Ben Croxford (Cotswold Archaeology)

Sculpture from Roman Britain is well studied and often considered to be well understood. Past considerations, however, predominantly follow an art historical interest and have concentrated on matters of style, symbolism and artistic cultural significance. Approaches that treat sculptures as physical objects and social things are less frequently adopted. Focusing on the physical nature brings to the fore the highly fragmentary state of this material and begs consideration of this. Where this has been undertaken in the past, there has been an explicit assumption of cause and effect with the significance of the damage being only simplistically engaged with: Christian iconoclasts are held responsible with the damage being the expression of hate or demonstration/consequence of hegemony.

Sculpture from Roman Britain became damaged, fragmented and disused for a number of different reasons and was not simply victim to a Christian iconoclastic purge. What has been assumed as negatively motivated treatment may be dispassionate recycling, abandonment or a new form of interaction. Damage and destruction can be shown to be the result of a renegotiation of the role and significance of sculpture within society. There was no one fate of sculpture nor one origin; there were a multitude of potential life courses, many involving interactions and modifications difficult to interpret with unchallenged modern presumptions concerning the act of breaking.