R Wiseman
Biographic Data
| ID | 24907 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Wiseman |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Wiseman |
| SIGNATURE | WISEMAN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8947-5624 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Gathering the Harvest: The Collection and Transportation of Agricultural Produce in Roman Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
When Rome colonized Britain, it created a transport network spanning the province. This transformed the Iron Age economy, creating large new markets which in turn supported specialized manufacturing. This article explores the impact of transportation on Roman agriculture – the core of the Romano‐British economy. It analyses a large archaeobotanical dataset (1726 assemblages from 87 excavations) covering the later Iron Age and Roman periods in Cam…
The costs of transporting goods by different modes: A case study of pottery movement in late Roman Britain
There is a long-standing view that, in the Roman world, transport by sea and river was very much cheaper than by land. Previous analyses of transport costs have relied primarily on a few surviving historical records, notably the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Diocletian in 301 CE. Here we outline an alternative method for deriving relative costs of transportation by different modes using materials recovered in archaeological excavations. We ap…
The Impact of Transportation on Pottery Industries in Roman Britain
The distribution of Roman pottery depended on the transportation system which moved it. Here we trace developments in these distributions during the Roman period in Britain to document how the transportation system developed and assess its impact on the island’s economy. We created a database with records from 775 excavations at 652 sites, and data on over two million pottery sherds. By analyzing the changing distributions of pottery from product…
Transport Costs and Economic Change in Roman Britain
Reductions in the cost of transporting manufactured goods have been an important element in economic development in the recent past, and previous research suggests that the Roman period in Britain also saw substantial reductions in such costs. The authors investigate how far it is possible to measure changes in transport costs by considering the spatial distributions of pottery from known Roman production locations over time. Their analysis of an…
Extreme Justice: Decapitations and Prone Burials in Three Late Roman Cemeteries at Knobb's Farm, Cambridgeshire
Excavations at Knobb's Farm, Somersham, Cambridgeshire, uncovered three small late Roman cemeteries, positioned at the edge of a farming settlement. The 52 burials found included 17 decapitated bodies and 13 prone burials – far higher than the British average. In two cases, cut marks show decapitation to have been the mechanism of death, and cuts on two other bodies indicate they experienced extreme violence. We conclude that the decapitations we…
The inverted dead of Britain's Bronze Age barrows: A perspective from Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Barrows are a prominent feature of Britain's Bronze Age landscape. While they originated as burial monuments, they also appear to have acquired other roles in prehistory. British prehistorians, however, have been hampered in their interpretations of these monuments, as they are wary of speculating about how Bronze Age people might have conceptualised their dead. Here, the authors suggest that a recurring pattern of inversion is significant. They …
Embodied Simulation, Conceptual Metaphor, and Archaeological Interpretation: A Reply to Gibbs
Getting beyond Rites of Passage in Archaeology: Conceptual Metaphors of Journeys and Growth
Van Gennep's rites of passage is one of anthropology's enduring models and is still much used by archaeologists to explain ritual behavior. But despite their ubiquity, there are problems with rites of passage. They lack specificity: their tripartite structure is so general that most rituals can be cast as rites of passage. Also unexplained is why people worldwide use "passages" to structure life cycle rituals or whether alternatives to passage-ba…
Random accumulation and breaking: The formation of Bronze Age scrap hoards in England and Wales
Interpreting Ancient Social Organization: Conceptual Metaphors and Image Schemas
This article outlines an approach that archaeologists can use to predict a widespread family of concepts about social organization in past societies. Such concepts are all ultimately conceptual metaphors: people map their experiences in other domains onto their society, to reason about social order. The Sumerians used the experience of sheepherding to understand their kings as shepherds and people as flocks; the Maya understood people as corn and…
Social Distance in Settled Communities the Conceptual Metaphor, Social Distance is Physical Distance, in Action
Social Distance in Hunter-Gather Settlement Sites: A Conceptual Metaphor in Material Culture
