Hinterlands & Inlands: The Archaeology of West Cambridge and Roman Cambridge Revisited

By Christopher Evans and Gavin Lucas

Thinking Hinterlands – Spanning 25 years of fieldwork across a 3 sq. km swathe on the west side of Cambridge, this and its companion volume present the results of 15 sites, including seven cemeteries. The main focus is on the area’s prehistoric ‘inland’ colonization (particularly its Middle Bronze Age horizon) and the dynamics of its Roman hinterland settlements. The latter involves a variety of farmsteads, a major roadside centre and a villa-estate complex, and the excavation programme represents one of the most comprehensive studies of the Roman countryside anywhere within the lands of its former empire. Appropriately, this book also includes a review of Roman Cambridge, appraising its status as a town.

With such a body of amassed data to draw upon, comparative statistical analyses are employed throughout, alongside an array of scientific studies that include ancient DNA. Both books also have a historiographic dimension relating to the landscape’s specific suburban situation and its latter-day colonization by the University. Earlier excavations by Jenkinson at Girton College and Marr’s Traveller’s Rest Pit investigations are reviewed, with the ‘archaeology’ of the Darwin Family Estate and the Newall Telescope also featured.

The collective results are groundbreaking. This was a densely packed landscape, and the scale and coherence of the cumulative excavation programme provides significant insights concerning prehistoric and Roman-period settlement densities. What their proximity implies for economic and social practices, and the area’s long-term land-use succession – the comings and goings of communities and ‘history’ – are explored in depth.

• Complete volume - Hinterlands & Inlands: The Archaeology of West Cambridge and Roman Cambridge Revisited
• Chapter 1 - Introduction – Mapping and Sociable Knowledges
• Chapter 2 - Roman Cambridge (Revisited) and its Immediate Environs
• Chapter 3 - Roads West – New Hall and Fitzwilliam College Excavations
• Chapter 4 - Vicars Farm – Baseline Matters
• Chapter 5 - Vicars Farm – Roman Settlement Sequence
• Chapter 6 - Building Spaces, Assemblages and Community – Overviewing Vicar’s Farm
• Chapter 7 - The High Cross Settlement and Other Investigations – Postscript and Landscape Context