The Ancients - Boudica's Battle of Britain

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

The Celtic queen who led a major uprising against the Roman Empire in ancient Britain, Boudica, is a name known throughout history. Her rebellion, fuelled by grievances against Roman oppression and with the aim of protecting her people, resulted in the destruction of numerous Roman settlements, the ashes of which can still be seen in the archaeological layers today. So, beyond the ashes of the cities she burned, what else does the archaeology tell us about this triumphant queen?In today's episode, Tristan welcomes archaeologist Duncan Mackay to the podcast to delve into this devastating moment in Roman history. By examining the archaeological evidence, the political landscape of ancient Britain, and studying Tacitus' works, what can we learn about this Celtic Queen and how she earned her place in the annals of history?If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, our mini-series on Babylon may have come to an end, but we are keeping on the bees because today we're talking all about that renowned warrior woman, the leader of the Iceni, Boudicca. Our guest today is the archaeologist Duncan Mackay, who has written a stellar new book all about Boudicca and her revolt. And in this episode, we really delve into the archaeology that survives, that's associated

with Boudicca and her revolt against the Romans, whether that's several feet beneath Colchester's High Street or in the centre of London. This was a fascinating chat because we also delve into the great mystery surrounding the exact whereabouts of where Boudicca fought her final climactic clash against the Romans at the so-called Battle of Watsling Street. Where exactly was this battle fought? Well Duncan, he's got a theory and that is all to come. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Duncan. Duncan, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you very much for inviting me. Pleasure to be here.

You're more than welcome. And I mean, for a topic like this, there's just something about Boudicca isn't there, and you've spent your lifetime in the footsteps of Boudicca on the trail of this almost legendary British warrior woman. Yes, I've been fascinated by Boudicca since childhood. And I know this is something that fascinates you as well. I've seen you've done at least two documentaries on her that I've watched. So it's great to talk to somebody with a shared passion. But yeah, I think it's one of the most remarkable stories in British history, and it was one of the great turning points. And although we've got three fascinating Roman texts covering the story, only one of them is really, I think, giving us a good chunk of the story. And it's still something that's just shrouded in mystery. We have archaeology, we have the history, but all in all, it's still something of a mystery.

Will I delve into these texts first of all? As you hinted at there, yes, this is definitely something that I love too, so we can have a massive nerd out about this for the next 40 minutes. But so what are these texts that we have surviving that mention Boudicca's revolt? You have two by Tacitus, the greatest Roman historian, I think, and one by Cassius Dio. Tacitus is much closer in time, and he has a personal family link. His father-in-law, Agricola, fought in the campaign. His first attempt at telling the story is in his biography of Agricola. And I think that because Agricola didn't play a great part in that war,

he was just a junior officer, I don't think Tacitus is really going back and fact-checking. I think he's really writing it off the top of his head and that he's saying that's job done. Then we'll get onto the good stuff where Agricola is in charge later on in his life. In the Annals, which he writes about 20 years later, he's writing proper history. He's going back, he's checking his sources, he's comparing sources. And I think what he gives us is a superb campaign narrative. There's different tiers of evidence within it that we have to be very careful how we pull the evidence out,

but all in all, I think it's probably the best account we could hope for. The third is Dio Cassius, and he's writing much later. So he's really beginning of the third century. He's separated from it in time, and although he is going back to original sources, undoubtedly, he's dramatising it. I think there's very little to pull out of his account that we don't already have much more clearly from Tacitus. But you're quite right, Duncan, isn't it with Dio Cassius that he focuses almost on

the character of Boudicca and the big speech that he gives her. But with Tacitus, he actually almost tells the story of Boudicca's revolt, where she visits his two kind of word, where she sacks, where she pillages, and then of course that big climactic battle right at the end. Very much so. And that's something that completely, you're right, you're completely lacking that in Dio. And he, so much of his account is taken up with that speech, that pre-war speech of Boudicca's, which is magnificent. And I know classical historians love it because there's so much political rhetoric in that. It doesn't tell us anything about Boudiccas, sadly, and it doesn't really tell us anything about the war. Whereas, yeah, Tacitus gives us blow by blow, location by location. I think Tacitus has three tiers.

