218 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
procuring building materials. While therefore suggesting the
possibility that many parts of the centuriation scheme have
been lost, it does seem that the existing network bears some
direct relationship to the Roman agricultural areas.
We are now in a position to return to a consideration of the
question whether the Romans continued the practice of the
Belgic folk in clearing and settling woodland areas. We may
compare the centuriation map and the Belgic pedestal urn
distribution, since both these remains denote the occurrence of
settlement. The former, implying cultivated areas, had a
settlement or "vicus" near each centuria, whilst the latter
probably denoted settlement in the vicinity. A comparison
will show that the major features of the two distributions are
not dissimilar.
In the centuriation map the light soils are still occupied,
although they do not stand in such a striking contrast to the
rest of the county. To the north and west the Boulder Clay
has a sparse but widespread settlement—a settlement fading
as the forest thickens to the south-west, but increasing around
the Roman settlement at Dunmow. On approaching Chesterford,
with its lighter soils, the centuriation pattern again becomes
clear. The Tendring Hundred shows settlement apparently
pushing into the sandy loam region of its neck. South-eastwards
the centuriation pattern appears with striking clarity in the
district of the dryer London Clay at Barstable, Dengie and
Witham—Winstree, ceasing almost abruptly to the west along
the line of the vegetational change we have already noticed.
To the south-west the forested London Clay shows slight evidence
of centuriation. Both this last-named district and the several
blank spaces around Danbury and Hockley suggest that their
lack of centuriation was owing to the heavily forested soils—
a suggestion later borne out by the prevalence, in these parts,
of Anglo-Saxon place-names denoting forest.
The Centuriation map indicates that the main settlement
tendencies observable in the final Iron Age period were repeated
in Roman times with few additional variations. The map suggests
that the Romans followed the natural course of occupying the
majority of those clearings existing at the time of the Conquest.
The invaders may have also extended the bounds of such clearings.