The Ancients - How to Survive on Hadrian’s Wall

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Step into the daily lives of those stationed along Hadrian's Wall, from Roman soldiers to civilians. Tristan Hughes and Dr. Francis Macintosh are your guides to explore the routines, duties, and unique cultural identities that developed in this northern frontier of the Roman Empire. They discover how the wall itself was maintained, the role of local and foreign deities, and the significant impact Roman occupation had on the local population.MOREThe Roman LegionaryListen on AppleListen on SpotifyThe Roman Invasion of BritainListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Max Carrey, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Hadrian's Wall, one of the most recognizable Roman monuments from anywhere in the world. Stretching from the Tyne estuary to the Solway Firth, in Romanize, this was the northern edge of their empire, the end point of civilization. Today, it's easy to define Hadrian's wall by the great sights dotted along its length, forts like Halsteads and Chester's. But what about the people themselves? What? do we know about the men, women and children who lived their lives on this border of barbaricum almost 2,000 years ago? What clues have they left behind? This is the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and this is your guide to life at Hadrian's Wall. Our guest today is Dr Francis McIntosh,

collections curator for English heritage at Hadrian's Wall Room. Francis, what a pleasure to see you again. It's great to have you back on the podcast. I know. It's been a long time. It has. The last time we saw each other in person was, as we were talking, just before going live, it was almost five years ago when we did the tour around Corbridge and Chester's Rowan. Exactly. We were exploring the ruins properly, weren't we, rather than just pretending.

It was very good fun. Well, we're still going to really delve into the story today. But this is what I find so interesting about Hadrian's world. We've done the story of like the monument itself in the past and the various components of it. I guess the most fascinating thing is learning about the lives of the people who made Hadrian's Wool what it was, the people who lived along this frontier. This is such an interesting part of Hadrian's Wall's story. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm a small finds archaeologist, you know, a collections curator. I'm not that interested in walls and shapes of buildings. I'm more interested in what happened inside those buildings because you can relate to a lot more,

can you. And, you know, if you can imagine how life for a normal person like yourself, hopefully I'm normal, you know, then I think it gets you more interested. doesn't it, and gets you wanting to find out more. Whereas if you can't at all place yourself there or imagine life there, you know, it's really difficult to sort of be interested. And from the settlements along Hadrian's Wall, do we have quite a rich amount of archaeology surviving,

which gives us insights into how these people lived? Yeah, absolutely. So we get everyday information from inside the forks as well as outside the forts. There's been a lot more work inside the forts. You know, the history of study has been a lot of men, you know, and also it's very influenced by the time that they're working in. And so often it's the military that's more interesting.

But there have been excavations and more so in more recent years and hopefully going forward into the settlements outside the forts. And I wouldn't say the non-military because they're all part of that wider military community. But they're not, you know, enlisted soldiers. Yeah. And that's the key thing to highlight straight away, isn't it? It is not just soldiers that lived in this, I guess, ancient militarized zone. No, not at all.

You know, people today, if they ever go to Katrick or, you know, anywhere around near Salisbury, The towns there are filled with people related to or providing a service for the army who are living inside the barracks. That's just what Hayden's War was like. As any other sort of frontier on the Roman Empire, it needed that sort of backup to keep it running. Well, we're going to explore a day in the life what we know from archaeology and whatever other records we have for people who lived, let's say like the high mark of the Roman Empire and Britain, shall we? So that the second or third century AD. But beforehand, let's set the scene a bit with Hadrian's world.

Some big questions, first of all. First of all, like, quite literally. I mean, how big was Hadrian's world and how long did it spend? So it was just about 73 modern miles, but 80 Roman miles, and that 81 is important to understand how it's constructed.

And it runs from Wall's End, which is just east of Newcastle, all the way to Bow Ness on Solway, on the west coast. So spanning the real narrow bit, if you look at a map of Great Britain. And it's unsure quite what height it was along that 80 miles.

It's maybe four and a half metres. We've not got any single section that stands to its full height. We look at what's remaining and also ancient sources. And then at every mile, which is why I said the Roman mile is important, there was a mile castle. So simple. You know, it's a mini fort. And in between each mile castle, two turrets evenly spaced.

And that was the original plan. But then partway through building, they changed their mind and added the forts in. So the forts are often the most famous thing, aren't they? You know, house steads up on the hill or chesters, the cavalry fort. Bad Oswald. Yeah. But they were a secondary decision. And quite often some of those mile castles or turrets I just mentioned had to be demolished for the forts to be put in.

So you can can imagine the curses of the soldiers who are building it because it's soldiers who are building in the wall, not brought in builders. You know, the higher rocks have changed their minds, haven't they? And they have to fit that plan. And it's always attested as the initial building of Hadrian's board at least to that emperor, the Emperor, the Emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century AD. and it was only recently that it was the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian's Wall. Yeah, so we say, you know, construction began in 1-22. Maybe it began in 120. Going to be controversial here.

It does two years matter. And it took maybe around 10 years to finish building. And then it's occupied for nearly 300 years. So in 2022, you know, we celebrated the Wall's birthday. That wasn't the official slogan. I wasn't allowed to choose. It was 1900 years of Hadron's Wall. Yeah, it was a great sort of moment to reflect.

and look back and lots of us, you know, on the wall, English heritage and the other English heritage and the other organisations who helped look after stretches the wall. You know, we did celebrations, we did new exhibitions, had events and things. It was great to sort of really, you know, remind everybody what the wall was and what it was there for. And why do we think, another of these big questions, why was it built? Well, do we have three days? You can have to try and summarise into about three minutes for good luck.

Yeah, so probably no one single reason, even if Hadrian had one, his head. There were other reasons that were just as important. It probably changed throughout its life. Hadrian is known as a Consolidator Emperor. You know, he seeds back land, you know, that his immediate predecessor had got. He puts lines in the sand or in the rivers, etc., in other parts of the empire. In Britain, our line ended up being quite big, quite a statement. It's stone. Is that because there's more trouble? Is that because, you know, he needed to make more of a statement in Britain? We'll never really know. It's probably a combination of of defence, propaganda, controlling trade and taxes, you know, running an empire costs a lot of

money. And if you can control access into and out of your empire of people and goods, it's going to save you or give you a lot of money. And then it also, you know, there is a, there will have been some defensive definitely, you know, both physically it stopped people moving, but also that sort of, you know, metaphoric, oh, there is a barrier now. We have to think twice about trying to cross that. So it's got multiple layers. And also that idea, you know, for the people that they've just taken over south of the wall, right? Yes, you say a symbol of power. The Roman saying, we are now here.

We can build things like this beyond your wildest dreams almost with the amount of manpower. You know, we are the top dog now and we are here to stay, I guess. Yeah. And it doesn't matter that you had some fields that are now south of the wall and some that are north of the wall. Tough luck. Well, that being the question, do you think that the building of this wall would have displaced many local Britons or it would have affected their day-to-day lives? Yeah, absolutely. So most of the bits of wall that have been excavated haven't uncovered, you know, the foundations of a house that was there beforehand.

But we know there's occupation in the area or along most of the line. In a couple of places, particularly Carra Bruff Fort where there's Ex-Mithraim, there was evidence of plow marks directly underneath the foundation of the wall. So that's a ploughed field that someone's gone through. But it could well be that your land is split in half, you know, your family live on the north and you live on the south. And now you can only go and see them through the gate, you know. paying each time to go north and south. Presumably or not being allowed to take your weapon or sheep or cattle not being able to move

without paying a tax. And it's not like now when HS2 is going through and you get compensated. I imagine none of that happened. But do we think the crux of those societies that were there before the Romans put the bigger line in the dirt, I guess, not really sand in northern England? They were farming communities.