The campaign narrative, you know, this is what the armies do. They destroy this, they destroy that. That's brilliant. I don't think we could hope for anything better. It could be a bit better on locations of where people are marching to and things, but all in all, it's brilliant. The second tier of evidence is when he starts to talk about the personalities, people like Boudicca and Prazutagus. And I think what he's telling us is true, but he's pulling the strings a little bit. He's trying to get you on side at some points, and how absolutely accurate it is, we don't know. And the third tier of evidence, again, he does the speeches of the protagonists, Boudicca and Paulinus. Well, Boudicca's speech is definitely made up, completely and utterly fictional. It's just Tacitus putting words into her mouth. The Paulinus speech might have a grain of truth in it. He might have got something from a grickler or Paulinus might have left his memoirs. There might be a little

bit more in that. But yeah, ultimately, there's those three tiers. There's good campaign narrative, there's personalities where he's pulling the strings a little bit, and then there's complete faked bit. Now, before we get into the story proper, one other thing to highlight, I feel it'd be a miss if we didn't straight away, is also, we talked about the literature, but this event in Britain's ancient history, it's also a remarkable one where we also seem to have, well, we do have archaeological evidence backing up what the literary accounts say for certain moments in Boudicca's infamous pillaging. Yeah, and the archaeology is incredible. And where you're able to test the archaeology against Tacitus' account, it matches pretty perfectly. And obviously, that's a great boon.

It also enables you, and that's what I've been concentrating on, is tracking down exact locations where these things happened. I've always been a great fan of going to battlefields that I know the history of, and you can almost reimagine it and in the instance one great interest of mine is the first world war you can actually go back to specific points and look at footage that was filmed at the time from the footprints of the cameraman now you you can't do that with Boudicca but the account is such particularly in places like Colchester and then the archaeology is such particularly in London and Colchester where you have stories teased out of the archaeology combine that with the historical evidence and you can still visit exact spots and know what happened there and it's a remarkable experience.

All right Duncan well let's start going through therefore the rough footsteps of Boudicca and her warriors so set the scene first of 60 AD, Roman Britannia, what's the situation? What's the big causes that lead to this massive revolt? There are little complex and longstanding, of course, the Romans invaded in AD 43, and the initial conquest was pretty rapid and pretty overwhelming. The Akene, Boudicca's tribe from northern East Anglia, so effectively Norfolk, North Suffolk, eastern Cambridgeshire, they made peace immediately. They didn't fight. It was quite a common tactic of tribes to prolong their independence a little bit and not be

occupied was to become a client. So they had nominal independence, but they had to bend to Rome's rule. The tribe to the south of them, the Trinovantes, they had been conquered. They had fought against the initial invasion and lost. And the army had a fortress in their territory, a place called Camulodunum, what we now know as Colchester. The 20th Legion had been there, but they'd gone west to fight in Wales in AD 49, and Camulodunum had been settled as a colonia for retiring veterans to settle in. Two legions were fighting in Wales, and I think this is a slightly ignored part of the story. The fighting in Wales was terrible. It was prolonged, it was guerrilla war, both sides hated each other, and it seems weren't really taking prisoners. The Romans, according to Tacitus,

were pretty much committing genocide in some aspects of it. The veterans of that fighting were the same veterans that were settling Camulodunum. So they were coming back from this horrific battlefront, traumatized, belligerent. They'd come from a place where really the only Britain they considered a good Britain was a dead Britain. They were used to taking what they wanted at the point of the sword and they were bringing that attitude and that prejudice with them to Camulodunum. And Tacitus quite specifically says that the Trinovantes were treated as slaves.

They were treated as a conquered people. They were thrown off their farms, thrown off their land. They were fleeced of their riches to build this new city where there was an enormous temple to the deified Claudius and government buildings. So what was meant to be a civilizing mission turned into an oppression of the local people

who must have hated the veterans in return. Now the Icani were unaffected by this. They were a client tribe so they were left very much to get on with what they were doing. But in AD 59 or 60 the king of the Icani, Prazutagus, dies. And as far as the Romans are concerned, that brings his clientship and the clientship of his tribe to an end. Prazutagus had tried to ward that off by leaving a will to the Emperor Nero, in which he left half of his kingdom to the Emperor, and the other half to his two daughters with his wife his queen consort Boudicca. She wasn't the heir it was the daughters so at that moment it's the daughters that are very

important. Whether or not what happened next was done with the official sanction of Nero or just by the the procurator on the ground Cates Decianus we don't know but the Romans go in to take the territory. Boudicca stands up to them. That makes her a rebel, effectively. She's flogged. Her daughters are raped, which is an obvious attack and insult to the Akene as a whole, because they are the heirs. They are the embodiment of the tribe at that moment. And the Romans are just saying, nope, this is how little you mean

