Silchester Revealed: The Iron Age & Roman Townwn of Calleva

by byM Michael Fulford Windgather Wind Press Mar 2021 2 £16.99 pp224 pb isbn 9781911188834 9

This is a terrific book, both for what it is and what it represents. The latter is a remarkable project, without precedent and possibly unrepeatable. Fulford started to excavate at Silchester in 1974, supported by his university – but having to seek funding elsewhere – and continues to this day. Over decades, many staff and thousands of students and volunteers have helped and learned from the project. Ideas and technologies changed (what can now be examined, and the costs of doing so, far exceed what was possible at the start), as knowledge of the Roman town ballooned. This is Fulford’s subject here: the story of a town from origins to the abandonment that left a rare specimen, its

remains both undisturbed and accessible. Like many Roman towns, Silchester had a Latin name – Calleva Atrebatum – that reflected existing local polities. Fulford shows, however, that this was more than a label. The town itself, with a scale and plan remarkably similar to the later development, was founded by Iron Age people. They were not local, however, but arrived from northern France – enterprising refugees, perhaps. Four other towns including Colchester and St Albans had similar roots. And so we proceed, with excellent illustrations, through Roman conquest and the growth of a regional capital to – Fulford suggests – takeover by a monastery in the fifth century.