Durnovaria is a suggested spelling for the Latin form of the name of the Roman town of Dorchester in the modern English county of Dorset, amended from the actually observed Durnonovaria. Upon the assumption that the name was originally Brythonic, it is suggested that the first element in the name, *durno- may mean "fist" like (Welsh dwrn ‘fist, knob’) and the second may be related to Old Irish fáir ~ fóir denoting a confined area or den. A simpler amendment (one letter instead of two) would lead to *Duronovaria, making this place one of up to 18 ancient British names that contain Duro- and mostly occur at river crossings, while -novaria has two possible ancient parallels in Britain associated with river junctions. That analysis would perfectly fit the geographical situation of Dorchester.
The pre-Roman population centre in the area appears to have been at the hill fort of Maiden Castle, 2 miles (3 kilometres) southwest of the town centre. The inhabitants appear to have resisted the Roman invasion and their war cemetery was excavated in the 1930s by Mortimer Wheeler. It later became the site of a 4th-century Romano-British temple.
The site of present-day Dorchester may have originally been a small garrison fort for the Legio II Augusta established shortly after the Roman conquest on the site of Greyhound Yard. When the military moved away, around AD 65–70, Durnovaria became a civilian settlement, apparently the civitas Durotrigum of the tribal confederacy of the Durotriges. Shafts were dug to deposit ritual foundation items. An organised street plan was laid out, ignoring earlier boundaries, the streets lined with timber-slot structures; public buildings including thermae were erected and an artificial water supply established. The town seems to have become one of twin capitals for the local Durotriges tribe.
It was an important local market centre, particularly for Purbeck marble, shale and the pottery industries from Poole Harbour and the New Forest. The town remained small, around the central and southern areas of the present settlement, until expansion to the north-west, around Colliton Park, in the 2nd century. By the middle of this century, the town defences were added and Maumbury Rings, a Neolithic henge monument, was converted for use as an amphitheatre.
The third century saw the first replacement of timber buildings with stone ones, an unexpectedly late development in an area with several good sources of building stone. There were many fine homes for rich families and their excavated mosaic floors suggest a mosaic school of art had a workshop in the town, members of which seem to have travelled in the area to execute mosaic floors in villas away from Durnovaria itself. A large late-Roman and Christian cemetery has been excavated at Poundbury just to the west of the town, but little is known of Durnovaria's decline after the departure of the Roman administration. The name, however, survived to become the Anglo-Saxon Dornwaraceaster and modern 'Dorchester'. The residents of modern day Dorchester are known as Durnovarians.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Durnovaria is a suggested spelling for the Latin form of the name of the Roman town of Dorchester in the modern English county of Dorset, amended from the actually observed Durnonovaria. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Durno(no)varia is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Roman amphitheater at Durno(no)varia (0.3 km), Outer defences of Roman town, W of St Genevieve's Convent (0.4 km), Dorchester Roman walls (0.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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