They were these small groups of peoples, you know, linked together. We think of the roundhouse. idea and all that. That should we be imagining those kind of communities? Yes, absolutely. So it's small, nucleated settlements. So maybe, you know, extended family living in one or two roundhouses within maybe an enclosure. And that's what George Joby is one of the famous excavators of, you know, these sort of settlements up here, but also later on, Nick Hodgson and Tanya Weir, archives and museums have found them along sort of the Northumber and coastal plain. And yeah,

it's that smaller settlement where you know your neighbours and you might loosely be part of a wide tribe, but there's no large sort of what we would see urban centres or anything like that. Then in come the Roman soldiers, in comes the creation of this militarised zone, which is, it's a mile or so south of the wall as well that it goes. It's quite a large area that Hadrian's wall then takes up when we're talking about Hadrian's rule. Yeah, so, I mean, you've got to go back 50 years, actually. The Romans first rock up, you know, in, say, what we see now as Northumberland in the 70s, AD. And they've always been putting forts in place there, but then they're carrying further on because the women want to take the whole island.

But then in one, two, obviously, come back and put this line, which is a lot more permanent. Yeah, it's not just the wall or even just the wall, Milecastle's, torrets, forts. To the north of the wall is a double ditch. To the south of the wall is what we call the Valen, which is another big ditch. And that potentially could be hundreds of feet sort of wide from the north part of the north ditch to the south part of Valem. The mysterious ballad. Yeah, to sort of cover. And so that's then all a no-man's land or a no-go zone or, yeah, you know,

you could only be in those places if you had permission or you're part of the military. So it does wipe out a large swath. You know, the wall itself is only maybe three, four metres wide maximum. But it's not actually just that footprint. It's much bigger. So yeah. And the soldiers who then become stationed along Hadrian's wall, I've got a feeling there'll probably be quite a list, won't there?

They're not just all local Britons or all from the heartlands of Italy, are they? No, so probably neither of those, actually. The Romans learnt fairly early on in their imperial conquest that you should not station people locally from where you recruited them. The Batavian Revolt in the first century went very badly. We need to do an episode on that. We've never done one.

Yeah, because that's local troops who are then being asked to put down a local uprising. And as you can imagine, sympathies are divided. So we know that there's British units, you know, units originally based in Britain's stationed elsewhere in the Empire. We also know where lots of the units from Hadrian's Wallforts came from. None of them were formed in Italy. The officers, you know, the high-ranking ones might have been Italian or Central Mediterranean

because they're coming on basically their career path. They're there for three or five years in one post and that's it. But just as a quick sort of idea, we've got Bird Oswald, which in the West, they had Dacians, which is modern-day Romania, yeah. Yeah. At Carvoren, we had potentially contingent of Hamian archers. Syria. That's Syria, isn't it? Yeah, and they're well known for their archers. Yes. Yeah. At Houssteads, we've got Tungrians.

They're from the low countries and Belgium. Okay, yeah. We had other units at Houses also from parts of what the Romans would have called Gomania. We've got Spaniards from Asturia at Chesters and at Great Chester's. Again, at Houses, Frisians, they're from the Netherlands. And then at Vindalanda and Carabrof, we've got Batavians from the Netherlands. and then South Shields, which is not on the wall, but it's very much part of the system.

There's a potential they've got Tigris boatmen there. Oh, okay. That's exciting. The river Tigris, I mean, depends where upon it, but that's Turkey, Syria, Iraq. Iraq, yeah. You know, there's a brough on sands. There's a unit of what the Romans would call Moors

from North Africa. So there's no Italians wearing skirts and, you know, sandals with no socks, you know, up on the wall. But also, there's no units that are, you know, recruited in Britain. Yeah. However, there's a big decision to be made.

If you're part of the second ally Astoria, so the second cavalry unit of Asturian, so it's based at Chester's, how many of them actually came from Astoria by the time they came to Hager's War? And then that unit is based there for 150 years. She's got to be reinforced, doesn't it? Are they always waiting, you know,

the three months it might take for a letter to get back to Astoria to send up, or are they recruiting locally? And we just don't know these things. But what we do know is the names stay and, you know, because the names are very important, and quite often traditions associated with places that those units originally came from still remain as well. So there's some pride in keeping that link, whether or not any of them have ever actually even lived there. I mean, even if they might, and then they might marry locally and then their children will then kind of take up the mantle when they grew up. It's at the idea as well.

Yeah, and I suppose, you know, say, you know, you're from a story. I'm a local woman in the village. We marry. Our children will be half historian. So it might still be that they still see themselves as being a historian even if they were born in Britain. And we know that soldiering has quite a lot of trades do become hereditary. So can we imagine that with these communities, these soldier communities, but of course much more than just soldiers and their families and so on, do we think as time goes on that they develop quite distinct cultural identities along the wall because of the communities that they become a They're not homogenously Roman as such. No, I would say, A, I would say there is no homogenous Roman.

That's very true. Anyway. And that if the Alla Astoria had 100 years, say, a base in France, they would have one identity. And then when that unit moves up to the wall, their identity would change again. Because I think there is a military sort of on frontier identity and you pick up things from your local, you know, that affects you. particularly, I think, to do with religion. But also you will hold on to traditions probably a lot more fiercely than you might if you stayed in a region.

You know, there's that fact which may well be an urban myth. But, you know, there's more Welsh speakers in Patagonia than there are in Wales now because of a community that moved to Wales in the, when I say the 18th century again, you know. They moved to Patagonia from Wales, got it. Yeah, and there's more Welsh speakers in Patagonia. And, you know, you look at immigrant and diaspora groups now that they're either version of the language they are still speaking

or the traditions they hold on to are from when that group left their homeland. You know, whereas in the home, things have moved on and changed. You know, I've got a friend who's, you know, Polish. And she said, you know, we keep some of the traditions that aren't happening now at home, but because that's what I had when I grew up in Poland. And I think that's how we should look at these people

who've moved to Hadrian's wall. they might spend their entire career and their health life at, you know, Hadrian's Wall. And they're going to cling on to the traditions that mean something to them and then pass that on to their generation. So at Houset's and at Birdhawood where, you know, the Frisian units were found, we have very specific pottery that is only then found back in Frisier. How interesting. Okay, so that really does endure.

They keep that up on that. Yeah. Vivian Swan did some really interesting work on North African pottery and this casserole dish that's only found in North Africa. and that's because they're potentially continuing to cook in the way that they're used to. Well, shall we now focus in on a day and a life of a man or a woman, quite frankly, on Hadrian's rule, either a soldier or soldier's wife or family, and get more of an insight what we know from archaeology. We've mentioned the Asturias contingent already from Chester's.

So should we maybe just use them as an example? Because there's lots of archaeology from Chester's as well to learn more about it. So let's kick off a day. Let's say it's the end of the second century AD or sometime around that. Do we have any idea about the morning routine of a soldier or their family? Do we know when they would wake up, where they would be sleeping? What do we know about that? So if we're ending the second century, the family are not living with the soldier.

Okay. You are not legally allowed to marry at that point. It's not until 2-11-ish. I can never remember. There's one date where the... Septimius severance time, isn't it? Yes. One decree gives them the right to citizenship, doesn't it, for everybody.

And one is the legal... Oh, the edict of Caracalla, that's the citizenship. There you go, yeah. And doing a service as you can legally marry, they were definitely all married because we see diplomas that they get when they've retired from 25 years and they've got wives and children named. But they would be living separately. So if we're in Chester's, cavalrymen inside the forts, family outside.

So let's go soldier first. He's sharing a room with two other men because they're part of a terma, which is a different sort of division of unit than if you're in an infantry one. They're in one room. And the room next door, they're three horses. They're horses in the same room, don't you? Yes, there are no stables that we can find at any cavalry forts. And maybe they've got grooms as well on the, you know,

we think maybe there's sort of an equivalent of a hail off. So the first thing you'd be doing is getting up and feeding your horses, I imagine. It also depend on what your duties were that day. Were you on shift last night? You know, were you on night patrol duty, etc. But you'd be seen to your horse because your horse is both your armour because it's driving you. It's your weapon.

but it's also a big investment, you know, it would be balanced against their sort of pay. So feed the horse, water the horse, maybe muck out. We presume they have sort of grazing, you know, areas outside, maybe take them out for an exercise. And then the men have got to think about breakfast. And there is no mess hall in a fort. Really?

