Tabulae
Vindolandenses l
(London 1994) 301, 302, 347; and the recent find of a writing tablet from No. 1
Poultry, London, documenting the purchase of the Gal icslave-gírl Fartunata: Tomlin 2003(supra n.l ).
The Fortunata tablet highlights the sometimes complex nature of slave purchase and ownership in
provincial Britain. Himself the property of an imperial slave named Montanus, Vegetus was wealthy
enough to expend 600
de nari i
on a
sl ve-girl
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7
e ster
certainly points to a variety of Iron Age social relationships placing individuais in ambiguous
but certainly servile positions that might, either as a result of increased slave-trading for
Rome or following conquest by Rome, have been re-defined simply as slavery.P Fosterage was
common in Iron Age Britain, and some categories of fosterage (of foundlings, for example) might
well have produced subordinate sub-classes whose servitude would have continued under
Romanrule.
It has also been suggested that the emergence and elaboration of aisled buildings may
reflect a gradual social degradation of the extended families of increasingly powerful villa-
owners.ê This work (along with
T. Smith s much-debated extended family model for villa
occupancy=) reminds us both that the exact status of kin groups resident within villas could
have lain anywhere on a spectrum from equal, through tenant, to slave, and that there are
likely to have been different levels of servitude in Roman Britain. The strategies that might
help us to find one servile group (for example, servi vincti or chained field hands) may not
work elsewhere (for example, with semi-servile kin, or co loni or household slaves).
Villas villa estates and other agricu ltural settings
Villas must surely remain primary targets for archaeologists interested in Roman slavery
and servitude, but little real progress has been made in this area, with the presence of slaves on
villa sites often inferred but nowhere proven. A key problem= has been the difficulty of
isolating dedicated s lave-quarters on Roman sites. At first sight, this puts Romanists at a
distinct disadvantage when compared with their New World counterparts, who are often able
to study plantation slaves living in purpose-built, segregated quarters. On the other hand, as I
suggest below, we have surely excavated enough villas in Roman Britain by now to have at
least some idea where to begin looking for their servile residents.
But let us begin by addressing this old problem in a New World way. N American slave-
quarters are at once both archaeologically visible, and a key source of information on artefact
creolization. This is in large measure because slaves generally buili their own accommodatio n.
This leads to an obvious question: if Roman slaves had to build their own quarters, what would
they build? Given the potentially disparate origins of the slaves resident on any given site,
this is difficult to answer. But if we limit this question to enslaved or servile Britons, then an
answer does come to mind: they might well build roundhouses.
Roundhouses in villa contexts
There were large numbers of roundhouses, and a huge variety of housing traditions, in Roman
Britain, and I do not mean for a minute to suggest that the majori ty of roundhouses were built by
(or for) slaves: indeed, in some counties, such as Northamptonshire, substantial stone-built
roundhouses in non-villa contexts appear to represent the homes of wealthy families. At the
same time, however, Roman-period roundhouses were clearly key loci for the maintenance of
53
Referring to Gaul, Caesar Be 6.13) noted that Gallic peoples were oppressed by debt and servitude,
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Archaeologies of slavery and servitude
171
/
/
- -
-
/ /
/
/
, /
--_
.. . . •
_
-
,
\
\
\
.
,
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I,
I I
, I
I
Siri, OF LATE R B
il
flOUSE
)(JOO()
(lOCJO()
I
, I
I
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I
I I
I
üC)üUU
O 80J O
: = : = t = : : : : - = : - =
h
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Ir _. I.• __ , ,
,
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;ITE )F
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l. . .....-_-_ -:. -. -:; ...._-.-:..--:::...-.-.-dl
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Fig. 2. Vindolanda: Severan annex and location of the roundhouses (Birley, Blake and Birley [infra n.61] p.
14; copyright Vindolanda Trust, reproduced by perrnission).
pre-existing ways of dwelIing,57and aspects of their presence in villa contexts are, to say the
least, intriguing (see below).
