This podcast is a trailer for Kevin’s Roman London – a Literary & Archaeological Virtual Tour.
Kevin, a retired Museum of London archaeologist, weaves together literary sources and the archaeological record, to 1) set out before us – and, indeed, take us there – Londinium and 2) answer the question, what was it like to live in a Roman provincial city? As this podcast makes clear, the physical features of Roman London set the scene. The physical features are the circuits. The people – their cuisine, their business affairs, their social relations, their rules of patronage, their personal adornment – are the electricity running through those circuits. Just a couple of keynotes: slavery was a fact of life in Roman London and the place was, in a word, cosmopolitan – a multicultural, multiethnic, multilinguistic mish-mash. Sound familiar? It’s pretty recognisable, isn’t it. Yes, London has been an amazing technicolour Dreamcoat from the year dot.