Series: Winchester Museums Archaeology Reports

This volume provides a record and analysis of Roman environmental evidence from the less well-known extra-mural areas of Winchester and assesses what these discoveries add to the understanding of the city’s past. It is one of the mostcomprehensive accounts of animal remains from a Roman town published up until this time. The study is based on excavations from the 1970s and early 1980s,which, by examining sites on the defences and in the historic suburbs, has enlarged the scope of previous extensive investigations within the city walls.It is essential reading for all those interested in the study of the animals, plants, and environment of a Roman town, as well as being of value to urban archaeologists and to those with a general interest in the history and archaeology of Hampshire. It sheds light on the management of animal and plant resources in and around one of the most well-known civitas capitals, as well as providing glimpses of everyday life in Winchester through this comprehensive study of the supply, consumption and disposal of mammals, birds, fish, and plants over a period of almost four hundred years.

Roman Winchester was preceded in the same strategic location by a large Iron Age settlement known as the Oram’s Arbour. Christopher Hawkes initially postulated the possibility of such a pre-Roman origin for Winchester in 1930. It is, however, a long series of excavations and observations from the mid-1950s until 1999 that have allowed this report to be prepared and the current thesis to be developed.The report focuses on the work carried out on a number of sites in the Oram’s Arbour enclosure by Winchester Museums Service (Archaeology Section) between 1973 and 1986. It is postulated that the enclosure was a strategically located centre for regional exchange and communications. It concludes with a brief survey of the impact and influence that the enclosure had upon the subsequent development of the Roman and later town.

The excavations described in this volume were undertaken in the northern, western and eastern suburbs of the Roman town and produced evidence for both the cemeteries and suburban settlements. The ambitious extent of the work, and the quantity and quality of the data mean that the results are of considerable importance not only for Winchester itself but for the towns of Roman Britain and for Roman mortuary studies. In the latter regard this volume builds on the groundbreaking study by Giles Clarke (1979) of the late Roman cemetery at Lankhills.