We know so little about slavery in Roman Britain that it might seem speculative, at best, to
propose not only that servile groups of indigenous origin built their own accommodations but
also that, given the choice, they might have built roundhouses. But we have one intriguing
piece of evidence suggesting that this might have been the case. An enigmatic and as yet unique
group of late Znd-c. roundhouses has been identified at Vindolanda, a fort on the Stanegate just
south of Hadrian's WalI (figs. 2-3 , These roundhouses are the only examples ever found in the
context of a Roman military site. Their presence there is
all
the more extraordinary given that,
although the roundhouse remained the dominant civilian architectural form in post-conquest
N
Britain, the zone of the WalI itself witnessed a rapid and standardised shift to rectilinear
building forms. lndeed, as S. Clarke has emphasized in his work on extra-mural settlement at
the fort of Newstead.P roundhouses do not even occur within v o
TheVindolanda roundhouses have been subjects ofdebate ever since the first two were found
in 1935, Between then and 1978 a total of 7 examples were located. Their spacing (back-to-back
in rows of 5, facing onto streets) suggested (as proved to be the case) that there might be more
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172
e ster
Fig. 3. Vindolanda: possible reconstruction of the roundhouses (Birley, Blake and Birley [supra n.61] p. 18;
copyright Vindolanda Trust, reproduced by pennission).
awaiting discovery. In P. Bidwell's comprehensive study,59these roundhouses were interpreted
as accommodation for conscripted labour. Contrasting the regimented layout of the houses with
their varied (but clearly vernacular) construction, Bidwell suggested that the occupants had
been allowed to construct housing in their own style on plots laid out by a military surveyor.s''
The discovery in
1997
and excavation of two more roundhouses at Vindolanda prompted a
fur-
ther re-examination'' during which environmental samples were taken from a hearth in one
building and a clay floor in another: both produced mammal bone, and oat and hulled barley
grains. Six more huts were found in 2000 62 and one of these was fully excavated, but the only
finds located on an otherwise very clean floor were two bronze studs. On an artefact-rich site
such as Vindolanda, the paucity of finds from the roundhouse floors is in itself instructive, and
in my view Bidwell's interpretation of these buildings as the self-built dwellings of forced
labourers who chose to build in the round remains the most convíncing.s''
59 P. Bidwell, The Rom an fort of V indolanda at C hesterholm Northumberland (London 1985).
60
Ibid.31.
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Archaealagies slavery and servitude
173
Roundhouse 369
Líoe 01 Mfldiaval plO()QhinO
m
.::::::':':':_:"'::::-.:-:-="":::>.
_ .c.= .::.::..:: ::f
Fig. 4. Redlands Fann, Stanwick: plan of Structure 369 (Keevill and Booth (infra n.63] p. 23; copyright P.
Booth and G. Keevill, reproduced by permission).
Perhaps the same explanation can be put forward to account for the occurrence of roundhouses
in villa contexts. It is well known that many Romano-British villas overlie Iron Age round-
house settlements. Indeed, the progression from circular 'hut' to rectilinear stone villa is one of
the classic markers of the 'Romanization' of 5 Britain. 50 what are we to make of roundhouses
occurring within villa complexes of 2nd-4th c. date? It is surely a remarkable fact that one of
the largest circular dwellings excavated in Britain was found not on an lron Age site, but in the
grounds of a mid-3rd c. villa at Redlands Farm
(Northantsj.v'
Measuring 13.7 m in diameter
internally, this building (5tructure 369) had entrances to the east and west, and appears to
have served simultaneously as a sleeping place, kitchen and byre (fig. 4). A series of intercut-
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174
Webster
ting hearths or ovens at the centre suggested that the house was in use for a lengthy period. It
sat in a courtyard area, close to the heart of the villa complex, but separated from the main
residence by a small rectangular barn. What are we to make of Structure 369 and other villa
roundhouses like it? As scholars have pointed out, we cannot see them wholly in terms of the
progressive Romanization of an Iron Age building tradítion.s No less importantly, villa
roundhouses in some regions (including 3rd- and 4th-c. examples from Oxfordshire) actually
post-date the decline of the domestic roundhouse form in the surrounding landscape.s To put it
another way, villa-owners were apparently maintaining a tradition that had died out on
lower-status sites.
