92 Archaeology 



south-east and south-west, would have induced settlement, but there is 

 little evidence of this. Penetration of settlement into the uplands was still 

 by way of river valleys ; those of the Linton Granta, the Newport Cam, 

 and the Bourn Brook, show this very clearly, while the courses of the 

 roads are almost without settlement. In thrusting their way into the clay 

 lands by the river valleys the Romano-Britons were carrying on, in larger 

 numbers and with better equipment, a movement that had begun in the 

 Early Iron Age, but they do not appear to have made any serious effort to 

 occupy the wooded country as a whole. This task was reserved for the 

 Anglo-Saxons. 



The general style of rural life seems to have been humble. No country 

 house of any importance has yet been found anywhere in the County. 

 There are no indications of any industrial activity except for a pottery for 

 coarse wares at Horningsea which enjoyed a fairly wide local market. 

 Few individual finds of much importance have been made in the County, 

 but the Fenland has yielded a number of good pieces of Roman pewter, 

 and there is also the remarkable group of cult objects associated with the 

 worship of the Emperor Commodus as Romanus Hercules found in 

 WiUingham Fen. The County, too, has some notable examples of the high 

 conical type of barrow of Roman age. The Bartlo w group, though badly 

 damaged, remains the finest of its kind in Britain. 



In the Fenland, an extensive Romano-British occupation has been 

 recently demonstrated, more particularly on the silt areas and on certain 

 islands. This settlement was agricultural, and the region of maximum 

 farming activity seems to have been to the north upon the siltlands of 

 south-eastern Lincolnsliire.' Before this discovery, the frequency of stray 

 Romano-British fmds in the fens had been a puzzling fact. 



The exploitation of the silt areas began at once after the Roman conquest, 

 and a large population of relatively well-to-do peasant cultivators spread 

 over a region wliich, it has been suggested, was administered as a domain 

 of the Roman people, though this fact can only be inferred from the general 

 conditions, and does not rest on any confirmatory discoveries. In the less 

 favourable parts of the Fenland, there was a fair sprinkling of folk living 

 in small groups. Many of their sites had close relation to watercourses, 

 but both their house sites, and the adjacent small fields, were carefully 

 protected against tidal floods, for it must be understood that, at this time, 

 tides came far up the wide fen estuaries. Towards the close of the third 

 century, conditions seem to have deteriorated. Whereas it may normally 

 have been unnecessary to organise any drainage works, a slight subsidence 

 of the whole fenland basin may have made the last one and a half centuries 



' See p. 20 above. 



