The Economy of a Lost Landscape: Turf Exploitation at the Roman Town of Isurium Brigantum (Aldborough, North Yorkshire)

Archaeobotanical interpretations of Roman Britain are dominated by cereal-centric models that classify non-cereal taxa as arable weeds. New macrobotanical evidence from the Roman town Isurium Brigantum (Aldborough) challenges this framework, showing significant evidence for turf exploitation in non-military contexts. Results show that while above-ground propagules trace source environments, subterranean components further provide diagnostic evidence of turf extraction. These results are compared against regional records from 110 sites, revealing the widespread co-occurrence of turf indicator taxa across Roman Yorkshire. This distribution reframes archaeobotanical signatures from occasional crop contaminants to widespread evidence for the regional practice of turf extraction. Ultimately, this research demonstrates how a major, persistent resource economy has been inadvertently masked by an over-privileging of arable agriculture, requiring a fundamental reassessment of archaeobotanical interpretation in provincial Roman archaeology.