Page - 130 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

130 AdamRogers preteddifferentlybydifferentgroups in the towns.Bathhousesmayhavebeenuseddifferently, andnotsimply inaway that reflectsRomanisation,30andaqueductsdrewwater frommeaning- ful locations. Inan interestingpaper,PeterEllis31 discussed thepotential religious implications on local people in conquered areas of Romanaqueducts drawingwater from springs and sug- gested that they could be a sign of domination.More studies addressing the complexities and meanings in the use of water in the past remain needed. Although aqueducts have received much study in thepast,32 their religious implications as addressedbyEllis have still onlybeen givenminimal attention. Theway inwhich towns in theRomanperiod interactedwith ritually- imbued watery landscapes and local identities is another useful example of the relationship betweenwater andpower,whichwill be exploredhere through the examinationof a fewsites. With post-humanism, we can consider water as an integral component of the landscape, and this landscapealsobecomepart of townsas theydevelopedand influencedurbanagency. Urbandevelopment inBritain in theRomanperiod tends tobe seenwithin the context ofmili- tary conquest and the establishment of a network of forts which later became towns. Some townswerealsoassociatedwithpre-existingoppidawhichareoften treated in thesamewayas towns. The problem is that these oppida, such as at Colchester (Camulodunum) in Essex, per- haps Camulodunon in the Iron Age, and St Albans (Verulamium) in Hertfordshire, possibly Verlamion in the IronAge, remainpoorlyunderstoodanddonot easily fall intowhatmight be regarded as the category of an urban settlement. This suggests thatwe perhaps need to think about these sites in away that is not preoccupiedwithWestern andmodernnotions of urban- ism. It is also important toconsider the fact that themilitary fortswerenot founded indeserted landscapes,butweresituated inplaces thatalreadyhadmeaning,historyandsignificance.The water in the landscape formedan important component bywhichwecanexamine this. The relationshipbetween townsandwater isnotonly in the formof riversandwaterfronts, which has key economic significance, but the full relationship between settlement andwater can bemuchmore complex. Thewater can include rivers, streams, lakes, pools, springs,wet- lands, islands, puddles,wells, pipes and other forms of supply andwater collection and even containers. Thedistinctionbetween ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ is not straightforward, because the humaninvolvement inall these featuresbreaksdownthesedivisions.Thepost-humanperspec- tive,moreover, ensures thatweexamine this relationship fromnotonly thehumanperspective, but also thenon-human. The rationalisation of the landscape led to its secularisation and the neglect of landscape as cosmologyandmythical geography,33 but bybreakingdown thedualismsbetween rational/ scientific and social approaches to landscape, we can develop more holistic perspectives on how landscapeswereused, experiencedand imagined. We candocument theway inwhichwaterscapes formedpart of the urban fabric andhow thesewaterscapeswerealtered throughurbandevelopment.Urbandevelopment involved inter- actionwithwetlands. At the townofWinchester (Venta Belgarum), for example, there is good archaeological evidence for a large-scaleprogrammeofwetlanddrainageand land reclamation within the floodplainof the Itchenas the townexpandedoff the island.Excavations inanarea of the townknownas theBrooksproducedevidenceofasubstantialdrainagesystemwith large timberdrains to remove thewater andmake it suitable for building.34 Therewasalso evidence of the large-scaledumpingofmaterial tobuildupthe landandmake it suitable forconstruction (Fig. 2). 30 Cf.DeLaine 1999; Fagan 1999;Kosso–Scott 2009;Revell 2009. 31 Ellis 1997. 32 E.g.Ashby 1935;Hodge 1991;Hodge 1992;Aicher 1995;. 33 Cf.Darby 1973; Cosgrove 1984;Bender 2001, 3; Johnson 2007. 34 Zant 1993.