ABSTRACT
This book examines the functions of towns in Roman Britain and to apply the definition so formed to Romano-British sites. It considers the towns' foundation, political status, development and decline, and illustrates where possible both their individual characters and their surroundings. It has been thought necessary to define the term town as applied to Roman Britain because of the confusion which seems to reign in many quarters about what can or cannot be called a town. It should not be thought that the Roman Empire was necessarily conscious of the functions now attributed to its towns by the process of modern geographical reasoning, or that the towns were necessarily planned with these functions in mind. Analysis shows that many of the so-called 'facts' about Romano-British towns are compounded of a mixture of inference, analogy, extrapolation, surmise and presumption. The book summarizes urban terms, both legal and other, which were applied, sometimes not too accurately, to British sites.