to us, and we're taking the whole territory. Do we have much archaeology from present-day Norfolk that hints at or that reveals the tribe at that time? I hesitate to use the word tribe, but these people, these Celtic people that dwelled in Norfolk at that time, do we have much archaeology surviving from their territory yes not a huge amount of it has been extensively excavated but yeah there's some fantastic archaeology and i think in the future there'll be a lot more as more is excavated there are seem to be several i'll use the word tribe as you say it's not a perfect term but it's the best one i think we can use there are several seem to be tribal territories in norfolk fairly large ones and they don't seem to have towns in the modern or roman sense but they have areas of landscape that are important with different foci of activity within them

there are several of those none of them have been extensively excavated but there is a lot of metal work particularly a lot of unstratified small finds come out. There has been some excavation, but yes, they're definitely there as a people. And what's significant about them is that although the tribes, particularly to the south of them, all of the tribes north of the Thames and south of the Thames, in the century before the Romans and during the Roman conquest, loved Roman prestige goods. They have an amphorae of wine.

They have wonderful tablewares from the Romans, all this sort of stuff. The Acania don't want any of that. They seem to be, I don't think they're resistant to it and it's not a deliberate policy, but they just, they're quite conservative seemingly and not having all this stuff. When you dig an Acania site, you're not finding all these Roman prestige goods. Right, well that is interesting indeed, especially when you compare it almost with Colchester and the elite late first century BC burials of chieftains that you've got there. Yes, with those Roman imported goods. Well, let's go back therefore to the story. You mentioned how these veteran Roman soldiers, these retired Roman soldiers based at Colchester, they've rampaged across the area. They've mistreated Boudicca and her daughters.

the area they've mistreated Boudicca and her daughters the reaction to this I'm guessing we can figure out where Boudicca and her followers would want to target first it would be Colchester yeah it's the nearest center and I think Tastus just says that the Akane rose up and the Trinovantes rose with them and he hints that others do as well but they're not named so it may have been factions of other tribes but the akane and the triumvantes are the main players and the nearest major settlement to the akane is camelodunum is directly south of them and of course so that the triumvantes are also directly south of them and they surround camelodunum so yeah it's the first place they march on i'm not sure we can say that it's the capital, quote-unquote, of the province, but it's the most prestigious city of the province. So that's where they march to.

The veterans haven't evacuated. Whether they don't believe that conquered and disarmed tribes could really be a great threat to them, we don't know. These are hard military veterans. They're very experienced. They presumably still have an arsenal of weapons. Taster says that one of the reasons for putting them there was to guard against rebellion.

So they're presumably still pretty heavily armed. They're pretty handy in a fight. So they're not running. They send to the procurator, Catus Dacianus, presumably in London for aid. He either doesn't have any men or doesn't appreciate the import of what's happening and just sends 200 men who are very ill-armed. They also send

word into the Midlands to the nearest military garrisons, the nearest of which is the 9th Legion. They seem to be spread between several garrisons in AD 60. The nearest and perhaps the biggest garrison was at a place called Longthorpe next to Peterborough. So that's only about 75 miles by road. So, you know, a three days force march will get them there. They were a good relief force to have. They might have come from further north, but I'd definitely go for marching from Longthorpe. That messenger, having arrived at their garrison and telling them what's happening will then go on to north wales where the governor suetonius paulinus is campaigning with the bulk of the army he's just attacked anglesey he's in his absolute moment of victory he's finally completed the conquest of

wales he's attacked across to anglesey last refuge of the druids last refuge and stronghold of resistance in wales he's just captured the island and a messenger arrives, hands him a dispatch satchel, and that says that a rebellion has broken out in the province. And that's where Tacitus begins his narrative. It's a moment of high drama. That's the moment where Boudicca enters the story. It's also pretty clever timing from Boudicca, isn't it?

