Largest study into the people of Roman Britain set to transform understandings of the period

Academics at Cardiff University and the University of York will begin a three-year project investigating mobility in Roman Britain.

The UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has awarded £1.49m for the project, which will be the largest combined archaeological, isotopic and ancient DNA (aDNA) study into a Roman population ever undertaken.

The research is led by Dr David Roberts (Cardiff University) with Professor Richard Madgwick (Cardiff University) and Dr Sophy Charlton (University of York).

Dr Roberts, based at Cardiff University’s School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: “The Roman period is foundational to our national narratives, and we aim to re-examine assumptions about the level of migration and mobility in Britain at that time.

“We’ll be focusing particularly on people from rural and civilian sites, using multiple strands of scientific and archaeological evidence to weave together subtler narratives of how people moved as individuals, as groups, and over multiple generations than has ever been possible before for Roman Britain.”

The project builds on extensive recent excavations of Roman cemeteries across England and Wales undertaken by commercial archaeological units as part of the planning and development process.

Dr Charlton of the University of York explained: “The high quality data generated by specialist archaeologists working on cemeteries excavated in advance of development allows us to work more efficiently, reusing our colleagues’ data and adding additional value to their projects. We’re grateful to our partners for allowing us to work with them on this exciting project.”

During the occupation of much of Britain by the Roman empire, we know that significant numbers of soldiers and other people involved with the empire moved between Britain and the Continent and traditional studies of mobility have tended to focus on these people, or those found with exotic artefacts.

This project will undertake far larger scale analysis focused on a wider range of people and sites, investigating not just provincial level mobility, but also movement of people within Britannia.

Professor Richard Madgwick, of Cardiff University’s School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: “This work will build on several recent major Roman projects at Cardiff, working with our colleagues at York to investigate mobility across Britannia. The scale of this research will be game-changing in understanding how people moved around, and into, Roman Britain. Our integrated archaeological and scientific methodology will provide a model to investigate other Roman provinces in future.”

The Roman Britannia: Mobility and Society project begins in March 2025.