Dr Lisa Lodwick

My main research interests are in the relationship between agriculture and urbanisation in later prehistoric and Roman Europe. Previously, I have studied archaeological plant remains from the Late Iron Age and Roman town of Silchester, and undertaken a major synthesis of farming in Roman Britain within the ‘The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain’ project at the University of Reading. My broader interests include the translocation of plants through the Roman world and the role of plants in ritual and religion. My new project, provisionally entitled Quantifying cereal cultivation and processing in the north-western Roman Empire, will investigate the cultivation and processing of cereals. First, through an application of stable isotope and weed ecology analysis to archaeological plant remains, and second, by establishing a corpus of corn-drying ovens from the north-western provinces. Together, these will develop a new understanding of the scale, intensity and organisation of the arable economy in the north-western Roman world.