2 Dec 2025 – Prof. Michael Fulford, Professor of Archaeology, University of Reading – Silchester: recent research on the Iron Age Town and Roman City.
Professor Fulford, a leading archaeologist and director of the Silchester Town Life Project, will provide an update on the latest discoveries from the Roman city of Calleva Atrebatum, located in modern-day Hampshire. This site, one of the most well-preserved Roman towns in Britain, offers a unique window into the lives of both the Iron Age inhabitants and their Roman successors. Professor Fulford will discuss recent excavations and what they tell us about the city’s development, its economic life, and the daily routines of its people.
With its apparently complete town plan, revealed by the Society of Antiquaries of London’s great excavation project, 1890-1909, Silchester is one of the best known towns in Roman Britain and the Roman world more widely. Since the 1970s excavations by the author and the University of Reading on several sites including the amphitheatre, the defences, the forum basilica, the public baths, a temple and an extensive area of an entire insula, as well as surveys of the suburbs and immediate hinterland, have radically increased our knowledge of the town and its development over time from its origins to its abandonment. This research has discovered the late Iron Age oppidum and allowed us to characterise the nature of the settlement with its strong Gallic connections and widespread political and trading links across southern Britain, to Gaul and to southern Europe and the Mediterranean. [Publishers description of Silchester Revealed]