You've got the main bulk of Roman soldiers, the other side of the island to where she is in East Anglia. Yeah, and it's the big question as to whether there was any orchestration, perhaps, with the Druids. Very mysterious order, we're not told a lot about them, but Tacitus is strongly hinting in his narrative that Anglesey was a major centre of the Druids, perhaps the Holy of Holies, and therefore whether or not this was a distraction event at the other end of the province to draw the army away. If that's the case, obviously it happened too late. But it is absolutely these two eruptions of resistance at opposite ends of the country. She couldn't have picked a better moment. Having

said that, the army was normally campaigning in wales and i think the governor would probably normally be there with them so it's not as much of a coincidence as we might expect but the fact that it happened at this probably the same day as this enormous victory that he's got on angle so yeah it's definitely food for thought well duncan let's continue the story then following in budoudicca's footsteps from the archaeology and the literature. Colchester, they've all been flattened. They feel so safe and unthreatened in this place that they've actually built over the old legionary defences. The place is completely without defence. What it does have is the Temple of Claudius. And this is a magnificent classical temple that wouldn't be out of place in the centre of Rome.

If you think of the Royal Exchange at Bank Junction in the City of London, very good signs and visual match. It was an incredible classical building. That in itself was quite a good fighting platform, and it had an enclosed, what we call a keller, the temple inside, which was completely enclosed. So it's a strongbox on a fighting platform, but more importantly, it's probably surrounded by some sort of wall. So it's a miniature fortress.

We don't know what surrounded it in AD 60. It was ultimately later on surrounded by a beautiful, enormous colonnaded walkway all the way around. Whether or not that was there is a moot point, but it would have been surrounded by something. And this gives them something to anchor their defense on. There's a stiff fight.

Tassadus tells us the veterans lasted for two days in the temple complex, but finally it was breached. The Britons went in and everyone was massacred. We assume there were no prisoners, and if there were prisoners, it wasn't a good end for them. It might have been sacrificial or whatever, but the whole place is sacked. It's absolutely brutal, isn't it? And you have that archaeology there as well, don't you? Those burnt remains, which almost seem to really emphasize that great severity of the fire itself. As you say, it was a horrific, catastrophic event.

I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and on my podcast, Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, I try to make sense of everything that baffled our early modern ancestors. Like, what do you do with your waist? If you put your dunghill up against your neighbour's wall, you're going to cause rising damp. Would Henry VIII ever consider executing his wife, the Queen of England? Anne Boleyn? I'm not even sure if the Boleyns took it seriously, because why would they have any reason to suspect Henry VIII would really get rid of his queen?

And why do men grow beards? During puberty, the male body heats up, and a smoke rises in the body, pushes out the hair in the face. So the beard is actually a form of excrement. In other words, not just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Twice a week, every week. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to keep going though, because I do want to get to the big bastard at the end because I know you've done a lot of work around the archaeology for this as well but you did also mention the

ninth legion there and past the ninth legion which is based not too far away from Colchester I'm presuming though that they arrived too late they don't get there we don't know what happens to them we can work out from tying various bits of the narrative together. They probably marched with one and a half thousand legionaries, perhaps 1,800 legionaries, and perhaps a thousand auxiliaries of both infantry and a significant cavalry element to them. Somewhere en route, they were attacked. Now, Tacitus doesn't describe it as a Spartan-like stand. He calls it a rout and a massacre. So the assumption is that they were ambushed on the line of march and simply routed. All of the foot soldiers were killed, the whole lot. But Kyrialis, the commander,

escaped with the cavalry and presumably hammered it back to Longthorpe. We don't know where that battlefield is. I've walked the entire route that they would have taken. And I suspect it was somewhere in the Colne Valley, about 10 or 12 miles northwest of Colchester. It's great ambush country. The Roman road to Colchester went straight through it. And we know that they didn't get there and relieve the city. So maybe somewhere in that area. Well, let's talk about this route then, because that's really, really interesting, because of course you've walked this route. So what was the Roman route between Colchester and Boudicca's next big target,

which is now present-day London? So that road runs directly along. It's still there. It's a straight line. And the railway from Colchester to London follows the exact line as well. It's an absolutely direct route what's interesting though is that paul linus immediately extricated his troops from anglesey and he's marching south whether or not he's hammering it with horsemen or whether he's taking his entire army is a much debated point in some respects it doesn't really matter what we do

know is he gets to london before buddicca does. Which is interesting because Langlesey is 270 or 180 miles by road, Colchester to London, about 50 miles. So exactly why there's this delay in Boudicca's advance, we don't know. It could simply be the weather. You know, Boudicca's army is too big to be restricted to the hard standing of a Roman road. If you get heavy rain, that churns up the ground, it floods river margins. Every time they need to cross a bridge or go through woodland, they're bottlenecking through

