Cornwall’s Romano-British ‘Cottage Industry’
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-04-01

Romano-British salt production in the west of Cornwall has not been regarded as anything other than as economic activity. Hathaway’s (2013) work on Romano-British salt works in Britain, though, noted its small scale production and methods within the domestic setting of local Romano-British ovalhouses. Experiments carried out with Plymouth University students at Truro College over four years demonstrated more problems with the scale and viability of these small-scale operations, given the locations of the small ovalhouse settlements with low concentrations of salt in the neighbouring seawater. Saltmarshes are more suitable for commercial scale production. Using Michel Callon’s (1986) four stages of translation, this paper investigates how different agents, human and natural, were assembled to create a salt production process that met local economic, social and spiritual needs (based around annual pelagic fish migration) against the shifting political imperatives of the Roman province. 

Full title: Cornwall’s Romano-British ‘Cottage Industry’: Networking communities, seasonality & historic chronology

Caradoc Peters (University of Plymouth)