Globalizing the local in Roman Britain: An anthropological approach to social change

This article considers the incorporation of part of Britain into the Roman empire in the context of globalization theory and world-systems history. Emphasis is placed on the local effects of the expansion of global systems and their impact on the social practices of eating and drinking at a range of settlements in the southeast of Britain in the Iron Age to Roman transition, c. 50 BC–AD 200. Through the analysis of consumption practices via quantitative pottery assemblage data, it is argued that globalization offers a more sophisticated framework to describe change than current archaeological approaches to Romanization and identity. The results show that while much of the populace was subject to a progressively homogenizing supply of food-related pottery vessels, the use of such technologies was negotiated within social practices drawing on the integration of both local and global cultural elements. Such findings highlight the potential of critical applications of globalization theory to conceptualize economic, social, and cultural changes in Roman provincial societies.