these places. It might simply be logistical like that. But Paulinus gets to London ahead of Boudicca, and that's the crucial point. The problem is he knows that London is indefensible. It also has no walls. It's a big, sprawling merchant town, very populous. And when he arrives there, the population must think that he's the saviour. He's going to save the city. He's at the vanguard of the returning army. He takes one look at it. His scouts tell him what's coming and the signs of what's coming, and he just says, I'm abandon abandoning it anybody who wants to come with me can come with me but i cannot defend this so paul linus retreats from london then leaves it to its fate just as buddhica arrives on the scene and so what is the archaeology from london revealed

about buddhica's attack on what is now the capital of britain it reveals the same as colchester it was absolutely flattened the same scorched daub and mud brick and ash and broken pottery covers the whole of the present city of london pretty much it's all down there four or five meters plus down below the ground surface so difficult to get to and much disturbed by later disturbance but when they get down to those levels it's just this stark red layer very little human bone in london or colchester which given the numbers of casualties we suspect took place there is superficially surprising but of course these places were rebuilt the bodies were cleared up. So we do get scraps and fragments, but we're not getting huge tangled layers of human bone as some people might expect. It is a fascinating case though,

isn't it, Duncan, that beneath London and beneath Colchester today, if you go further enough down in the centre of these settlements, where the Roman settlements were, that you can find that archaeology, you can find that burnt layer that dates to this period that has artifacts within. And that is the visible legacy of the most famous or infamous warrior woman in Britain's history. That is fascinating in its own right. It is fascinating and because of course these were the early settlements they were built of daub, thatch, mud brick there was actually very little or relatively little for them to retrieve so they didn't clear it all away they just built on top of it so it's all still down there and when archaeologists go down they sometimes find the walls still standing

to 60-70 centimetres and it's a little pompeii everything that was in the room at the time is still there is the day it burned it's difficult to access them now because if there's not an archaeological dig going on but what i've managed to do is identify some of the places where these excavations have taken place and you can still go down and visit these the exact locations at the same levels that these excavations took place and if you know what happened there you can stand there and take a moment and just reimagine where you're standing amongst the shadows of these people wherever you are in a basement or in an underground ticket station wherever you can revisit these locations very poignant very

emotive indeed i mean well let's keep moving forward. So Boudicca, she sacked Colchester, she sacked London, presuming her armies in several tens of thousands by now. The route of her march following this from London, where does she go? She goes to Verulamium, which is St. Albans, north of London. Where Paulinus goes is more of a moot point. Most people would agree that he retreats back along that same road, north along Wappling Street to Verulamium, and then abandons Verulamium in the same way that he's abandoned London. I think that's the simplest explanation. Some would have him retire west from London with his whole army.

It's possible, I think we'd be crazy to say that anything's impossible in this story, but to me, that's not my reading of the text. Boudicca goes north and sacks Verulamium. And I think that Paulinus has just abandoned it when she does so. Same sorry story happens there, except in Verulamium, I think people now know what's coming. They know there's going to be no quarter. And I think Verulamium would have been pretty much abandoned. There'd have been no one there. And the question is, what happens to Paul

Linus now? Because Tacitus' account is beautifully written. It's very, it's multi-layered. It's a lovely account. And he takes us to Colchester. He takes us to London. He takes us to Verulamium. And then he puts in a paragraph about the conduct of the Britons. He talks about there were 70,000 Roman and Allied casualties in these towns, what massacre there was, how cruel the Britons were. That paragraph is a parenthesis. It could have gone in anywhere. It's not about that moment in time. It's just discussing the war as a whole. If you remove that paragraph, it says that, like ruin, fell on the town of Verulamium, and then Paulinus breaks off delay and fights a battle. And I think removing that parenthesis is crucial to the fact that he's taken us on a step-by-step

journey through the country with both armies, and then he's taking us to Verulamium, and he's not taking us any further and I think there's lots to suggest that Paulinus would have chosen a quick battle close to Verulamium as soon as he could he can't keep retreating he's lost the province effectively he'd gone to Britain to finish the conquest of Wales and to finish the conquest of Britain and he's actually at the moment of his triumph he's lost the province he needs to regain it he needs to beat Boudicca as quickly as possible before her army starts to disintegrate he needs to restore his own personal glory and he can't abandon all of these allied tribes north and south of the Thames or they're going to throw him that lot with Boudicca so I don't think there's any reason to start looking for Boudicca's battle 75 miles away in any direction, which has often been done.