As G. Keevill and P. Booth have pointed out in their discussion of villa roundhouses in
Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, where circular buildings were in contemporary use with
more obviously Romanised structures, it is easy to infer a social distinction between the
inhabitants of the different buildings, but less easy to define what this distinction
was . ?
Smith regards the juxtaposition of rectilinear and circular domestic structures as a variant on
his proposed extended family model for villa occupancy.s but exca vated villa roundhouses
produce noticeably fewer finds than other buildings in villa complexes, making it very difficult
to argue for equity b etween their occupants s?
Keevill and Booth?? raise the interesting possibility that villa roundhouses might be read
as a very pointed statement about relative social status: that is, powerful villa-owners may
have exercised dominion over their inferiors by housing them in circular buildings. Similarly,
in his discussion of the Holme House roundhouse, Harding remarked that the native
building type had no doubt been retained because it was cons idered adequate as living-
quarters for farm-labourers ar slaves, to whom in any case, native ways may
have seemed
preferable to the trappings of Romanisation=.? In my view, it seems highly likely that villa
roundhouses may have been the dwellings of servile groups whose status lay somewhere along
the continuum between slavery and degraded kin discussed above, and who had built their own
accommodations.
With this in mind, let us approach these structures in the way that N American archaeolo-
gists would assess slave-built plantation houses. Focusing on both architecture and the manipu-
lation of artefacts within slave-built accommodations, plantation archaeologists explore the
The fact that roundhouses were built and occupied alongside, or even successive to, buildings of
rectilinear plan in itself implies (as D. Harding notes with reference to the Holme House roundhouse
[Holme House P iercebridge : excavat ions 1969-70 (Edinburgh 1984) 18]) that the roundhouse form was
de liberately retained or revived in parallel with dominant Roman practice . See also R. Hingley, The
imperial context in Romano-British studies and proposals for a new understanding of social change, in
P. Funari, M. Hall and S. [ones (edd.),
Historic al archaeology backfrom the edge
(London 1999) 145-46.
Keevill and Booth (supra n.64) 41-42.
67
Ibid.40
68 Smith 1985(supra n.55).
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Archaeologies of slavery and servitude
175
dialectic between African lifeways and an imposed material culture. In that dialectic, they
find slave experience and slave culture. Can we use this approach with villa roundhouses?
As discussed above, there is much to suggest that various categories of unfree Briton existed
both before and after the conquest. It also seems reasonable to suggest that (as was common
practice in the New World) some of these servile Britons would have built their own accommo-
dations. This was certainly likely at Vindolanda. At the same time, we know a great de al
about Later pre-Roman lron Age indigenous architectural traditions, and about the logic in-
forming the use of dwelling spaces. Specifically, it is clear that the movement of the sun around
E-facing roundhouses was an important structuring principle for many communities in lron Age
Britain.F The Iron Age concept of the sunwise path can perhaps be seen as an equivalent of
the African cosmological traditions informing plantation architecture and
artefacts ê
How,
then, did the sunwise path fare in the Roman world? It seems reasonable to suggest that the
cosmologicallogic of the sunwise path would soon be irrelevant to those living in buildings
with corners.õ but what if one
continued
to live in the round? One possibility here might be to
look at artefact patterning on villa roundhouses to see if Iron Age cosmological principles are
maintained within them, and to ask at the same time whether potentially creole artefact
categories can be identified in such locations.
