AbstractsAnthropology

The aim of this thesis is to study the extent and effect Roman culture and economy had on rural Cornovian society from the perspective of the development of the new relationships determined by the Roman administration in terms of the provincial infrastructure, the establishment of urban centres and civil and military socio-economic relationships in order to identify and explain the processes that facilitated cultural and socio-economic changes in Cornovian society as indicative of Romanization. The basic premise of the thesis is that Roman administration and the development of the region as a part of the developing province had little, if any, effect on the native Cornovian society, in the very marginal and relatively isolated area of the south Shropshire Hills; and that the rural native population lived in a state of indifferent cultural and social separation rather than a conscious communal rejection of Roman culture. On this, we must consider a separation of the elite from the general rural community, due to the foundation of the civitas capital of Viroconium Cornoviorum, and that it is this latter population, who must be assumed to be the majority, are the subject of this research. Therefore, implicit is the Cornovii as an identifiable regional grouping and specifically the population of the south Shropshire Hills.