Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon
A Cultural and Social History of the Roman City
By (author) Roger H. White
Paperback (Published)
(September 2022)
ISBN: 9781803272498
6.85 x 9.65 inches
Price: $36.00
In stock
This book reflects on how people over time have viewed the abandoned Roman city of Wroxeter in Shropshire. It responds to three main artistic outputs: poetry, images and texts. It explores what locals and visitors thought of the site over time, and considers how access to the site has altered, impacting on who visits and what is unde
Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon offers a perspective on how people over time have viewed the abandoned Roman city of Wroxeter in Shropshire. It responds to three main artistic outputs relating to the site: poetry, images and texts. The poets include Wilfred Owen, A.E. Housman and Mary Webb. The writers cover a range of interests relating to the site but include Darwin, Dickens, Rosemary Sutcliff and John Buchan. The artists are perhaps less well-known but include watercolours by Thomas Girtin, archaeological reconstructions by Alan Sorrell and Amedee Forrestier, and paintings by Wroxeter’s own resident artist, Thomas Prytherch. Photographs are represented by the work of Francis Bedford and others more closely associated with aerial archaeology such as J.K. St Joseph and Arnold Baker. While the famous names have their value, The book also investigates what locals and visitors thought of the site over time – how they perceived it and have responded to it. It reflects in particular upon how the public and locals responded to the archaeological discoveries on the site and perceived the narratives that were created by the archaeologists working on it. It contends that archaeologists are just as much story-tellers as the writers, poets or artists, although their work is more filtered or controlled, and through these narratives, they inspire others. A further strand to the book is to explore the increasing focus over the past century on the democratisation of access to and understanding of the site, alongside increasing state intervention in its running. This too has had its impact on who visits and what is understood about the site. A short concluding section offers a vision of how the site might develop in the near-future, and how its cultural side might flourish once again.
My Wroxeter ;
Introduction ;
Archaeologists and their stories ;
Poetic visions ;
Wroxeter depicted ;
Writing and visiting Wroxeter ;
Archaeology for all ;
Wroxeter’s people ;
Coda: Wroxeter in the 21st century ;
References
- By (author) Roger H. White
'Roger White's love of the Roman town at Wroxeter in Shropshire shines through the pages of this book. He first worked there as a digger in 1976 and has been involved with it in various capacities almost ever since.' – Neil Holbrook (2023): Current Archaeology Issue 396
—
'Roger White’s wide-ranging review of what this little patch of the English/Welsh borderland has meant to him, to past and present locals, to writers, artists and tourists, as well as to other archaeologists is a thoroughly researched, free-flowing and fascinating read, warmly to be recommended.' – Jenny Britnell (2023): Archaeologia Cambrensis Vol. 172
—
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
