Hella Eckardt - Individual mobility in Roman Britain: challenges and opportunities

This paper will summarise recent work on mobility and  migration in Roman Britain, exploring methodological challenges and theoretical opportunities. The Roman Empire is characterised by high levels of mobility, often focused on urban and military sites and occasionally recorded in inscriptions. Burial rites and grave goods have also been used to assign local or non-local identities to individuals. Isotope and increasingly aDNA analysis offers new sources of information, but there is perhaps a danger that scientific data are used to define the only relevant or ‘true’ identity. The first Romano-British analysis of cremation burials (using strontium isotopes) and the associated recent exhibition at Colchester provide an opportunity to explore the opportunities and challenges of these new techniques, and to reflect on curatorial choices when presenting them to the public. This builds on work in York and Winchester, which combined artefactual with isotopic and aDNA analysis. Overall, I aim to think through how can we better understand the interplay between cultural identities, geographical origin and descent.

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