Roundhouses have been fully or partially uncovered in the course of large-scale villa
excavations at a number of sítes. A brief look at the work at Barnsley Park and Bancroft will
highlight the problems, but also the potentials, that emerge when attempting a re-analysis of
the kind advocated here. Six circular structures were identified at Barnsley Park, a villa
complex occupied from AD. 140 to 380.
76
Two of the circular structures (F and G) were discovered
in the S yard of the villa complex and dated to Phase 2 (275-315); two more (K and L) were
uncovered in the N yard and dated to Phase 3 (315-40); finally, two further examples (Q in the
N yard and R in the S yard) were dated to Phase 4 (340-60). Structure Q was still in use in 360-
72
Important studies include A. Fitzpatrick, Outside in: the strueture of an Early lron Age house at
Dunston Park, Thateham, Berkshire, i n ido and E. Morris (edd.),
The lr on Age in W essex: re cent work
(Trust for Wessex Arehaeology 1994)68-72;A Fitzpatriek, Everyday life in lron Age Wessex, in A
Gwilt and C. Haselgrove (edd.),
Reco nstructing Iron Age societie s
(Oxford 1997) 73-86; and
Oswald,
A doorway on th e past, ibid. 87-95.
73 See Ferguson (supra n.20) on the Bakongo eosmogram as a referent structuring the use of slave-made
eeramics in SCarolina.
74 Taylor (supra n.57) has suggested that patterns in the usage and layout of spaee observable in lron Age-
and Roman-period roundhouses were maintained in 2nd- and 3rd-c. aisled buildings in parts of the E
Midlands. Taylor did not look specifieally at eosmologieal referents, preferring to foeus on the
segregation of private and publie spaees within buildings; on which see also Hingley (supra n.27), and
id., Public and private spaee: domestic organisation and gender relations among lron Age and Romano-
British households, in R. Samson (ed.),
The socia l archaeology of houses
(Edinburgh 1990) 125-49. Nor
did Taylor assess how far, if at ali, eosmological referents intimately linked with building in the round
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176 Webster
75 (Phase 5/6) and thus survived the major reconstruction of the villa in c.360.
77
The excavators
initially dismissed the idea that these buildings could have been houses, asserting that any
circular or irregular dry stone outline must surely be regarded as purely a dry-stone walled
structure, perhaps informally roofed, or perhaps unroofed, as an animal pen .78 As several
subsequent writers have
suggested. ?
it is more likely that some (perhaps all) of these struc-
tures were roundhouses.s?
On balance, it seems very likely that the Bamsley Park buildings represent servile quarters,
but, having made that suggestion, what more can be said about them? The key point is that
none of the previous interpretations was based on analysis of the artefacts from these
structures.
It
is not the case that there are
finds from the Bamsley Park roundhouses; the
problem is that no-one has thought to look beyond the circular form of the buildings to the use
to which artefacts were put within them.ê We can note, though, that several of the
roundhouses here had E or SE-facing.entrances, like the Iron Age roundhouses which were
regularly oriented towards sunrise at the equinoxes and midwinter.V A good number of finds
appear to have come from the general area of building Q, a substantial (9.5 m diameter)
circular building with an E-facing entrance.
The final report on excavations at the extensive villa and temple-mausoleum complex at
Bancroft'ê provides information on two circular structures (Buildings 4 and 11) associated with
a villa of the late 1st to late 2nd c., and another (Building 12) constructed in the late 2nd or
early 3rd c., at a time when the villa site otherwise appears to have been devoid of human
activity.ê These buildings were excavated under modem conditions and using a quadrant
excavation system that would, potentially, facilitate detailed analysis of artefact-patterning
within circular buildings.ê'' But even here problems emerge. Building
4
(8.6 x 6.0 m overall) lay
at the centre of the villa farmyard. There was no evidence for an entrance, and the floor was of
beaten earth. This building was first located, and partially excavated, in 1976; the original
excavators reported the presence of post-holes and a pit in the interior, but they were not
subsequently relocated. The more substantial (13 m diam. externally) Building 11 was sited on
the edge of the farmyard area; it probably had an E-facing entrance.f Part of the interior on
the E side was surfaced with cobbles, and the remains of
a
hearth were located at the centre.