There is no catering unit, you know. No cooks, okay. If you think of a film set or if you think of a modern day army, there's no catering core. So they would be feeding themselves from rations. and they wouldn't be getting the equivalent of ready meal. They don't even get flour. They get given grain.

So we imagine that the three men, or maybe they neighbour with the next three next door, they're working together. There's been a fair bit of work done. Alex Krum has worked out how long it would take to grind enough grain for one person's daily. And it's about half an hour. So you're having to grind for half an hour to make yourself enough flour to make either bread or a cake or, you know, sort of potting or things. And so they think that in an infantry unit,

It's eight men per group to make up the 18th century. You'd probably be taking turns. Because I guess this is different because if you think of a Roman army or an ancient army, if you're thinking of a field army, they'll be given rations for X days on campaign. But of course, this is a different setting. This is where they are every day of the year, if they're a garrison kind of thing. So I didn't realize that. Of course, the making of your own food, how much time in the day that would have entailed.

And do we know much about where those cooking places would have been? Yep. So we see quite often quernstones. So the small stones that you use to grind your grain, you know, they're find often in barrack rooms, particularly at Chester's, there's bread up ovens built into the walls of the fort. So if you think of the fort, it's plain card shape, all your buildings are inside,

but there's always a bit of a gap around the edge, you know, a walk space for people to walk around. And on the interior wall of the fort wall, there's bread ovens. You know, you'd have them further away because initially barracks might be made of wood, but even if they're mostly of stone, you don't want anything burning, you know, nearby. So there'd maybe be, I don't know, one oven

and everyone would have to take turns using it because you're not going to fill even a small oven with, you know, even one term of 32 men's probably rations. But I would say even on a campaign, they're not given food. They're given rations, as in they're given the basics, but they're still going to have to make it themselves. So, yeah, so it's not that they get extra help, yeah. Okay, fair enough.

But you wouldn't spend half an hour grinding your grain. You'd do something different probably and make it. Maybe we've done some prep before you went. And do you think the soldiers would have had servants to help in the fort for any of that stuff? They might have had slaves. So we don't talk about servants. Yeah, it would be slaves. But yes, there is evidence that even a equivalent of the squadie could have forded a slave.

And it is thought that the cavalrymen, so cavalrymen are better paid than infantrymen because they've got extra skills, but presumably has also got extra expenses. And there's definitely thoughts that they would have had grooms to help them with the horses. And those grooms are likely to have been slaves. At Corbridge, we have a piece of Samian, the red shiny pottery that looks like a flower pot. It's a bit of a cup. And it's got a graffiti one, so an ownership name. And it says Niko slave of.

So he's identified himself as that. So maybe, yes, their slaves would be doing the cooking or looking after the horses. And the fetching of water, we talked about food early on. But do we know much about the fetching of water and liquid? I mean, if it's not water, I guess milk from the local cows or anything like that. Do we know about that? So at Chester's, we have a very nice well, right in the centre of the headquarters building, which is very close to the really nice stone phallus, you know.

We'll get to that, don't worry. And forts needed to have everything they needed inside in case they were besieged. So there would always be a water source inside. And you're going to need a lot of water, particularly if you've got horses to feed. At Halsteads, we've got some great tanks that are taking account with the gravity. So they're in the bottom corner of the fort and catching that water. Again, getting water would be a huge. task you'd be constantly having to make sure you've got enough water and your horses,

but also you need water for not cleaning yourself because you'd be going to the baths, but probably cleaning your armour. And so you mentioned how we put the scenario at the end of the second century in this particular case where in the case of the cavalry at Chester's three men, three horses in a barrack block. But you mentioned that after that decree that soldiers could marry, Do we see that reflected in the archaeology at all that the barrack blocks change I guess for both infantry and cavalry

that they could have a family with them? So there's not been any archaeological investigation that proves that the barracks at Chester's and so Wars End is the one that's been really properly excavated much better actually than Chester's, which is the 19th century. But at Halsteads that's our real sort of window into what happens in the barracks in the fourth century. So they've excavated what's the northeastern quadrant

and it's two rows of barracks and they originally are one long building with just dividing walls in the middle with eight men in each room and then in the fourth century they changed to be in small individual buildings they get called chalet barracks because butlins was very popular

when they were being excavated in the 70s and 80s but you know there's these little ones there's the tiniest gap in between them I imagine you know you couldn't fit along there just get rubbish and rats in there but you were as a separate space and also the civilian settlements around the outside of the forts seem to go out of use in the 4th century.

Not everywhere, not exclusively and more work is being done at the moment about whether they get reoccupied later. But there is a thought that by the 4th century, the number of soldiers living on the wall has reduced because troops have always been recalled for bigger problems elsewhere in the empire. Obviously soldiers are allowed to marry. And so perhaps the change that we see at house steds, which could be elsewhere

and we've just not looked at it or found it properly yet, is that a soldier's family would move in with them and that's why they moved to these individual buildings. But it's still sort of a lot of things that we don't know. You know, the higher up archaeology is in the ground, the later it is. And that means the later it is means it's more at risk for erosion, but also it's the first thing that's been excavated.

And while we had some great work done in the 19th century, wasn't to the same standard. So a lot of fourth century material, which will be a lot more ephemeral and harder to sort of understand was, you know, sort of taken away by early excavators who didn't recognise what they were looking at. And that's why sort of the work at house steds and then later as well at Bird Oswald has been really key

because we haven't got those later layers. I just love the idea. It's always in my mind now ever since going to Vindalanda and learning about that and seeing that wall of shoes they have of all sizes, just thinking that maybe in those latest entries kind of walking out for barrack blocks, seeing the soldiers huddled around doing their stuff like their garrison duties,

but also potentially seeing, you know, two children running around playing or like a woman with clothing or whatever like that. It's fascinating to kind of get that insight into a war community as well at the same time as just the soldiers from the archaeology.

Well, so that wall of shoes at Vindalanda, they're all late first, early second century. Because that's where they've got their waterlog layers. So if you imagine the sort of range of people living there when it was supposedly solely a military space and, you know, know, not that it was, we know. But once sort of the fort walls have opened even more in the 4th century,

the change in the people who were inside the fort would it be even, yeah, even more marked. And it's really interesting because people think about Haging's Wall. And imagine 300 years ago from today, 1725, how different life was. And obviously we're in a period where technology and things have changed a lot. but the soldiers who first went there in 1-2-2, how different their life might have been to those who were there in 380 and it's a huge change in it

so we should expect it's a complicated situation and that the guys in 380 wouldn't have recognised what it was like or maybe they thought they had it better or worse you know there's always going to be complaints aren't there? But if we kind of stick with like, you know, that turn of the third century then, if we were walking through a place like Chester's

woken up, got the water, done the food, what types of clothing do you think? think we'd see, both like the armour of soldiers, but also the everyday clothing. So, you know, this is a traditional, isn't there? If you sort of ask most people to picture a Roman soldier or Google it, often you see what is a Mediterranean, Central Mediterranean and legionary soldier. So he's got that sort of leather skirt, hasn't he? He's got those sandals, might be laced all over to his knees.

Yeah, no socks or anything like that. No socks, red tunic, you know, bare arms, bare legs. You know, that's not what we're seeing here. The Romans were not stupid. The army was not stupid. but they knew they needed to keep their soldiers appropriately clothed. There would have been the equivalent of sort of leg coverings. I don't know if we probably can call them trousers.

Kind of trousers, yeah. They would have worn socks, we know that. You know, one of the Lindenolanda tablets that's famous is asking for socks, isn't it? One of the exports from Britain was the Birris Britannicus, a woolen huddled cloak. And obviously wool in its natural form is waterproof. Got evidence of layers of things because you need to keep warm, you need to keep dry.

