Roman times

By the time the Romans invaded, the Island had already seen thousands of years of human history and successive peoples and cultures had left their legacy. Flint tools, pottery and the bones of slaughtered animals remind us of the Island's Stone Age inhabitants. Their Bronze Age successors buried their dead in round barrows which still survive on the Island's downs. Iron Age peoples have left a hill fort on Chillerton Down and quantities of pottery, much of it on sites later occupied by Roman Villas.

According to the Roman historian Suetonius, the Island of Vectis (as the Romans called it) was subdued by Vespasian the future emperor. There is no evidence of any military operation on the Island: the conquest seems to have been a peaceful surrender to the inevitable by the local chiefs. During the occupation, the Island remained a rural backwater. There were no Roman towns or Roman roads. However, some of the local native landowners adopted Roman culture and were wealthy enough to build villas -farmhouses in Roman style. At least seven are known to have existed on the Island.

These villas were the centres of prosperous farm estates which probably sold surplus grain and wool in mainland markets. Two of these villas are open to the public. Newport Villa has a very well preserved bath-suite and hypocaust, while Brading Villa is noted for its high-quality mosaics, many of them illustrating classical stories like Orpheus and Medusa (there are obvious links here with the Ancient Greece study unit). Both villas also have displays of artifacts illustrating Island life in Roman times.

Settlement by Germanic peoples followed the Roman occupation. According to the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, the Island was settled by Jutes. Bede also tells us that the Island was the last province of Britain to be converted to Christianity, and that this was achieved through conquest by the West Sussex King Cadwalla in 686. Pre-Christian Jutish cemeteries on Chessell and Bowcombe Downs, excavated in the 19th century, yielded finds of weapons and jewellery. Surprisingly, no archaeological evidence of occupation by the Vikings has yet been found on the Island, although they used the Island as a base camp during the late 10th and early 11th century.