Pottery of 2nd-c. date was recovered from the interior, and the building was interpreted as
77
Webster 1981(supra n.75) 9l.
78
Webster and Smith 1982 (supra n.75) 89.
79
Including Hingley (supra n.27),Smith 1985(supra n.55), and Keevill and Booth 1997(supra n.64) 37.
8 Smith (1985, supra n.55) has also attempted fit Barnsley Park inta his 'extended kin' model of villa
accupancy, suggesting that three families, at first living in circular buildings and holding land in joint
ownership, were converted into a single modified kin group living within a single hall villa. Webster
and Smith (supra n.68)87have countered with the suggestion that the roundhouses represent peripheral
occupation by inferior workers in outbuildings with animais .
81
Part of the difficulty here lies with the presentation of the finds data in the published reports (Webster
1981, supra n.75; Webster and Smith 1982,supra n.75). Simply put, it is not possible to determine what
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Archaeologies of slavery and servitude
177
providing accommodation for farm workers.V ln the case of Building 12 (11.7 m diam.), no trace
of an entrance was found, and the interior was devoid of contemporary features.
In order to creolize villa roundhouses, we need to know what was on their floors, and
where. As this brief look at Barnsley Park and Bancroft makes plain, that information is diffi-
cult or impossible to reconstruct, even on sites excavated in recent years. We know, however,
that a good number of these buildings faced east; and it is interesting to note that a number of
excavators have found traces of internal, and sometimes radial, partitioning segregating villa
roundhouse interiors.P Both features suggest the maintenance of pre-existing cosmological
referents. As for artefacts, we may als o have to come to terms with the possibility that one of
the clearest s ignatures of servile villa accommodation may actualIy be a paucity of finds. In
this context, a number of likely villa roundhouses have been identified from the air but not
excavated.ê? more may yet appear. It should be clear by now that the question we need to ask
in future is not What form did villa roundhouse artefacts take? , but How were they being
used? The answer might be that the occupants of villa roundhouses were using artefacts
according to an underlying, Iron Age logic. If so, we can begin to ask whether we might be listen-
ing to the dialogue of the unfree. At the very least, we can begin to re-assess old data in depth,
and put new strategies in place that will inform future work.
Further thoughts on villas
Dedicated slave-quarters might be hard to find on villa sites, but surely we have excavated
enough villas in Britain to have so m e idea as to where to begin to look for servile, as opposed to
élite, residents. Villa roundhouses, I have suggested, are one possibility. What else? One
obvious target might be aisled buildings and related ancillary structures situated within
double- or multiple-compound villas. Despite all that we now know about variations in the
date and function of aisled buildings in Britain, this idea still has considerable merit.f? The
central difficulty is our inability to differentiate with confidence between buildings housing
extended families, semi-servile kin , tenants, servants and slaves. But we have to start some-
where, and villas with compounds exhibiting clear economic differentiation (including Wood-
chester and Chedworth [Glos.], North WraxalI [Wilts.], Bignor [Sussex], and Gorhambury
[Herts.]) seem as good a place as any. At Gorhambury, for example, the compound to the east of
the villa contained aisled buildings and an isolated bathhouse, and is usually interpreted as a
wo rkers compound . Why do we not look again at the assemblages from this and similar
large sites to see what more can be said about the use of artefacts within these architectural
spaces? We might also explore whether some of the ancillary buildings on these villa
complexes might not have served as rural
erg stul
In so doing, we might find spaces in which
(and artefacts through which) servile groups shaped their identity in Roman Britain.
