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ROMANO‐BRITISH PEOPLE AND THE LANGUAGE OF SOCIOLOGY
Author(s) -
McCARTHY MIKE
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
oxford journal of archaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.382
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1468-0092
pISSN - 0262-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0092.2006.00257.x
Subject(s) - conquest , scope (computer science) , history , order (exchange) , sociology , archaeology , ancient history , computer science , finance , economics , programming language
Summary. Despite the vast amount of work and the huge database for Roman Britain, the people of the province remain very difficult to discern. There are many reasons for this, but one is that we have not yet learned to look behind the disjecta membra of archaeology in order to understand the structure and nature of society, and how the Roman Conquest may have impacted upon it. The language of sociology offers scope for thought, especially when combined with examples drawn from historically documented societies in later periods. Whilst models drawn from the classical world are important, attention also needs to be focused on the local, and on the factors that determined the shape of people's lives and influenced their daily activities. Not all these are archaeologically detectable; nevertheless an appreciation of their existence is an important pre‐requisite in attempting explanations of patterns in the data.