Research Projects
Discovering Roman Britain
A research project of the Department of Archaeology.
Background
This project is being undertaken by Richard Hingley to chart the early recovery of knowledge about Roman Britain. One book, which focused upon the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has already been published (R. Hingley 2000, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen, Routledge) and the research for a second book, Discovering Roman Britain, is currently underway. Research for the new book involves writings and representations connected to the rediscovery of the material culture of Romans and ancient Britons from 1583 to 1900. The research seeks to investigate how discoveries and interpretations of objects and sites gradually came to influence the ideas that were communicated through the classical accounts of pre-Roman and Roman-period populations. The book is the subject of a period of research leave during 2006-7 and should be published during 2007/8. A separate project to investigate perceptions of Hadrian’s Wall from the eighth to the twenty first century is also underway as part of this broad initiative and a bid for a major research grant in the Landscape and Environment initiative from the AHRC is currently under consideration.