There'd be lots of browns, a very muted, because it'd be the natural colour of the fabric or you'd have a very simple dye. And they were wearing what in the Latin ends up being translated as sandals, but they're not open-toed, you know, sandals. They'd be laced fairly tight. And we know there was also sort of boots and things. It's appropriate to the weather that they're in. And they will have adapted and adopted, you know, clothing and techniques from the rest of the parts of the empire,

or the provinces that became part of the empire after conquest, yeah. No, exactly. That old Roman idea that anyone who wears, you know, trousers are barbarians. It's like, well, as soon as you get into Northern England and you experience a winter here, you're going to be praying for trousers at the very least, right? Exactly. You know, there's lots of, you know, what we would call, no, no, how we sort of, you know, an urban myth. You know, the Romans were all clean-shaven and they all did this and they all did that. But actually, that's what someone who lived in Italy or, you know, maybe Southern Spain did.

But they're practical. They're not going to let their soldiers start get ill or, you know, lose fingers and toes through frostbite because, you know, or, you know, equivalent of sort of trench because they're not clothing them properly. Could you still imagine like the prefect or the chief administrators at one of the forts, maybe wearing the equivalent of a toga or something more, I guess, in the Roman mindset, prestigious to symbolise their rank? Yeah, so nowadays, the modern British army, and even, I suppose, going back probably a couple hundred years, there's a uniform, isn't there?

And it's very clear always what rank you are from what you're wearing. There wasn't so much a uniform in the Roman army. There was this conception initially that Lorica segmentar, the big plate, which again, if you did a little Google, you would probably think as a typical Roman. That's supposed to only be the legionary soldiers who are the citizen ones who are higher paid. And then the auxiliaries either wear chain or scale armour. And it might be that the officers have either the cuirass which is like a full bodyplate or, you know, Lorica. But also they'd just be wearing finer clothes.

So it might be finer fabrics in particular. You know, the Centurions and others would have specific plumes on their helmets. There wasn't quite many occasions where you'd wear a toga, but you might. wear finer clothes, more brightly coloured, for example, because there is no uniform, the sort of foot soldiers or the, you know, the equivalent of the squadies, they'd get the basic tunics and armour, but you could then accessorise it yourself, you know, when we talk about the soldier's belt and other things like that being very personal.

I think the reason I ask also is because don't you get in many of these forts, you get the commander's house. So you get the headquarters, you get the commander's house, and you get the granaries in the middle of the fort. And when the commander's house, sometimes, did we see the house days? it almost comes very much an Italian feel to it, a villa feel to it. Yeah. So do we get a sense that maybe if you're walking through somewhere like Chester's

at the turn of the third century, you might be able to spot who was like the commander's wife or the commander's family because they might look a bit, you know, a bit more well cared for or something like that? Yeah, definitely, you know, a commanding officer lives in a house that is basically a miniature version of a big courtyard house you'd find in the Mediterranean, you know, and we saw at Chester's, you know, it's got underfloor heating, you know, there's painted wall plaster and house stets as well

and at houses so it's a standard thing you know that you would have and so the soldier will probably just have the same tune that he wears all the time whereas I imagine the companion officer

and his wife they'd be having much nicer clothes and the soldier would have off duty clothes compared to you know his sort of soldier clothes yes and they would be much higher quality

you know and the women are wearing what we might call like a stola so it's a long sort of draped equivalent of a dress you know, and it'd be tied in at the waist. You might have brooches at the shoulders and maybe on the sleeves. You know, the jewellry as well would, you know, really mark them out.

And for women, it's the hairstyles because you've got to have money and time and probably someone to do your hair into a fancy do. And so, you know, we start to see lots of hair pins or other sort of dress accessories, you know, that indicates its presence of women rather than just men. Isn't there a big hairstyle shift in the early third century when an empress comes up to Adriensville, Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius, Do you think that becomes a trend along Hadrian's role?

Yeah, so, Jimmy Seras brings his wife and the two sons, isn't they? You know, they come and set up court and there's a lot more coinage around, Julie Domina's images on those coins. And this is for just say this is a big invasion into Scotland at the time. Yeah. You know, so he comes through the wall. We always tell he probably passed through Corbridge because that's the main route north. And anyone who wants to be fashionable or wants to curry favour will want to have the same hairstyle as the imperial household. So in York in particular, you know, where she's based, going to see.

people who are wanting to come to, because basically the court moves, doesn't it? It's like when Henry VIII goes on his progress and things. So, yes, we see hairstyles change in the third century. And in the first and second century, hairpins are really fancy, particularly on the end bit that you see that sticks out of the hair. Whereas later in the third century, they're plainer because actually the thing that you want to look at is the hairstyle and the design. And it's all these intricate plaits.

But there's no hair spray and there's no hair clips. So it's held in place by beeswax and animal fat. You know, the beeswax boy smells okay, but I'm off that, yeah. Well, moving on, you mentioned also that the soldier were on duty, so their armour, and you mentioned also earlier, chain mail and scale armour. Is that the types of armour that we should be imagining for people who are either cavalrymen or who are living either as infantry or cavalry serving as infantry or cavalry on any fort along Hadrian's war? Yes, so this Lorica segmentat, segmented armour, which looks like big play,

It's a bit like, you know, an armadillo. Traditionally, that was thought to only be for legionaries. We know now it's not quite the case, but it was going out of use as we, you know, moving to the time when Hagen's Wall is active. And so, yeah, it's going to be scale armour or chain armour or male armour. Mike Bishop will not let me call it chain mail, which is not the correct term. And that is made in a sort of mass production way. So I could make loads and loads and loads of rings.

I didn't have no skill. But then you'd be the trained armourer who would then take all my rings, and make it into the shape. And the same with the scales. Whereas a Lorica segmentartre, you need to be skilled to make all of that. So you would have, in a workshop, lots of people making the scales,

making the rings, depending on what you're doing. And then you need less skilled. It's in a triangle and the higher up you go. That's where the skill is and they are the ones that construct it. So it takes a lot of time. A lot of it is unskilled. And if you make it right, hopefully if a small section gets broken,

you can place just that section. And sometimes you do see repairs in this chain and the scale armor. But if you talk to reenactors, it takes a lot of looking, after. Well, if we were, first of all, let's say a routine day in the life of a soldier, we can focus on cavalry to start with the Asturias and then we can look at infantry as well. But do we know much about the routine of a soldier, if they were on duty that day? Do we know much about that? I'd like to say we do. A shift on the wall. Yeah, we really don't.

The glimpses we get are from the Vindalanda tablets where they have, you know, what we might see as the register, you know, or the roster for the day, where it talks about. about this many men out on patrol or this many men out escorting the governor doing something. You know, and then you can start to extrapolate and look at other records, particularly in Egypt, where, you know, sort of Vindalanda, it's the wet conditions that allowed things to survive. Egypt is the dry. And we imagine, you know, particularly in an infantry barracks where eight men are sharing a small space, we imagine they're going to be split into shifts because they've tried all sorts of configurations

about how the bunks would work and how you'd all sleep. And so, you know, you'd be, I don't know, maybe there's three shifts of eight hours or two of 12, and, you know, you might be on guard duty at the gates. You know, there's four gates every fort, not more, chess is the six. Maybe, and we know, we think we know that was one fort, they seem to be sort of responsible for a section of the wall either side of them, including the Malcassas and the turrets. So some of your troops might be stationed there. At mile castles, they could sleep over, you know, not a sleep over, but, you know, because there's often Barrett, buildings, at turrets, we think they're just, just there for the day and then swap out.

