Roman road in Britain predates Rome in Britain

[Endre Fodstad]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/m...s-iron-age

..but is this really all that unusual or sensational (of course, when it reaches the newsfeed, every archaeological discovery gets to be "unusual and sensational" if it is to stand any chance of getting picked up)? Roads are not something I am all that interested in, but my impression has always been that there are several "roman"-style roads from before and after the roman empire around that are not associated with it.

Any takes?

[mcbishop]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/m...s-iron-age

..but is this really all that unusual or sensational (of course, when it reaches the newsfeed, every archaeological discovery gets to be "unusual and sensational" if it is to stand any chance of getting picked up)?

Well I excavated a metalled pre-Roman road surface near Crambeck a few years ago (complete with wheel ruts) and I was aware at the time that mine was certainly not the first, so this is probably just the usual tosh dished out by the media (everything has to be the first, biggest, tallest etc etc). Hippesley Cox published a volume (The Green Roads of England) about pre-Roman roads in Britain back in 1914 (nothing to do with Watkin and his Old Straight Track nonsense, which came some 11 years later) and they were not all ridgeways. Much of the pre-Roman network remained in use to link up the Roman all-weather system of roads.

Mike Bishop

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Well, Romans would not have built a road on a new patch of land, knowing there already was a perfectly fine road.

M.VIB.M.

[Robert Vermaat]

Indeed, it would be simplistic to argue that the pre-Roman British only used forest tracks between their settlements, when we have the later drover roads showing that moving cattle also contributed to a road system.

What the article doesn't claim is of course how long these British roads were. Roman roads went from one end of the island to the other, and until we excavate them all and find a British predesessor beneath each of them, I'd venture the guess that although local roads existed before the Roman road system was developed, it was not comparable.

Wilson & Blackett argued that the Celts really built the Roman roads - they are not vindicated...:x

[Chariovalda]

I think the word 'system' is important here. Organised road systems are associated with political organisations, i.e. the bigger and the better organised the polity, the bigger and better organised the road system.
As pre-Roman Britain had some pretty large and reasonably complex tribal polities (let's not overstate that too much, though...) it stands to reason they could, and did, build road systems. I expect them to be very localised though, like those roads in the old Mycenaean kingdoms of mainland Greece.

What I find interesting is that every time we are confronted with the fact that our pre-Roman Iron Age ancestors weren't mere hairy savages, there's a tendency for the pendulum to swing (perhaps a bit too much) the other way. Especially with some people :neutral: