VENTA ICENORUM
(Caistor St. Edmund) Norfolk,
England.
Capital of the Roman civitas of the
Iceni ca. 5 km S of Norwich. This tribe occupied Norfolk
and part of NW Suffolk, as is shown by the distribution
of their pre-Roman coinage. The position of the capital
before the Conquest is unknown: Venta itself was a foundation of the Flavian period. Until 60 the tribe was ruled
by Prasutagus who was recognized as a client king by
Rome. After his death and the rebellion of his wife Boudicca the period of independence ended and the tribe was
formed into a civitas peregrina within the Roman province. Venta was its capital, but very little civic development is apparent before the 2d c., no doubt because of the poverty and backwardness resulting from punishment
for the rebellion. It was one of the smallest civitas capitals
in the province.
Apart from the wall, rampart, and ditch which enclose
only 14 ha, nothing of the town remains on the surface,
which has been ploughed for centuries. Attention was first
attracted to the site by some vertical air photographs
taken in the dry summer of 1928: these showed in brilliant clarity the street grid and some of the buildings. Excavations in 1929-35 explored three town houses, some pottery kilns, two temples, the public baths, and the
forum, as well as the defenses. The original air photographs proved that the visible defenses were later than
the street system, for streets could be seen truncated
by them; it was not until 1959 that further air photography revealed an outer and no doubt earlier line of
defenses on the S side, with which the street system
conformed. The date of the early defenses has not yet
been established; the reduced system has been dated to
the 3d c., but the very broad ditch and external towers
hint at a later phase of reinforcement probably datable to 369.
The forum was constructed perhaps as late as 150-160;
it occupies an insula central to the early town. The
building is of modified principia type with a courtyard
(30.9 x 29.1 m) surrounded on three sides by rooms
and on the fourth by the basilica, which lay at the back
of a narrow terrace reached by steps. The basilica (53.1
x 12.75 m) consisted of a nave with a single aisle; a
tribunal lay at one end and the curia at the other, and
on the narrow axis was a transept, best interpreted as
the civic shrine. The forum was damaged by fire but
repaired late in the 2d c.; during the 3d c. a second fire
destroyed it completely. A new forum of simpler plan
was erected perhaps ca. 270-290.
The public baths were only partially excavated: a
colonnaded palaestra with disrobing room beside it adjoined a frigidarium (ca. 26.7 x 12 m), beyond which
was a tepidarium and laconicum; there were traces of
several reconstructions. Immediately N of the forum two
Romano-Celtic temples were found to date from the
early 3d c., a date also attributed to three nearby houses
built of half-timber on stone foundations. These replaced earlier houses wholly in half-timber, though one
was found to occupy the site of some pottery kilns of
the first half of the 2d c. A glass kiln of the early 4th c.
was excavated, but the most inexplicable discovery was
that of 36 human skulls and bones in the ruins of a
small room burnt down at the end of the 4th c. This
has suggested a massacre of the inhabitants, possibly in
a revolt of foederati for whom there is evidence in a
5th c. cemetery close to the town; but the room in
question is too small to hold 36 persons, and photographs
show that it lies so close to the surface that doubts must
remain about the circumstances of burial.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. S. Frere, “The Forum and Baths at
Caistor by Norwich,”
Britannia 2 (1971) 1-26; J.N.L.
Myres & B. Green,
The Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries at
Caistor by Norwich and Markshall (1973).
S. S. FRERE
