UnRoman Britain
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
How far did Roman culture and politics penetrate into Britain during the Roman occupation of Britannia?
Miles Russell, archaeologist and writer, argues that Britain wasn't as Romanised as has often been believed; in fact only the wealthy elite really emulated fashions from Rome. He highlights archaeological evidence which shows that the bulk of the population went on with their lives as best they could whilst the forts, towns and later villas were little bubbles of Roman culture having limited impact on wider society. Join Dan and Miles as they discuss.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello History Hit listeners, as you are listening to this right now at this exact second I am |
| 0:05.8 | currently on an epic cross-country road trip of England. 600 miles and 1 million years of history |
| 0:14.4 | from the first humans through to Stonehenge, Dovercastle, Hastings up to Ironbridge in the |
| 0:19.3 | Black Country and to the northeast where I'm visiting a Cold War bunker in York. |
| 0:25.0 | I want to hear from you. I want to do more stops. Tell me when I should stop. Any local tips or |
| 0:29.8 | hints that you want to share or you want to see me report on on my social media channels and Twitter |
| 0:34.1 | and Instagram etc. just send me a message ds.hh at historyhit.com. That's delta Sierra. |
| 0:41.4 | . hotel hotel at historyhit.com or tweet me at the History Guy. You can keep up with the road trip |
| 0:47.4 | this week on Instagram and Twitter at the History Guy on both and then you can hear the whole thing as a |
| 0:52.1 | podcast series next week. Thanks and enjoy this episode. |
| 1:02.5 | Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm still in St Helena. Little volcanic |
| 1:08.1 | outcropping the middle of the South Atlantic. One of the most isolated communities of human beings |
| 1:13.1 | on planet earth. So lots of lots of history at content being produced here just you wait. It's |
| 1:18.9 | going to be also it's not just Napoleon Bonaparte also so far stuff as well. Did you know that on |
| 1:23.4 | this island there is the most important archaeological record of the middle passage of the Transatlantic |
| 1:30.7 | slave trade anywhere in the world. Yep, watch this space. Lots coming out here soon. This podcast |
| 1:37.2 | over has nothing whatsoever to do with St Helena. It has everything to do with Roman Britain or |
| 1:43.6 | un-Roman Britain. Just how far do Roman ideas, language, culture, religion, politics, |
| 1:54.4 | demographics penetrate into Britain during the Roman occupation of Britannia from the first |
| 2:01.3 | to the fifth centuries AD. In this podcast I looked at Miles Russell who doesn't think it did |
| 2:07.0 | penetrate very far and he's got lots of fantastic archaeological evidence to support the idea that |
| 2:11.8 | Roman rule was just a bit of a veneer or certainly confined to isolated spots around our island. |
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