A synthesis of archaeological evidence for the organisation of industrial production in later medieval English small towns is presented. We examine evidence for the undertaking of industry within domestic space, landscapes of industrial specialisation (particularly pertaining to iron production, salt extraction and pottery production), the impact of institutional demand and the relationship between industry and processes of urban growth and decline. The archaeological evidence is supplemented by historical evidence from Escheators’ inventories, presented here for the first time. The analysis demonstrates some broad trends between towns and relationships between industrial processes and urban topography. In particular, we highlight the importance of marginal areas, such as urban boundaries and flood-prone areas for the siting of industries, and the way that inter-dependencies between industries are articulated through spatial clustering.
This paper sets out to consider anew the sculptural landscape of imperial Gabii by integrating newly examined evidence with the city’s archaeological record. Long portrayed in ancient sources as a city in decline after the Middle Republic, Gabii yielded an extraordinary assemblage of more than thirty life-sized statues during the excavations of the eighteenth-century antiquary, Gavin Hamilton. A previously understudied inventory from the Borghese Archives attests additional, largely fragmentary sculptures, ranging from imperial portraits to mythological figures, that expand our understanding of the city’s civic and cultic environment. By situating the archival material within the city’s archaeological context, the civic, imperial and religious display of the city comes more sharply into view, and contributes towards a more nuanced understanding of this liminal city in the imperial period.