Maybe you are going to escort a grain shipment, you know, into the fort or out of the fort if it's going somewhere else. Maybe you've been sent to escort, you know, a governor who's coming to visit. And do you think escort missions would be a big part, actually, of these garrisons once in a while? I think it depends what's going on in the area, doesn't it? You know, there's also going to be patrol duties, you know, just going to check that no one south or north of the wall is causing any trouble. presence and visible presence is about

you know sort of reminding everyone we're there and we're in charge every now and then you know there would be some fighting so you're going to have to be kept fit so we're presuming they have regular training. Well yeah that's another question do we know much about you know training yards or about how I get not exercises as such but yeah

drill I guess we don't know loads so we know quite a bit about how you get trained to become a soldier at the beginning there's sort of manuals on how to train a soldier as they enter the army we've got the hippie the gymnasia, which is a text, and it's about, it's basically a bit of a show for the cavalry to put on and show all the moves they can do with the horses. But presumably that would be something you would train for, a bit like our horse guards parade

now because it's showing that how one you are with the horse and the maneuvers you can do. They must have been doing regular training because otherwise, if all you're doing is standing on a wall walking, you know, you're going to not be fit. And although the wall isn't overrun very much, even if you believe all the sources that say we were overrun. There's going to be basic change. So you'd imagine there's a routine and, you know, every three days you're on, I don't know, sword practice or, you know, a lot of it we would have to sort of guess, but you

would guess based on how, you know, the army works. And at Bird Oswald, they found a building that they have identified as a training hall. A training hole. An indoor one. Because, I mean, you know, soldiers need to be used to going out in the bad weather. But equally, if you've got covered, you know, space, then that's probably better because if your weapons and your armour gets wet unnecessarily it just adds more time to the care of them.

So, you know, maybe you could do some of your indoor exercises. So how have they been able to identify it as a training hall? If they found plastic, no, not plastic, straw dummies on the ground or anything like that? I would say, and I'm a bit cheeky, because obviously I've studied a long time to get to this physician. But a lot of archaeology, it's kind of like pairs. So you find something, and you've either seen it before

or someone else has seen it before, and you're looking at other places where there's similar straw. or other places there's similar objects and working out. And so from the layout of the building where it is in the fort, looking at other examples, the most likely is it's a training hall. And it's the same house says we have a hospital building. It wasn't because we found, you know, a thing that says the doctor's in and, you know, inscribed on the door.

It's looking at what is most likely and what's similar, what are the things that the army might need and what can we see in other forts across the empire. And Burd Oswald, you know, Tony Wemort's found that there because, it's more permanent. So the record, you know, it remained in the record. There'd be similar structures elsewhere, you know, as well as outside sort of marching grounds and things. But it's very easy to say, oh, that's a flat bit of ground outside the floor. Yeah, that's probably where they'd marched and the training.

Like, what's that thought that's like on the... Hardnots. Yeah, a hard knot. You know what? I was actually going to say, I went to Hard Knock Roman Fort in the Lake District a few months ago and like beautiful. And then there's that large, like, flat plane which people say, that's the parade ground. I mean, it's a bit of flat ground, isn't it? You know, I'm sure they did it.

They used it for that. But whether they, you know, designated the training ground. You know, and it's the same with people are always desperate to find equivalence of amphitheatre something once as a hollow in the ground. So I like being an archaeologist and studying the wall because there's lots we know and there's lots we don't know. But we can kind of join the gap with them sometimes by making, you know, educated suggestions based on our evidence and our understanding of people and society. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, going back to the duties of a soldier.

So you mentioned a kind of being on guard on the wall if he did have a walkway. Presumably it did have a walkway. That's another big debate. It was a whole other day. I'm not putting any money on anyone. I don't want to, you know, get taken out on the way home. Okay.

Being on guard, the fort, maybe on patrols, maybe doing escort missions, which is also really interesting. Given that the soldiers were involved in the building of Hadrian's wall itself, if there was a case where a part of Hadrian's wall had fallen down, can we presume that a team of soldiers from one of the forts, even whether you're a cavalry or infantry, would be sent out to help rebuild the wall at that? part.

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously the wall was built by the legionary troops, not the guys who stationed on it, which is the auxiliary troops. But yes, you would be expected to do repairs, and we see that. So, you know, Hadrian's wall, we say it's being built about 1-22. Hadrian dies 138, Antoninai's Pires comes in and they're like, nope, we'll go further north, you know, and they build the Antonine wall. And when they come back from the Antonine Wall, about 160-ish, there's lots of repairs

along Hadrian's wall, basically because it's been left unattended, you know, maybe just a skeleton or caretaker crew on there. and there's loads of inscriptions saying we've fixed this and that's the soldiers who are also based there. You know, they're expected to do everything that the army is meant to be a self-sufficient unit and it might be that there's more skilled, I don't know, bricklayers in one unit than another,

but they should be able to function as that unit on their own to do everything they need, which is get food, keep their forts safe, both from outsiders and from, you know, it falling down. Yeah. So the day goes on and let's say you finish your shift at the end of the day, you want to eat once again, it's dinner time. Can we imagine that the

I almost said the forbidden R word, the rations word again, but can we imagine that the food is similar to at the beginning of the day, kind of making bread from flour, or do we have any ideas that there was more substantial food available, that they ate in, you know, not messholes, as you said, there were mess halls, but maybe a more communal meal in the evening, any idea around that? We have no evidence that they're sitting down and eating communally.

That's what happens in the pre-Roman period, so what we call the Iron Age. There's lots of large, big serving dishes. Big round house, yeah. The houses, but also the, you know, big bowls. One pot, you know, it's a one pot meal, so everyone wants now, isn't it? It's over the fire. And people eat from that.

The Romans come in and it goes to individual dining. People are interested, Hillary calls from some excellent work on dining. And how you can see the change in consumption by the stuff they're eating off, so the plates and the crockery. And so, no, eat soldier probably has his own little beaker, his own cup or bowl. they would also have their own pan, you know, if you looked and we could do a whole thing about how much a soldier has to carry, you know, if it's his kit. It might be communal that they sit together, which is not communal dining. And we think, so the eight men in a, it's called a contuburnium, they're the ones that marched together.

They, you know, have a tent together. They stay in their barrack. They're probably communal dining in some way. This is the infantry compared to the cavalry. So then, you know, an eight sort of makes sense. But, you know, it's three in the term. Whether they band together, because three is a bit different. but no, it's really interesting.

We can see there's not that sort of thing. And I think you can call it rations, but it's just the food stuffs rather than, you know. So they would have still seen it as rations or the equivalent of, but yeah, they're not getting given a meal. It's the means to make a meal. And so how would the supplies, whether it is just, you know, the wheat or supplies for the wall and maintaining the wall and so on,

how would supplies reach a fort on Hadrian's wall? Do we know much about that logistic system that was behind it? Or what would you see, would you see pack animals coming into and from the fort and so on? Yeah, definitely. So we talked at the very beginning, didn't we, about what the wall was? And it was the wall with this wide swath of land that was bordered by two ditches. And south of the wall, but inside the military zone was what is called the military road, a military way. And that's kept open and running for communication but also trade.

And then there's other roads. So Deer Street goes all the way from York. and it goes past many forts, comes up through Corbridge, hits Hayneswall, the port gate, and then carries on north to the outpost forts. And these roads are maintained. We've got in the Vindelanda tablets, again, things talking about supplies coming in by cart

and coming to Corbridge, going to collect it at Corbridge. Corbridge seems to be a bit of a hub point. But transport by water is always cheaper and quicker in the Roman period. This is excellent resource online called Orbis, where you can have a look. Oh, yes. You can do point to point and see how long it would take and what it would cost for the different,

means of transport, but South Shields, we've mentioned, it's on the coast. On the Tyne, yeah. On the Tyne. Fairly large ships could come up the East Coast, dock at South Shields. Things could be offloaded into South Shields and put onto smaller boats. And then we've got the Tyne, haven't we? You know, it's a huge shipping route now, but it would have been then. And there's not been any boats, Roman boats found in Northumberland. But in the Netherlands, the low countries, they found quite a lot because, again, of the soil conditions.

