Page - 128 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

128 AdamRogers superior tonon-Westernsettlements. TimEdensorandMark Jaynehaveargued thatweneed to decentralise theway inwhichweapproachurban studies.23 Thismeans thatweneed tomove urbantheoryawayfromapreoccupationwithWesternurbanism.This isnotonlyabout treating non-Westernsettlementsequally,butalso thinkingabouthownon-Westernsitescanbe investi- gated fromdifferent, non-Western perspectives, andhow these themes can alsohelp us to see Westernsites inadifferent light.Thesedifferentperspectivescanrelate to thedevelopmentand function of urban settlements, the organisation and use of urban space, the construction and useof buildingsand the lives andexperiencesof residents.Non-Westernperspectives cancon- tribute to an exciting variety of ways of thinking about urbanism and urban spaces. Within archaeology, thisdecentringofurbanstudies is evenmore crucial becauseof theway inwhich Western perspectives have conventionally dominated in urban investigations globally, despite there being ahuge range of different settlement sites. This is important for thinking about the Romanworld, where there were many different types of urban sites across the Empire; they need tobe investigated inways that donot prioritise theRomanocentric perspectives. FocusingonBritain, the towns in theRomanperiodtendtobestudiedandcategorisedfrom theperspectiveof their legal titleandstatus,whichhadanimpactonthenatureof their founda- tionanddevelopment.This categorisationof townswasconsolidatedbyearly scholarsworking on the epigraphic, documentary and archaeological material in order to produce some of the first narratives on urban development in Roman provincial contexts.24 This perspective and narrative on urban development has been immensely influential on approaches to provincial archaeology andurbanism, as canbe seen in themajority of later publications onRomanBrit- ain.25 MartinMillett’s 1990 book ‘The Romanization of Britain’ continued,26 but built on, this narrative by emphasising the need to study the pre-Roman context inwhich each towndevel- oped,andthelocalagencyinurbandevelopment throughinteractionwiththeRomanincomers. This approach has continued to be influential, as can be seen in later publications on urban development.27Laterworksought tomoveawayfromtheRoman-orientatednarrative in looking at urban origins by thinking critically about urban biographies and landscapes.28 The colonia inBritainwere founded fromfortresses and theyareusually regardedas themostRoman form ofcities, followedby thecivitas-capitals,whichwereoften located in thecontextofpre-existing oppida, but could also involve the construction of a fort. The study of towns inBritain has, as aconsequence, tendedtofocusonwhether therewasafortassociatedwiththetownfoundation or not andhow these forts influenced the development andnature of the town. This narrative has tended todominatedespite attempts tomove towardspost-colonial perspectives. Across the archaeological discipline there is increasing interest in the need to bring social and scientific perspectives of landscape together. In the context of Romanurban studies, how- ever, landscapes have continued to be tackled in fairly conventionalways,which iswhy there has been increasing dissatisfaction with post-colonialism and critiques of Romanisation, be- cause they continue to prioritise the Roman perspective. Other ways of looking at landscape, however, can help us assess urban development and themateriality of urbanism differently. This iswherewecanthinkaboutnotonlydifferentperceptionsof landscape,butdifferingways of reconstructingpast landscapes. Post-colonialismhelpsus toemphasise thatweneed to look at urban development froma range of perspectives and not simply from that of the top-down analysis. Breaking downdualisms in approaches to archaeological interpretation allows us to bring togetherdifferentperspectives, including the social andphysical implicationsofwater in urbancontexts. 23 Edensor– Jayne 2012. 24 E.g.Haverfield 1912. 25 E.g. Frere 1967; Salway 1981;Hurst 1988;Webster 1988. 26 Millett 1990. 27 E.g. Creighton 2006. 28 SeeRogers 2016.