Catuvellaunia and Rome: Economic and Political Relations during the Final Decades Pre-conquest

This study examines economic ties between Catuvellaunia and the Roman military in Gaul before AD 43, arguing that southern Britain’s grain surplus supplied Roman forces. Drawing on numismatic, textual, and archaeological evidence, it explores agriculture, trade logistics, tribal power, frontier supply, and Rome’s client‑kingdom politics.

This study brings together the numismatic, textual, and archaeological evidence required to discuss potential economic collaboration between the powerful Roman client-kingdom of Catuvellaunia in southeastern Britain and the growing Roman military presence in northern Gaul during the decades before the Claudian conquest of Britain in AD 43 and the inevitable full annexation of Catuvellaunia by Rome as Britannia, a strategic asset.

The main theme of the study centres on the grain-wealth of intensively cultivated productive chalk-land in southern Britain and the potential for its ready export to fulfil the growing needs of the military in northern Gaul, a damaged war-zone already limited in its agricultural productivity, during the decades BC-AD.

Context for the study is provided by a series of related case-studies:

– discussion of climatic conditions, agrarian systems, and models of grain production-consumption set the basic agri-economic parameters;

– the logistics and problems of managing land-based, riverine, and maritime supply-lines servicing the northwestern frontier are discussed, with added context on contemporary settlement and shipping;

– the position of Camulodunon in the context of other oppida, of Greater Catuvellaunia within the tribal structures in southern Britain, and of its role as an agent of cross-Channel trade, located nearest to Gaul, reflect its wider controlling regional power;

– evidence from Celtic coinage, stylistic and inscriptional, provide a major source for essential discussion of tribal structures and lineages;

– questions of military supply are outlined in detailed case-studies of two developing near-contemporary frontier-zones: the Tayside Militarised Zone [Scotland], and the Rhine frontier;

– political aspects of clientship and annexation by Rome across the wider Empire provide interesting parallels.

Contents

Preliminary notes for readers

Keynote evidence

Summary

Section 1: Arable systems

Celtic fields: nature, distribution, and environmental background

Extensive arable blocs (EABs): a model for larger scale early agri-management

Division of the land: linear boundaries, and their field-systems

The agronomics of grain production during the Iron Age: a model-system

Section 2: Climatic considerations

Section 3: Hillforts from southern Britain: assessment of basic properties and distribution

Section 4: Tribal lineage and interaction

Section 5: Greater Catuvellaunia

Section 6: Tribal emblems on Celtic coinage from southern Britain

Section 7: Personal portraiture on Celtic coinage from southern Britain

Section 8: Kingship: the evidence from Celtic coins in southern Britain

Section 9: Militarism: changing projection: the evidence from Celtic coins in southern Britain

Section 10: Camulodunum: capital and major port of the Catuvellauni

Section 11: Oppida: Britain

Section 12: Oppida: Gaul

Section 13: Roman grain-consumption

Section 14: Southeastern Britain: Continental imports to southern Britain during the final Iron Age

Section 15: Ships and boats of later Iron Age, and earlier Roman date: evidence from northwestern Europe, and the Atlantic seaboard

Section 16: The northwestern coastal Atlantic: topography, navigation, and early resource-led voyaging

Section 17: Resources: trade in metals as motivation for development of major sea-routes from the Mediterranean to the northwestern Atlantic

Section 18: The Tayside Militarised Zone [TMZ]: logistics of bulk-supply to the Flavian salient in southeastern-coastal Caledonia

Section 19: The northern frontier-zone of Gaul along the Rhine: its initial development, and military requirements

Section 20: Grain-supply: problems and solutions

Section 21: Political considerations

Section 22: Cunobelinos: surviving the historical narrative

Section 23: Celtic coinage: Britain and Gaul: examples

Section 24: Literary sources

Section 25: Bibliography

Alistair Marshall has carried out extensive excavation and prospection on prehistoric sites in southern Britain, with a strong interest in the latest Iron Age and early development of the Roman province.

• By (author) Alistair Marshall