Events Programme
AGM & Colloquium
Saturday 7 June 2025, 2 - 6pm, Room G22/26, Senate House
Voices waiting to be heard? Notable women of Romano-British archaeology
Female archaeologists have been involved in Romano-British studies since the early days of the archaeological discipline and have played a significant, pioneering role. While a few early and 20th-century female archaeologists are recognised today, many others remain largely forgotten despite their key contributions and pioneering research. This colloquium will put spotlight on a few forgotten female trailblazers, touching upon their roles in and contributions to the research on Roman Britain. Not only the individual biographies of invisible and forgotten women archaeologists will be presented, but the reasons why their work has not received due recognition will also be explored. The talks compare and contrast the challenges faced by these women and the obstacles they had to overcome to make their work acknowledged. All put in the spotlight their contributions and achievements in the study of Roman Britain.
The colloquium will be accompanied by a small display of archival material of MV Taylor and drawings (digitally reprinted) by Elizabeth Hodgson.
2pm AGM
2.30 - 2.50: Dr Tatiana Ivleva, ‘Present but forgotten: why we need historiography of women archaeologists in Romano-British studies and beyond’
2.50 - 3.15: Dr Martha Stewart, ‘Margerie Venables Taylor (1881-1963): an unsung heroine of Roman Britain?’
3.15 - 3.45: Dr Natasha Harlow, ‘Championing the contribution of women archaeologists at Caistor: Atkinson, Hankinson and Green’
3.45 - 4.15: Tea and cake and viewing of the archive and photographs
4.15 - 4.25: Dr Amara Thornton, 'Beyond Notability' project
4.25 - 4.45: Dr Frances McIntosh, ‘Her father’s daughter: did Grace Simpson ever escape the shadow of F G Simpson?’
4.45 - 5.15: Prof. Dr David Breeze, ‘Elizabeth Hodgson: a dispassionate recorder of Hadrian's Wall?’
5.15 - 5.30: questions/discussion
5.30 - 6.00: Reception and viewing of the archive and photographs
Roman discoveries in Lincolnshire
Friday 30 May 2025, 10am–12:30pm
University of Lincoln
Registration is free, please visit: https://tinyurl.com/24c4ekf4
Coop Lecture theatre, MB0312, Minerva Building, University of Lincoln
Event schedule:
10:00-10:15: Introduction
10:15-11:00: First talk: Dr Eleanor Ghey, Coin hoards and Roman Lincolnshire
11:00-11:30: coffee and refreshments
11:30-12:15: Second talk: Richard Parker, Norton Disney, the site that keeps on giving!
There will be time for questions after both talks.
Please see the poster for more details.
This event is free and open to all, organized by the Archaeology Committee of the Roman Society, in conjunction with the University of Lincoln and the Lincoln branches of the Classical Association and Historical Association.
Reconnecting Roman Britain 2025, Nottingham
Date and time: Friday 7 November (16.00-19.00) & Saturday 8 November (09.00-16.30)
Location: Department of Music, Lakeside Arts Centre, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD
Following the continued success of the annual Reconnecting Roman Britain event, the Archaeology Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, the Department of Classics and Archaeology and the University of Nottingham Museum will showcase the latest research and discoveries at an in-person event.
On Friday 7 November, there will be a pre-event tour of the University Archaeological Museum, drinks reception and an evening lecture, at which Dr Simon Elliott FSA will be presenting his work on Roman Britain’s Missing Legion (see box below). Papers, posters and presentations will take place on Saturday 8 November. There will be a combination of longer papers, as well as “lightning round” and poster presentations. There will be opportunities to view the Norton Disney dodecahedron and accompanying exhibition on both days.
Further information and registration is available here.
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Paestum
Tuesday 25 March, 2025, 5.30pm, Room G22/26, Senate House
Dr Tiziana D’Angelo (Director of the Archaeological Park of Paestum and Velia): Poseidonia, a city of temples: architecture, cult and society in a recently-discovered Western Greek sanctuary
Professor Christopher Smith (St Andrews) and Professor Elena Isayev (Exeter): Religion and Politics in Poseidon’s City
Dr Kathryn Lomas (Durham): Paestum: Ethnicity, culture and the power of memory in a mixed community
Reconnecting Roman Britain
The annual 'Reconnecting Roman Britain' event will be held on 23 November 2024 at the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, hosted by the University of Chester and the Chester Archaeological Society. This free event will include specialists of different disciplines showcasing the latest research and finds from Roman Britain as well as the presentation of the Britannia Award for extraordinary voluntary contributions to Roman Archaeology in Britain. A pre-event tour of Roman Chester and reception will be held on Friday 22 November and the papers and presentations will be on Saturday the 23rd.
The programme is available here.
Booking is available here.
Further information is available here.
Autumn Lecture
Tuesday 5 November, 5.30pm
Room 264, Senate House, London
Professor Jonathan Prag: Crossreads: multidisciplinary approaches to Sicilian epigraphic culture
Joint event with the Society of Antiquaries
Thursday 31 October, 2024, 5-6pm
Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly W1J 0BE and online
Dr Nicola Terrenato: Urban borehole surveys and the origins of the Roman Forum
The debate on the early phases of the Roman Forum goes back to the origins of urban archaeology in Rome, in the days of Giacomo Boni’s excavations in the early 1900s. Understanding how and when the first piazza was created has always—and rightly—be considered as a crucial step to reconstruct the urban formation in Rome and in central Italy more generally. Lacking palaces and large temples, the beginning of early Italian urbanism can be detected primarily from the creation of public spaces in the center of the settlement, like the Forum in Rome.
Since the 1990s, the dominant theory for Rome has envisioned that the Forum valley had always been seasonally flooded, thus requiring mitigation to be turned into a public piazza. Such mitigation would have happened between the 8th and the 7th century and would have required thousands of cubic meters of intentional infill. This massive project would have marked the first major collective effort on the part of the early Romans to turn their settlement into a city. Recent hydrogeological data from a vast borehole survey in the neighboring Forum Boarium (and other adjoining valleys), however, has been calling into question the accepted reconstruction. After a careful and methodologically innovative work to create a three-dimensional model of the entire stratigraphy, a starkly different new picture is coming into focus.
We now know that the environment of early Roman valleys changed radically in the course of the 6th century BCE, probably as a result of human impacts along the broader river basin. Over the course of only a few decades, meters of sediment were deposited, the Tiber riverbed moved and was raised, and the Tiberine island emerged for the first time. The earliest Forum gravel floors lie on top of this sequence, providing a much later date for the creation of the first piazza than previously believed. This re-dating of the Roman Forum has major implication for our understanding of early urbanism in central Italy. Evidence from other sites converges to show that budding cities in this region invested in public spaces only at a fairly advanced stage of their development, centuries after their first occupation.
Nicola Terrenato is the Esther B. Van Deman Collegiate Professor of Roman Studies and the director of the Kelsey Museum at the University of Michigan. He directs the Gabii Project and the Sant’Omobono Project, and conducts research in the Forum Boarium, at the Regia and on the Quirinal in Rome. His research focuses on early Rome, the Roman conquest and the formation of states and empires. He recently published Early Roman Expansion, CUP 2019, which won the 2021 AIA Wiseman Book Award.
To book, please visit the Society of Antiquaries website:
https://www.sal.org.uk/event/urban-borehole/
Details of past events can be found here.
Visit the Roman Society's YouTube channel to browse videos of past lectures.
Click here to see upcoming lectures hosted jointly with Classical Association.