Antonine contraction (c. AD 165–80)

Abstract

London appears to have shrunk significantly in the Antonine period, although the evidence remains contested. A major concern has been expressed over whether bioturbation and disturbance has removed the evidence of slightly built timber structures, leaving us with an exaggerated idea of the scale of contraction. This chapter looks to the detail of this evidence, including the formation of a dark-earth horizon that may mark the conversion of abandoned buildings to urban wastelands, to conclude that 57 per cent of sites show evidence of contraction that cannot be accounted for by later disturbance. It is consequently estimated that London’s population may have reduced from over 30,000 to under 20,000. Depopulation was perhaps hastened by an evacuation of the military garrison from the Cripplegate fort, and is reflected in reduced settlement densities in London’s rural hinterland and the cessation of some industrial production. There were no signs of this contraction before c. AD 165, but little evidence of routine urban maintenance in the following decades. Factors that might have contributed to London’s depopulation are considered. One of the most important may have been urban flight and manpower shortages following the epidemic known as the plague of Galens. Anxiety over the effects of this plague is attested by an amulet inscribed with a magical phylactery from the Thames foreshore, and the popularity of a London cult of Apollo the archer. The potential importance of such a pandemic to the changed mentalities of later antiquity is considered.