The voices of early Britain—written in stone, scratched onto bone, and carved into symbols—are being recovered from a period spanning the century before Roman rule to three centuries after it ended. This matters because the relative lack of historical sources for Britain and its neighbours in this period makes writing history unusually difficult. The evidence is scattered across separate academic fields—Classics, Celtic studies, medieval studies, archaeology, art history—that rarely talk to one another. That fragmentation has obscured the cultural entanglements that crossed the end of Roman rule, the frontiers of Empire, and the divide between text and image. Latin, for example, inspired both Ogham script and Pictish symbols, while local writing systems in turn shaped regional variations in Latin inscriptions. The project is primarily curiosity-driven fundamental research. If successful, it will produce the first comprehensive sociolinguistic description of Roman and early post-Roman Britain, revealing how language, identity, and migration varied across regions, social groups, and genders. By integrating existing datasets with AI-driven analysis of millions of data points and images, the team aims to recover patterns invisible to traditional methods. The findings will feed into a broader socio-cultural history of early Britain and, through partnerships with museums and schools, help reshape public understanding of Roman Britain and its legacy.
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What did the voices of Britain sound like during and after the Roman period? What can the remains of language convey about the construction and expression of identities and life in early Britain both within the Roman province and beyond the frontier? How did the waters around the island serve to connect or separate communities? In this project we analyse the sociolinguistic complexity of Britain from the century before Roman rule to the three centuries after. We explore voices expressed in writing, interpret symbols and images in stone, and reconstruct underlying cultural contexts and connections. The relative lack of historical sources for Britain and many neighbouring communities in this period makes writing history challenging and dependent on using the material and approaches from multiple disciplines—sociolinguistic, linguistic, epigraphic, historical, art-historical, and archaeological. Integrating these multiple disciplines, appreciating the Irish, Continental, and Scandinavian contexts, and incorporating longer-term post-Roman dialogues can reveal the diverse voices of early Britain. This interdisciplinary approach cuts across provincial and chronological boundaries, and combines evidence usually split between Classics/ancient world and Celtic/medieval studies and between their sub-disciplines. These boundaries continue to be a barrier to assessing the ancient dialogues which cross the end of Roman rule, the frontiers of Empire, and the divide between text and image. During the Roman period, for example, Latin inspired both Ogham script and, arguably, Pictish symbols, and in turn local epigraphies inspired regional variation in Latin inscriptions and monuments. After centuries of isolated study, the integration of these materials will bring deeper understanding of cultural entanglements. We will integrate a range of new later-period datasets with the large datasets generated by the ERC-funded LatinNow project, including Roman Inscriptions of Britain Online (RIB Online), to pursue novel lines of inquiry. A step change comes from testing pre-trained AI models to leverage millions of data points and images across multiple datasets, to recover regional and social patterns. Combining standard analyses with higher-risk AI explorations will add fresh information for the reconstruction of the experiences of life under and after Rome, the nature of local and non-local identities, regional and social patterns, and connectivities. The multidisciplinary Voices team will: · produce the first comprehensive sociolinguistic description and analysis of Roman and early post-Roman Britain, revealing linguistic differences across regions, settlement types, social groups, locals/non-locals, and genders; · explore the regional, social, and temporal dimensions of the inventions and use of writing systems and expressions in stone, to reveal the sociolinguistic messages of inscriptions, symbols, and images; · identify the reasons for the variety revealed, including the underlying cultural entanglements stretching beyond the end of Roman rule, the impact of migration and fixity of communities, the impact of Roman rule, the role of Continental and Insular neighbours, and the Channel, the Irish Sea, and the northern frontier as connectors and dividers. This project will feed into the writing of a broader-based socio-cultural history of early Britain, have ramifications for the understanding of Britain’s cultural heritage, and inform discourses on imperialism, migration, and multiple and mixed identities. Through collaboration on collections and exhibitions with museum partners, the Nottingham University Museum, the Roman Baths Museum, and The British Museum, and teacher training and school curriculum leadership with Classics for All and the Classical Association, we will help shape the national discourse about Roman Britain and its legacy.
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