And their barges are very shallow, what's a board? Well, yeah, shallow bottoms. Yeah, very shallow bottom, you know, hardly any sort of depth in the water. So when you have boats like that, it makes sure you think again about how navigable the river is and how far, because you could move things that way. So transport is key. Often the transport is more expensive than the thing itself, which is changes, isn't it, with certain items today. And things will be coming and going all the time.

An army marches on its stomach, that's a modern phrase, but that still... An army garrisons on its stomach at the same time. Yeah, exactly. You know, and it would have been vital that, the soldiers are fed as vital as they're being paid, you know, and money's also got to come in. And so, yeah, things are coming from all over, you know, we are at the northwestern edges of the empire, you know, da-da-da, but we are not out in the sticks. They are well connected. They are getting the things they need. And if they can get it locally, they will. So they will take tax of people in grain or purchase more grain. Same with, you know, livestock. There's a really

interesting project based out of Carverty that's coming to an end, which is looking at cattle. And the cattle that are found in the Fort San Hadrian's War, and are they growing up locally, or are they being brought in? And they're doing that with isotopes. And so we're starting now with science to get more of an understanding of how far foods have to travel. You know, certain things, olive oil, wine, garum, you know, the fermented fish sauce, that's going to have to travel quite far. But if you'll get things locally, you would because it's cheaper and quicker. It's just one of those other amazing things of imagining a day in the life of Hadrian's wool is, you know, you'd see the soldiers, you see their wives and children and so on,

but you would also see lots of donkeys, mules, horse and carts coming to and from the granary or wherever, or as you say, barges as well, the river right next to Chester's, as an example, does that ultimately connect to the River Tyn? Yes, so the river at Chester's is the North Tine, and it's one of the tributes that is into the Tyne. So whether or not that was navigable, I mean, in the summer now, no way, is it navigable. But in the winter, it's high, you know, and if you can get canoes along, why could you net get shallow drafted, you know, barges in? Because it's smoother sailing than going along the road. So we do need to think about all these things.

And also think about how the river courses might have changed at Bird Oswald, the river there. You know, we know that's changing. But how far was that navigable? And how did that help with supplies at the fort? Very interesting. Okay. Leisure time. We've talked about shifts and food and it's not just the soldiers and getting a sense of that.

But of course, you know, once you've done all of that, and you need to kill time, what sorts of activities were available for someone who was based at a place like Chester's? Possibilities of N. No. So it depends if you've got a pass to leave the fort. We don't know whether you had to have a pass to leave the fort,

but that's one suggestion. If you couldn't, if you stayed in the fort, there's gaming boards found all over forts. Gaming boards. This is one of the best parts of Roman archaeology gaming boards. Yeah, you know, and dice and counters. and knuckle bones and they genuinely were actual knuckle bones

you know they're not little toy pieces that we make today. Gambling is you know quite a big thing. They're found really interesting, Lindsay Ellison Jones did a study of what's found in mile castles and there's a lot of gaming boards in mile castles because imagine you're quite bored when you're on century duty there. If you're allowed out of the fort,

you're in the civilian settlement or the extra mural settlement or whatever, you know, you want to call it there where there'd be taverns you know with all the things that they might offer there which is probably more gambling you know, food, alcohol, maybe ladies, maybe boys, depending on what you want. And then there'd be other things, there'd be shops. Maybe your family is there and you want to go and see them.

Maybe you're trying to make a bit extra money and you're also trading and you've got shares in one of the pottery shops in this town. And so that's what you're doing elsewhere. You could go hunting. There's a lovely altar at Bird Oswald that's been dedicated by the Venetores of Banner. So Banner is a Roman name. Hunting would be a way to supplement your food. Are we thinking of bore?

Both. Yeah, rabbits. Fishing? Yeah, they definitely go fishing. There's locked. It's not the L-O-C-H lots. It's L-O-U-G-H up here. But, you know, that's supplement your diet or your pay.

Yeah, so a fair few things. Yeah. And any amphitheaters in the area? Obviously, we've got a couple near, well, there's Tramontium, isn't there? So there's an amphitheatre from further north. Yeah. So we know that they did build amphitheaters in this area of Britain. Any evidence were won along Hadrian's war?

There's not one so far. The closest is something near by. Doddsworth that people are desperate to say is and but Tony Wilmot you know who's the expert is not convinced but equally it's a circular depression that could well have been used for people to sit around and be entertained by the plays or gladiators or things like that one of the recent finds that I've been working on is a little knife handle in the shape of gladiator that was finding the river tyne at core bridge you know so gladiators are across the world and they're you know a form of entertainment just because we haven't found a really nice amitha to say

the one at richborough you know fantastic doesn't mean there's not temporary structures that then leave no footprint you know maybe there's a travelling I don't know you know show of either actors or gladiators or other things and you know we have pop-up shows now don't we need

no physical trace afterwards and of course we should mention because you mentioned them earlier as well the baths that's another pleasure that they can have without if they let's say hypothetically they don't have a pass to leave one of the forts they will have the bars to go and relax in

well baths are not normally inside the force oh so even just to go down to the root, because I'm thinking chesters is right next to them. Yeah, but it's outside the fort, isn't it? And if every gate is guarded, you know, these are the intricacies we don't know. Every gate presumably was guarded. And you maybe, you don't need a pass to get out. Maybe you just need the password, particularly if you're going to the bathhouse.

But no, because the bathhouse is not something you would need in a siege. So if you think about what's in the fort. But, you know, and the bathhouse is not, it's not a luxury. That is an essential. An essential. It is, you know, it's part of Roman life. Soldiers would be expecting that, you know, and we don't know. they go once a week, again, that sort of thing we don't know.

But it was seen as a real essential part of Roman life. You know, there's olive oil, there's wine, you know, and bats and bathing. And bathing isn't just going to get clean. It's a social occasion. You know, you go and you sit with your fellow soldiers and particularly the ones that we know about saying Rome. You know, that's where business deals are done, isn't it? And gossip is heard and things like that. It's where you vent as well, if need be.

You know, know, of your commander or something like that. Yes. He doesn't need to check he's not next door. I must also ask, though, about, because I found this very interesting, we've actually talked about one interesting example of this in the past. Crime and Punishment, let's say you went down to the local town and you, like, for a lot of drinks or whatever, you get into an argument, you've done badly at gambling or whatever,

and it's broken out into a brawl and maybe there's even been a murder or something like that. Do we know anything about that if things get a bit too out of hand? So there are sort of bits of evidence, not up on Hadeswell but elsewhere of sort of civilians complaining about soldiers' bad behaviour and trying to go to their, you know, their officers and saying, you know, Centurion so-and-so beat me, blah, blah, blah, you know, and the commanding officer would have to try and sort it out. But I don't think there's probably much redress.

If a soldier is not good towards a civilian, you're probably not got much of a chance. I imagine there's a lot of brawling. The famous one that, you know, we have at Housstead, so there's a tavern or what we've identified as a tavern, basically two doors down from the south gate of the fort, which when they excavated, those two bodies found buried under the floor. Now, it is illegal, or it was illegal, to bury somebody within the boundaries of a settlement. So immediately that's a bit suspicious. You know, they have to be outside of the boundaries of the settlement.

You know, they're underneath the floor. Also a bit weird. I mean, it's not like you've been, you know, buried your dog in the back garden or something. And then one of them had a dagger in the ribs. Oh, yeah, that's quite, yeah, that's quite a big signal. So it's, you know, what we cheekly call the murder house, you know, what's going on there? I mean, you know, thought even with the smells of sort of the ancient world, the smells of two bodies might have raised something. But no, we have no idea.