I think that he's going to be fighting it in that region. He needs to stop this rebellion and nip it in the bud. Well, let's focus on that. Well, first of all, so Paulinus, he's choosing a quick battle. How much manpower does he have at this stage? Tacitus says that after London and after Verulamium, he's drawing all his forces together that he can muster. So he's got the 14th Legion, he's got part of the 20th, and auxiliaries that together make up an army of about 10,000 men. And this is the reason I don't think he's

running scared. A Roman army of 10,000 men is quite an army. It should be up to taking on anything that Boudicca can throw against it, no matter how big her army is, so long as he can choose a decent battleground. Well, let's go on that battleground a bit more then, Duncan, because if you're saying that it's possible that he opts therefore for a quick battle, he's got all of these men behind him somewhere near St. Albans. So what does Tastitus say in his description? How does he describe this battlefield? This is one of the most useful things that Tacitus gives us, at the same time as being one of the most useless things that he gives us, because he describes a Roman army with a wood

behind it that's approached by some sort of narrowing landscape feature we normally interpret as some sort of narrow, shallow valley, and the Britain's approach from clear ground. Now, if you open any Ordnance Survey map of the British Isles, you will find a lot of places that would vaguely match that description. And that's why I'm always reluctant to use that as the sole way of prospecting for the battlefield. I think by looking at it logically and tactically and rereading Tacitus, I think it's fairly local to that area. What we need to do is find landscapes fairly close to Verulamium that match his description and work in the way that he describes the battle progressing. But also, crucially, what we actually need is some

archaeological or artifactual evidence that something out of the ordinary occurred there. And that's what we've really been lacking until now. Until now, indeed. So okay then. So with that description, and if you think it's in the area around St. Albans, are there any real potential candidates for where this battle might have taken place? Well, it's been known since the 1980s that on the hills, just to the southwest of Varrolamium, literally within a mile or two of it, there's a plateau where Roman battle artifacts have been discovered. Now, relatively early Roman battle artifacts, probably first century AD, so the right time period we're looking for. They consist almost entirely of lead slingshots. So the Romans are famous for their short sword, their gladius hispaniensis, and their javelins. They also carried slings, particularly the auxilia. The sling was a

deadly weapon. It had a range of 200 plus meters. The velocity of a slingshot when it was first loosed was not far off a 44 magnum revolver. They were a deadly weapon. And dozens and dozens and dozens of these have been found on the hills on this site just southwest of Verulamium. Having been up there and wandering the landscape with all of this in mind. Part of the site has been built on. There's a dual carriageway running through part of it. So a lot of the geography is hidden and not obvious. But what you see is that where the slingshots were found, you're at the top of a defile.

And that defile runs straight down to Watling Street, about a mile away, and would have exited directly into the face of Boudicca's oncoming army as it marched from London. When you actually walk the battlefield and take a copy of Tacitus and read Tacitus while you're walking that landscape, it fits. It means he dominates the Ver Valley. Boudicca can't pass him. She has to fight him. He dominates Watling Street and he dominates the entrance onto the southwestern

road system where the second legion ultimately are down at exeter so i think tactically it's a perfect place but crucially it's got the artifacts as far as ancient battlefield hunting goes and looking for this battlefield it's the closest you're going to get to a smoking gun you've got a location that you know buddhica was at she destroyed the town just a mile away we're almost certain that paul ines was there before she destroyed it and you've got a landscape that matches tacitus with first century battle artifacts that is amazing because also duncan it must be searching for a battlefield an ancient battlefield is one of the most difficult things for an archaeologist to do, isn't it? Of all of the sites of archaeology. And there are very, very few

battlefields, actual battlefields. I can think of maybe Calcrisia in Germany, Masada. Not many have been found, but maybe, maybe this location, you actually have artifacts and the topography to match tastas's account very much so and i think when these artifacts first came to light it's an area that's been heavily metal detected in the past and these came to light during metal detecting initially it wasn't really identified as a battle site it was suggested perhaps they were hordes of lead buried for reuse that have been scattered a lot of work has been done in more recent decades on slingshots and their spread, and there have been another couple of potential battlefields in the north of Britain that have come to light because of these scatters of lead shot. With that in mind, it's now been

reinterpreted. It's long been reinterpreted. A local archaeologist called Rosalind Niblett initially suggested it, probably about 20 years ago, that it was an actual battle site. I think that is now effectively confirmed by Roman military archaeologists. So yeah, it's very exciting. Well, go on then. We've looked at the archaeology, potentially this battle site, if this is the battle site. what ultimately happens during this big climactic clash between Boudicca and the Romans, Suetonius Paulinus? It was an absolute disaster for Boudicca. Paulinus has chosen a battlefield where he cannot be outflanked. It has to be a frontal assault. It's exactly what the Romans want. They're playing to their strengths in this battle, and the Britons are playing to their weaknesses, which is they can't deploy their numbers on a vast scale. They're being channeled towards the