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) has been little used by archaeologists. A key barrier is that current metaphor analysis relies on linguistic evidence, a resource that archaeologists rarely have. Methods for interpreting entirely “material metaphors” have yet to develop. This article explores CMT in a domain of long-standing archaeological interest: settlement structure. Anthropologists have long recognized that hunter-gatherers place their dwell…
Ancient Roman Metaphors for Communication
Everyday Roman beliefs about how communication occurred are founded on the process of breathing. Speaking is breathing, and hence words are breath. Words are formed in the chest, specifically the animus. In speaking they are "ejected" or "emitted" from the animus. Speech is either "breathed" or "poured" into an audience, or else listeners "grasp" or "catch" what is said. Increasing familiarity with writing seems to have suggested that words might…
Verbal Reception, Guided Discovery and the Learning of Schemata
S ummary . Verbal reception and guided discovery techniques of teaching are compared in a classroom situation for effectiveness in promoting the formation of stable, usable, cognitive schemata in comparable groups of university students. The results indicate that explicit direction can produce performances superior to those resulting from a guided discovery approach for immediate recall, delayed retention and transfer. Tentative explanations of t…
Random accumulation and breaking: The formation of Bronze Age scrap hoards in England and Wales
Social Distance in Settled Communities the Conceptual Metaphor, Social Distance is Physical Distance, in Action
Getting beyond Rites of Passage in Archaeology: Conceptual Metaphors of Journeys and Growth
Van Gennep's rites of passage is one of anthropology's enduring models and is still much used by archaeologists to explain ritual behavior. But despite their ubiquity, there are problems with rites of passage. They lack specificity: their tripartite structure is so general that most rituals can be cast as rites of passage. Also unexplained is why people worldwide use "passages" to structure life cycle rituals or whether alternatives to passage-ba…
The costs of transporting goods by different modes: A case study of pottery movement in late Roman Britain
There is a long-standing view that, in the Roman world, transport by sea and river was very much cheaper than by land. Previous analyses of transport costs have relied primarily on a few surviving historical records, notably the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Diocletian in 301 CE. Here we outline an alternative method for deriving relative costs of transportation by different modes using materials recovered in archaeological excavations. We ap…
Transport Costs and Economic Change in Roman Britain
Reductions in the cost of transporting manufactured goods have been an important element in economic development in the recent past, and previous research suggests that the Roman period in Britain also saw substantial reductions in such costs. The authors investigate how far it is possible to measure changes in transport costs by considering the spatial distributions of pottery from known Roman production locations over time. Their analysis of an…
The inverted dead of Britain's Bronze Age barrows: A perspective from Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Barrows are a prominent feature of Britain's Bronze Age landscape. While they originated as burial monuments, they also appear to have acquired other roles in prehistory. British prehistorians, however, have been hampered in their interpretations of these monuments, as they are wary of speculating about how Bronze Age people might have conceptualised their dead. Here, the authors suggest that a recurring pattern of inversion is significant. They …
Embodied Simulation, Conceptual Metaphor, and Archaeological Interpretation: A Reply to Gibbs
Verbal Reception, Guided Discovery and the Learning of Schemata
S ummary . Verbal reception and guided discovery techniques of teaching are compared in a classroom situation for effectiveness in promoting the formation of stable, usable, cognitive schemata in comparable groups of university students. The results indicate that explicit direction can produce performances superior to those resulting from a guided discovery approach for immediate recall, delayed retention and transfer. Tentative explanations of t…
Ancient Roman Metaphors for Communication
Everyday Roman beliefs about how communication occurred are founded on the process of breathing. Speaking is breathing, and hence words are breath. Words are formed in the chest, specifically the animus. In speaking they are "ejected" or "emitted" from the animus. Speech is either "breathed" or "poured" into an audience, or else listeners "grasp" or "catch" what is said. Increasing familiarity with writing seems to have suggested that words might…
Social Distance in Hunter-Gather Settlement Sites: A Conceptual Metaphor in Material Culture
Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) has been little used by archaeologists. A key barrier is that current metaphor analysis relies on linguistic evidence, a resource that archaeologists rarely have. Methods for interpreting entirely “material metaphors” have yet to develop. This article explores CMT in a domain of long-standing archaeological interest: settlement structure. Anthropologists have long recognized that hunter-gatherers place their dwell…
Interpreting Ancient Social Organization: Conceptual Metaphors and Image Schemas
This article outlines an approach that archaeologists can use to predict a widespread family of concepts about social organization in past societies. Such concepts are all ultimately conceptual metaphors: people map their experiences in other domains onto their society, to reason about social order. The Sumerians used the experience of sheepherding to understand their kings as shepherds and people as flocks; the Maya understood people as corn and…
Social Distance in Settled Communities the Conceptual Metaphor, Social Distance is Physical Distance, in Action
Random accumulation and breaking: The formation of Bronze Age scrap hoards in England and Wales
Getting beyond Rites of Passage in Archaeology: Conceptual Metaphors of Journeys and Growth
Van Gennep's rites of passage is one of anthropology's enduring models and is still much used by archaeologists to explain ritual behavior. But despite their ubiquity, there are problems with rites of passage. They lack specificity: their tripartite structure is so general that most rituals can be cast as rites of passage. Also unexplained is why people worldwide use "passages" to structure life cycle rituals or whether alternatives to passage-ba…
Embodied Simulation, Conceptual Metaphor, and Archaeological Interpretation: A Reply to Gibbs
Extreme Justice: Decapitations and Prone Burials in Three Late Roman Cemeteries at Knobb's Farm, Cambridgeshire
Excavations at Knobb's Farm, Somersham, Cambridgeshire, uncovered three small late Roman cemeteries, positioned at the edge of a farming settlement. The 52 burials found included 17 decapitated bodies and 13 prone burials – far higher than the British average. In two cases, cut marks show decapitation to have been the mechanism of death, and cuts on two other bodies indicate they experienced extreme violence. We conclude that the decapitations we…
The inverted dead of Britain's Bronze Age barrows: A perspective from Conceptual Metaphor Theory
Barrows are a prominent feature of Britain's Bronze Age landscape. While they originated as burial monuments, they also appear to have acquired other roles in prehistory. British prehistorians, however, have been hampered in their interpretations of these monuments, as they are wary of speculating about how Bronze Age people might have conceptualised their dead. Here, the authors suggest that a recurring pattern of inversion is significant. They …
The Impact of Transportation on Pottery Industries in Roman Britain
The distribution of Roman pottery depended on the transportation system which moved it. Here we trace developments in these distributions during the Roman period in Britain to document how the transportation system developed and assess its impact on the island’s economy. We created a database with records from 775 excavations at 652 sites, and data on over two million pottery sherds. By analyzing the changing distributions of pottery from product…
Transport Costs and Economic Change in Roman Britain
Reductions in the cost of transporting manufactured goods have been an important element in economic development in the recent past, and previous research suggests that the Roman period in Britain also saw substantial reductions in such costs. The authors investigate how far it is possible to measure changes in transport costs by considering the spatial distributions of pottery from known Roman production locations over time. Their analysis of an…
The costs of transporting goods by different modes: A case study of pottery movement in late Roman Britain
There is a long-standing view that, in the Roman world, transport by sea and river was very much cheaper than by land. Previous analyses of transport costs have relied primarily on a few surviving historical records, notably the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Diocletian in 301 CE. Here we outline an alternative method for deriving relative costs of transportation by different modes using materials recovered in archaeological excavations. We ap…
Gathering the Harvest: The Collection and Transportation of Agricultural Produce in Roman Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
When Rome colonized Britain, it created a transport network spanning the province. This transformed the Iron Age economy, creating large new markets which in turn supported specialized manufacturing. This article explores the impact of transportation on Roman agriculture – the core of the Romano‐British economy. It analyses a large archaeobotanical dataset (1726 assemblages from 87 excavations) covering the later Iron Age and Roman periods in Cam…
Archaeology (8 works) · Geography (7 works) · History (7 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Metaphor (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (5 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (5 works)