David Roberts

Research project

Supervisors: Kevin Walsh and Steve Roskams

Recent theorising regarding ‘Romanisation’ has made a welcome plea to consider diversity of response to changing contexts (e.g. Mattingly 2006), yet has predominantly focused on purely abstract or ritual identity dynamics (e.g. Eckhardt 2009) whilst seldom attempting to locate them in regional landscape contexts or material circumstances. This has prevented the emergence of any truly holistic understandings of the interactions of so called ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ components of lifescapes. Additionally, if we accept that Roman societies emphasised the control and management of landscapes via quite specific forms of engineering and landscape management procedures, it is important to understand if these procedures or ideological templates varied across the empire according to differences in environmental processes, as well as differences in economy, ideology, and religion.

My research will develop such understandings through the development and application of an innovative and holistic methodology for landscape studies, based on critically applied GIS and social theory. I will be investigating the landscapes of Wessex and Provence, using case studies from Teffont, in Wiltshire, and the Montagne Sainte Victoire, in Provence. My work in Provence will involve reanalysis and reinterpretation of existing data, whereas my work in Wiltshire will involve substantial amounts of fieldwork. This fieldwork will include multiple forms of landscape survey, excavation and analysis, and continue to provide opportunities for undergraduate and post-graduate students to gain fieldwork experience.

Profile

 I took my BA in Archaeology and MA in Landscape Archaeology at York, and have just begun my PhD. I have experience of working on archaeological sites in the UK and in France, and am especially interested in landscape survey and excavation. In my spare time I enjoy climbing and walking, particularly in the Lake District, and in the Wiltshire downlands.