One's a man, one's a woman, we think, need to get sort of osteology to double check that nowadays. But, yeah, what's going on there? Who knows? I mean, you've got, say at House Steads, when it's fully garrisoned 800 men who are trained to fight, you know, haven't really got anywhere to go. There's going to be trouble, isn't it? though, I think. And yeah. And do we have any examples then, like of healthcare then, for instance, if you were living in a fort at that time, if there was, you know, someone got injured for one reason or another, was there the equivalent of a hospital they could go to? They could call

1X, 1X, 1X. Yeah. Yeah, so at house deads, we've got a building that we've been identified as a hospital. It's the only one along the wall. But each unit would have had a medicus and would have had orderlies. And we find medical equipment at all the sites, particularly we've got a lots of lovely ones at Corbridge, although some of them are a little bit gruesome when you start to think about it. They performed cataract operations. Oh, God, the Roman eye surgery stuff is horrific.

Yeah. You know, there's lots of probes and long things. And I think particularly men, there's quite a few related to, you know, those. But medicine is very bound up with what we would now see as magic and religion. And so there's Asclepius, you know, the god of healthcare and his serpent twisted around the staff. That's still, you know, a symbol of pharmacies. isn't it now?

And, you know, Amber and Jet and other sort of specific sort of minerals had these magical properties, maybe they were electrostatic and they were thought to do, you know, so you might. Or Wittsby Jet as well, so quite a local. Exactly the Jet. Yeah. You know, Jet is electrostatic, so it's thought to have medical properties. So you might go and see a doctor, but you might also make an offering to Sclipius. And you might also, Greek is often used in magical texts.

And so, you know, you make an incantation in Greek over something. I think the soldiers would have had fairly good medical care for the time. And the Romans understood the basic. You know, they understood that stagnant water wasn't good. So you need to keep your water moving and keep it fresh. They did understand about fresh air. Obviously, they didn't understand about germs, passing, and all their tanks aligned with lead.

There's lots of lead water pipes. Yes, yeah. Lead makeup as a woman. So for the time, the soldiers got poor access to fairly good medical care, but it's all still relative. Gosh, that's very interesting. Well, you mentioned religion there in passing. If you're one of these soldiers on these communities on the wall,

Were there any gods that you were more likely to pray to than others? Were there any particular gods that we know from archaeology were more popular than others for communities along the wall? Yeah, so it's a real mix of what we find. And there are deities that are only known about on Hedian's wall, not anywhere else. And one of them, for example, is the huiterers or the veterans, or there's many variations how you spell it. And they're a group of deities, a single deity,

a pair, we don't know, because there's never any real information about who they are, but we only really find on the wall. So we think they're a local deity that the soldiers have realized they have to keep happy. So kind of like Aquasulus with the Roman Barth's at Barth. Yeah, so we don't know, you know, what the Hoita is, the Veteras, variants of, what they did, but they were important. Obviously, Mars is fairly common. Yeah, God of War. But then there's also lots of other very specific local ones like Coventina, and then there's ones that they bring with them. So Mithras is an Eastern. Eastern God, sort of from Turkey.

His worship is spread through the soldiers and the army, and he's pretty popular up on the wall. And then we've got a really unusual god called Mars Thinkscus, a house stead, so Mars, the god of war, thinksus. So it's a hybridisation or syncretism of, you know, two cultures, but it's not of a local deity. It's not of a, you know, a deity from around housesteads.

The current thinking is it it's actually a German god. Is it here? Yeah, which means like sort of all, you know, because that's thing and, you know, and they've been merged together because we've got troops from what we would call Germany now, Gamania, what the Romans would call. And they've brought things.

Along the Rhine area, we think. Yes, yeah. And they've merged him with Mars because they're both sort of warrior gods. But we don't really understand quite who Mars thinks is and what they thought he was doing for them. We've also got the Alisaji and there again, a deity from Germania that's been brought over.

And so you can see kind of like we were talking about with cooking and with other sort of cultural things. These people are moving around. Maybe they were the first unit were recruited in, let's say, Tungria. They move up to Hedron's War. They keep some of the Tungary and things, but then they're also adopting stuff from the wider Roman pantheon, Mars, then they also take on what's happening where they are based

because it's important to keep the local gods happy because in Roman religion, the gods really had an impact on you. So if there's a god of that hill or that stream, you need to keep them on side, you know, as well as the gods you believe of them from back home, plus the gods that look after the army, you know. So it's really complicated, and it will have changed over time as then, I don't know, a unit came over and said, oh, have you heard about Mithras, blah, blah, blah, you know, and then Mithrasom comes in.

Do you think most soldiers in place like Chester's and other forts along Hadrian's Wall, do you think most of them would have joined a cult or two? So, cult is a very loaded word, and it's a modern word. and it's a modern word and a lot of Roman religion wouldn't have been sort of cultish and what's the word where you know you only worship that so we often talk about

Mithraism as being more like a cult however you could worship Mithras and still believe in other deities and still believe in them and that's why Mithras and all the gods were allowed to exist and continue as long as you did what you know worship the top Roman gods that the empire recognised but it's then

the reason why Judaism and Christianity were not accepted at the beginning because they're monotheistic. And so they're more, maybe, what the Romans might have thought of as a cult because they are exclusionist, aren't they? If you believe in Jesus and God for Christianity, you can't

them believe in any of the others, and the same with Judaism. And so all soldiers on the wall would have believed in deities, gods and goddesses, absolutely. Whether they were sort of members of specific groups of religion be different. So Mithrasim could only be a man. So you'd be allowed to worship him, but I couldn't. I suppose I could have worshipped him, but I wasn't allowed into that. And Mithraism

seems very specific in that you went together and you did stuff at the temple. I think a lot of other deities, you know, you could just believe in them and you didn't have to necessarily go to the temple and do specific activities. And we know quite a bit in some ways about what happens in a Mithrae temple. And it's more sort of, it's a set down sort of process, almost like a mass or a, you know, a sort of religious ceremony, whereas it's not the same for a lot of other deities. So I've danced around that question. No, no, no, it's a difficult question for me to ask. I think it's really interesting.

You know, what do we think of as a cult now? You know, you say cult now and that's such a negative connotation. And it's not always just religious, isn't it? It could be about the world ending or, you know, that you think, you know, the government's taking it down. And I think, yeah, it's meaning would have had something very different in the room period. But everybody believed that the deities had an impact on their life and that, you know, if you didn't keep them on side, they could screw you over. There we go.

So we've come with quite a lot, so we've already, haven't we, with their life, you know, life on Hadrian's Wall and how to survive. I guess we mentioned a bit about kind of traders as well, because there's that famous Palmyra and Baratis, is he a flag seller or a flag carrier? We don't know, do we? Yeah. But like you've got people from Syria there as traders not, you know, just coming back and forth kind of idea. Yeah, and some of them would have been local already. Some of them, you know, might have come up from York or other parts of Britain because then once Hayden's Wall's settled, that's a good market, isn't it? You know, some of them would have come from further afield. There's an amazing pair of altars, one in York and one in Bordeaux.

Amazing. That's set up by the same person, the trader, saying, he leaves York. He says, help me get to Bordeaux safely. He's obviously been in doing business. And when he gets to Bordeaux, he says, thanks, I got here safely. And, you know, that's not for them all. But that sort of thing is happening all the time. Traders are moving around because they're following the trade.

And you also think certain things, there wouldn't be a big enough market for someone to stay there all the time. So there'd be it itinerant traders as well, who are just visiting for a week. and then they go from Chester's, then they go to houses, then they go on, and then they do the circuit to come back. So interesting. So many other things we could talk about. I will last quickly about, well, we are recording this interview in December, when the days are very, very short, and it gets dark very, very quickly.

Do you have any idea how people living along Hadrian's ball would have thought about that? You know, the changing of the seasons, being somewhere so far away from their homelands, you know, so far north, where, you know, during this time of the year, you don't get much sunlight. I mean, actually, do we get that much less sunlight than Belgium and France? Okay, fair enough. Maybe I'm thinking of Syria. Yeah, so for places like that. But also, yeah, it would just be, there would be no accommodation, I don't think.

