DORCHESTER
Oxfordshire, England.
A
small Roman town on the left bank of the Thames,
13 km SE of Oxford. There are Belgic settlements nearby,
but the first Roman phase was the establishment of an
auxiliary fort soon after A.D. 43. Military buildings have
been found by excavation: they were demolished ca.
A.D. 78-80, and only thereafter was the town laid out.
At the end of the 2d c. it received a bank and ditch, to
which a wall was added ca. 270-290. The defenses were
further augmented by a flat-bottomed ditch 33 m wide,
possibly in the 4th c.; later still two small V-shaped
ditches were dug. An inscription (
RIB 235) shows that
the town was the seat of a beneficiarius consularis, a
government agent supervising traffic and supplies. The
principal local industry was pottery production: from
ca. 270 on its red color-coated wares won popularity
throughout the province.
Excavation within the defenses has revealed masonry
buildings of which the most interesting, a small three-roomed house, dates to the early 5th c. Unusually large
numbers of coins point to the importance of Dorchester
at this time, while close outside the walls occur burials
which may be those of foederati who were perhaps placed
here to defend the rich Cotswold country. Occupation
in Dorchester was uninterrupted: a 6th c. hut and later
Saxon building have been excavated, and in 634 the
town became the seat of St. Birinus, bishop of the
West Saxons. S. S. FRERE
