Defended Small Towns of Roman Britain

Although the vast majority of the population of Roman Britain continued to live in small rural farmsteads, many larger nucleated settlements developed after the conquest, often sited along the expanding road network. Some of these roadside settlements gained earthwork and/or masonry defences at various points during the mid- to late Roman period, and have often been termed 'defended small towns', although these vary markedly in terms of their scale and in the extent of any 'urban' characteristics (streets, public buildings etc.).
From the outset, for pragmatic reasons, the Roman Rural Settlement Project excluded defended small towns from the database, though a very generous donation by Paul Chadwick later enabled a sample of such data to be collected. Twenty-three defended small towns were included in analyses of the Romano-British economy, lifestyles and ritual practices, published in volumes 2 and 3 of the project's monograph series. A total of 211 records from the 23 settlements are included in this resource.