You'd be like, oh, it's dark. Oh, well, still going to stand on the wall. You know, you're still on guard duty, you know, wrap up. But it's really interesting. Yeah, how did they see to do things? Your working day is hugely restricted, isn't it? Because there is no natural light. to do things. And so you would have had to change how you work in that sense because you could

only do certain tasks in a certain time because a candle or a lamp is not going to bring you in a flight for certain tasks. And you know, you can imagine the Centurians or the Decurians, you know, who having to do all the admin, it would make things a lot harder. Yeah. Very much so. A couple more questions before we completely wrap up. We've talked a bit about the settlements nearby and I think I'm going to ask you a bit more about your particular work on Corbridge in our next bonus chat. in a bit and your work there so stay tuned for that but i would also like to ask about one thing i remember doing an interview with um duncan keenan jones recently about aqueducts and he actually mentioned

how there are a lot of aqueducts along hadrian's wall that begin north of hadrian's wall so can you paint us a bit of a picture of that like do we know much about the aqueducts and the running of water that way for forts along harian's wall what you would see so do you know we don't in terms of you know, how high they might have stood or, you know, we've got loads of bits and bobs of them, so particularly at Corbridge, which I know we've just said a whole talk about later. But, you know, we've got a public fountain at Corbidge. We're really impressive, well, we have the foundations of a really impressive aqueduct. All the stones been stolen, you know, by those medieval and later people.

But they'd only need to be that high and that big if you've got to keep the water out of the way of the people or you've got to come a real long distance. You have to start high, you know, sort of to get it down. So actually a lot of them would have been smaller. You'd only raise it up as much as you needed to get the angle going. I know Northumbria University we've been doing work on looking at aqueducts and pipes because they're amazing mathematicians, the angles of sort of movement of things there. So no, but, you know, they're north of the wall, which shows it's not just barbaricum, is it?

It's not, as in Georgia-R-R-Martin, it's not, you know, the white walkers north of there. The line of the wall was just the narrowest point that's where they set it. you know, it's not as stark as we, you know, jokingly often say to people. Did you think it would be, is it realistic actually to say that someone stationed at one of the forts, let's say they've got permission to leave the fort, maybe with their family and go somewhere, I'm not thinking of a buttlins or a holiday, but, you know, but to travel somewhere, that, you know, there was potential that they would travel north of the wall. They would visit somewhere north of the wall.

They wouldn't be scared out of their wits to go beyond this frontier. Oh, not at all. So there's outpost forts. So although the Antonine War's only occupied, you know, for 20 years, of 140s, for about 20 years, there's outpost forts that are occupied right through. So High Rochester, for example. And there's huge amounts of trade that must,

that we know is going on, you know, north of the war. Traprain Law, I'm sure you'll have done an episode on Traparene Law with Fraser from NMS. And, you know, they've got huge amounts of Roman stuff there where the Romans are paying, you know, the people's north of the border to keep on side. when it doesn't work, that's when September 7th comes up. But, yeah, it's not this wild, untamed landscape.

I'm sure people were going hunting and... Hunting, of course. Would have been north of the wall. And equally, on a much smaller scale, fairly recent excavations say at Benwell and at Bird Oswald, have found that the civilian settlement that we talked about being around the outside of the fall, you know, in the murder house at houses.

Some of their activities actually north of the wall. So even there's industry and other sort of occupation north of the wall, even just on that small scale, so I don't know, stretching 30, 40 feet, meters or something. So, you know, the line is what was drawn by surveyors as the simplest point to draw the line. It is not the end of the safe zone. It's not like we talk about escorts earlier

that every person who goes north of the wall to visit that industry has to be escorted by 10 soldiers to get there and back. Oh, no, that would be if you're, I mean, some of the escorts are probably within the empire. But if they're taking a pay chest or huge amounts of other supplies, you're going to be a target for anyone. You know, just because you're within the empire,

doesn't mean there are no brigands or, you know. No, completely. Francis, we've covered lots of different questions. I've got a couple just to finish off. At its height, the height of Hadrian's Wall, how many people do we think men, women and children? I know it must be so difficult to get an estimate, but do we think would have been living at settlements

all along Hadrian's Wall, to the forts and I guess the settlements that grow up around them? So I was having to think about this, and I was thinking, you know, because I'm not very good at maths on the fly, But so say there's 16, 17 forts, depends on, you know, which ones you count. And in each of those, there's 500 to 1,000 men depending on the unit. Each civilian settlement outside the fort could be the same as that.

So if you say 16 to 20,000, I don't think that's outlandish. You know, it's impossible to know how many people lived in all the buildings in the civilian settlements. Often the civilian settlements cover a bigger area than the forts, but they might not as be densely occupied because if you think about how many men, soldiers, crammed in barracks, but it's a huge number of people. Yeah, completely. You mentioned earlier how this is several centuries that the Romans are manning the walls and how it's like us going back to 1725, that 300 years ago.

How do we think everyday life changes as we get to the end of Roman Britain? And you get those frontier communities that have been living there for generations, quite frankly, by that point. So, you know, 410, that's our end date, isn't it? When the letter goes out for help and they say, no, you're on your own. Probably the changes had already begun because, as we talked about before, lots of troops have been withdrawn to other areas of the empire that were seen as more troublesome or more valuable to protect.

And the thing that changes is there's nobody higher up making the decisions. There's nobody saying, right, these soldiers are here and they've got this task to do and they're being paid. The vast majority of people who lived on Hedonsville in 409 are probably still there in 415, But by that point, they are already generations into living in that area, I imagine. And so they just have to manage themselves. And so, you know, Rob Collins, who I know who's talked on here before, you know, talks about sort of these, they're becoming little equivalents of warlords or little sort of community.

So the soldiers who are already based at Bird Oswald probably continue on doing a similar sort of thing, but there's no central control. There's no money coming in. They're not being paid. There's no one controlling trade and things like that. So they'll just manage themselves, but they will probably. probably doing quite a bit of that already. And it's just, it'll be a gradual change in terms of soot,

but also Tony, Wilmot, as, you know, excavated, what we think is this is a sort of long house. And that's not made of stone, presumably because they haven't got the manpower and the sort of the system behind them to go and quarry more stone. And they're also losing the skill of stone making, stone working because they're not using it. You know, it becomes more small scale.

Everything just becomes more small scale and you're not connected. So sort of levels of literacy seem to reduce. trading in money is less common. It goes back to more of a barter economy because you're working more locally. But that just shows, doesn't it, you know, how the everyday life of these people, even though those communities, those faults,

they endure past the end of Roman Britain, that it does very much change. And so we've largely focused on the beginning of the third century AD, you know, stressing once again how parts of daily life would have changed over those many different centuries. But still, it's a wonderful way

to explore the story of Hadrian's rule. We have done in the past, the story of the big monuments and the stone and what it's made up of. But to do this one where we've been able to explore different parts of actually someone stationed on the wall and learn more about the lives and what they would have experienced, it gives you a much more human experience of what is one of the most famous, one of the most recognizable ancient landmarks in Britain. I think, so I think, you know, a lot of the soldiers, a lot of the time on Hagen's War

are just doing the same thing every day. It's kind of boring. You're on guard duty this week. Next week you're on escort duty, you know, the week after you're on. You've got to do this. But there's peaks of activity, I imagine. But it's just a fairly ordinary life. An ordinary life indeed.

Francis, this has been absolutely fascinating. It just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. You're very welcome. Well, there you go. There was Dr Francis McIntosh talking you through a day in the life of someone on Hatred's Wall, daily life, how to survive on this northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. I absolutely loved recording it. It was lovely to meet Francis again in person. It had been a few years. But yes, it was wonderful together back on the show. And if you'd like to hear more about Hadrian's Wall, and in particular on Corbridge with Francis, where we have our special bonus episode with Francis being released right after this one for our subscribers.

So make sure you become part of the ancients team. If you subscribe, you can also listen to that bonus episode too. Thank you once again for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. that really helps us and you'll also be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Now, don't forget, you can also sign out to History Hit

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