Hasted Prize 2015

by David Killingray

The biennial Hasted Prize for 2015 has been awarded by the Society to Dr Elizabeth Blanning for her doctoral thesis ‘Landscape, settlement and materiality. Aspects of rural life in Kent during the Roman period’ (University of Kent, 2014, can be accessed at https://kar.kent.ac.uk/47715).

The judges deemed the thesis to be an important and pioneering piece of research which provided a clearer picture of the pattern of rural settlement throughout the present County over the several hundred years of the long Roman presence. Much work in the past has taken a ‘villa down’ view of rural life and activity; this clearly offered but a partial view of rural settlement in Roman Kent. By interrogating and analysing a wide range of recent research material and archaeological field notes (including unpublished ‘grey material’) Dr Blanning has provided a much better informed picture of rural life and settlement throughout the whole of modern Kent, and in so doing has produced a substantial platform from which future researchers can operate.

A copy of the thesis, which contains a range of skilfully prepared coloured maps, will be deposited in the Society’s Library in Maidstone for members and other scholars to read.

The next Hasted Prize, for theses completed in the calendar years 2015-2016, must be submitted by 30 May 2017 to Professor David Killingray, 72 Bradbourne Road, Sevenoaks TN13 3QA (dmkillingray@hotmail.com). Further details of the Hasted Prize are on the Society’s website.