One other villa context in which we should be looking for slaves is amongst the dead. In the
New World, some of the best evidence for slave experience comes from plantation cemeteries.V
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178
Webster
Because slaves buried each other, and because grave goods were commonly interred even with
Christian slaves, cemeteries provide important evidence about aspects of the social lives of
slaves that were largely hidden from slave-owners. These aspects include inter-slave hierar-
chies, economic networking, and the maintenance of African spiritual traditions and social
categories. Even in the New World, plantation cemeteries are not easy to find, and in the
Roman world the situation is far worse. We know very little about the disposal of dead slaves
in Roman Britain, for example, and have yet to identify a slave cemetery; we cannot even be
certain that such sites existed. Certainly, few sites in the Roman world as a whole have been
identified as slave cemeteries. The best-known candidates are cemeteries associated with the
mining settlements of Portugal, such as Dehesa and Corta Lago (Riotinto), which have pro-
duced cremated remains of possible slave-workers.P Examples of slave cemeteries in villa
contexts are especially rare: a cremation cemetery located outside the enclosure wall of the
villa at
Koln-Müngersdorf
contains
55
burials (Flavian to 2nd c.) that may represent the
remains of slaves or farm-workers dispatched with few grave goods, and without cremation
urns;94 in Britain, the villa at Hambleden has produced 100 infant burials, leading to specula-
tions about infant exposure on a
slave-run establishment i
The number of villa cemeteries identified in Britain remains small (perhaps because, until
recently, we have rarely looked beyond the walls enclosing villa complexes), but are there
ways in which we could look for slaves among the human remains from the excavated sites? At
Patuxent Point (Md.), to give just one example, physical anthropologists examining human
remains from a 17th-c. farm graveyard identified massive
upper-torso
development in the only
body on the site to be interred with grave goods: they suggested that the young man may have
been a slave who lived and died alongside his owners after a brief life
of
hard manual
lab-
our ?
What more might we be doing with the skeletal and cremated human remains already at
our disposal in Roman Britain, not to mention with new finds?
Conclusions
Some readers may feel that paucity of finds will hamper all the avenues of enquiry have
outlined. My response is that we don't know if that will actually be the case until we try. The
error we make in the study of Roman slavery is that we under-estimate the power of artefacts,
assuming that they can have no part to play in articulating stories of slavery and servitude.
lndeed, amongst the British sites discussed above, Chalk stands out as the sole example where
interpretation
a building as a slave dwelling was informed by observations about the use and
manipulation
artefacts. Most
the sites discussed produced material culture: they just do not
produce very much of it. But we will never come doser to seeing slavery and servitude if we are
not prepared to extract every nuance, and wring every piece of information, out of the little we
do have. Perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from the New World is the
under-
standing that we cannot see the worlds the unfree made for themselves without constant refer-
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Archaeologies of slavery and servitude
9
ence to the ways in which they manipulated the few (often unremarkable) artefacts at their
disposal. The archaeology of Roman slavery - insofar as such a thing exists - remains, by
contrast, heavily reliant on the bigger picture offered by Classical literature. As a result, we
have drastically under-estimated the potential of the small things through which Roman
slaves, like their counterparts in the New World, wrote themselves into history.
[email protected] School of Historical Studies, Univ. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Acknowledgements
Versions of this paper were first aired in seminar series at Kíng s College London and at Durham. I am
grateful to colleagues and students from both institutions for their comments and ideas. My appeal to
ROMARCH brought very helpful information from a number of colleagues, including E. Fentress, M. T. Boat-
wright and Bode . I owe special debt to N. Cooper. who commented on the Chalk assemblage, and to H. Mou-
ritsen, who provided a summary in English of Carandini (1984,supra n.8)and commented on an earlier draft
of this paper. D. Mattingly and E. Fentress also commented on an earlier draft and suggested many improve-
ments to the textoI should also like to thank the Caird Trustees (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich),
whose award of a Caird Senior Research Fellowship supported my research on slavery between 2001 and
2003.