Romans. So effectively, they can only meet the Romans on the front that the Romans present. The charge is a disaster. They're felled en masse by javelins, by slingshots, by arrows, absolute carnage. And then the Romans punch forward into buddhica's army force it back down the defile the cavalry are unleashed the britons are pushed up against their own baggage train that blocks their escape and we are told that every living thing on the battlefield was killed man woman child and even the baggage animals. The Roman army was brutal. If it needed to put down a rebellion, if you engaged in a guerrilla war,

didn't want to be involved in, it would just kill everybody. It had no moral compunction against doing that. And Tacitus says that in this battle, they ended it there on the field. They destroyed everybody. They killed everybody. It's absolute horrific end to the revolts. And I'm

guessing for Boudicca herself, she doesn't live much longer after this if she survives the battle. If she survives the battle, I mean, Tasta suggests as many as 80,000 Britons died on the field. Now, if we accept that that's an exaggeration, even if we halve it, or more than halve it, and say 30,000 or 40,000 died. I mean, that's an extraordinary casualty rate. I don't doubt that that many did. If the Romans had 10,000 men and they were heavily outnumbered and killed everyone on the field, it must have been tens of thousands of British dead. And I would be very surprised if Boudiccas got off the battlefield. Whether they would have recognised her or known that they'd killed her is another matter. Tacitus says that she took poison. Dio Cassius says that she died of illness. But either

way, I don't think they ever found her. I think the assumption was that she was dead, and that was probably the case. Duncan, with this whole grand, infamous climax to Boudicca's rebellion, this massive battle, you've hinted at that potential location near St. Albans. As an archaeologist like yourself, you've followed in the footsteps, you've walked this ground, you've been on the ground, looked at the topography. Do you think in the future we're likely to find out more about the battle itself, about how this massive revolt ended? Do you think there is a chance that we will find evidence beneath the ground for where this battle actually took place?

It's a very tricky one to answer. I think the best chance would be the Roman dead. There were 400 Roman dead in the battle, and they would have been given a proper burial, presumably with funerary monuments, and probably not far from the battlefield buddhica's army i would strongly guess they simply left them on the field there were too many to do any with so over the centuries over the millennia they will have been broken down into almost nothing whether you could do scientific tests on the subsoil for you know nitrates higher nitrate levels from human corpses or whatever is beyond my specialty but effectively i think by far the best chance we ever have of definitively saying

it is will be roman dead that will have been properly disposed of and any any funerary monument and it's important to point out i'm not claiming that is definitely the battlefield there's nothing definitive here it's one of many good candidates It is the only one that really has convincing archaeological evidence in the soil. But whether anything else will turn up in the future, we'll just have to wait and see. We'll just have to wait and see. Well, Duncan, that's a lovely way to end this episode. Last but not least, you have written a book all about this, about your travels, your passion for the whole story of Boudicca, following in the trail of this warrior woman, which is called? It's called Echolands, A Journey in Search of Boudicca.

It's in hardback, e-book and audio book. Fantastic. Well, Duncan, I look forward to reading that from one Boudicca buff to another. And it just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. It's been brilliant. Well, there you go. There was Duncan Mackay explaining all things Boudicca. I hope you

enjoyed the episode. Duncan's book, Echolands, is out now and I encourage you all to get a copy because it is such a fascinating story. Last things for me, you know what I'm going to say, but if you've enjoyed this episode, if you're enjoying The Ancients at the moment, first off, don't you worry, because we've got so many really cool episodes coming up in the weeks ahead. June is going to be a stellar, stellar month for us.

But also, if you would like to help us out, well, you know what you can do. You can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it greatly helps us as we continue to share these remarkable stories from our distance past with you and with as many people as possible but that's enough from me and i will see you in the next episode.