ABSTRACT
This book considers three types of towns, which had a certain status as administrative centres and were therefore genuinely urban in ancient eyes: they can be classified as coloniae, municipia and the planned vici which became civitas capitals. The word 'town' as applied to settlements in Roman Britain has become synonymous with fortified places of civilian character. Civitates peregrinae, self-governing districts of non-citizens, and their capital towns would normally have been set up by the provincial administration in Britain as each area was freed from military control. Each would have been formed by agreement reached between the leaders of the community and the government. In this way the constitution and administration of the civitas would have been regulated. There were certain common factors behind the foundation of each and every town in Roman Britain. But, once founded, each town tended to assume its own individual pattern of development, which was brought about by different circumstances in each case.
