The Ancients - Roman Camps in Britain

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

When one mentions Roman military installations you would be forgiven for instantly thinking of their forts, the remains of which we can see today dotted around the country. From the Kent coast to central Scotland. But what about their camps, these often-temporary structures that formed a keystone of Roman military activity. Roman camps have now been discovered across the former empire, but Britain boasts a wealth of them. To discuss the different types of camps and how we can tell them apart, Tristan spoke to Dr Rebecca Jones from Historic Environment Scotland. Rebecca explains why Scotland in particular is the best place to study marching camps, and why there is such a concentration of them on the Roman Empire’s northernmost frontier. Rebecca is the author of ‘Roman Camps in Britain’.

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where we are talking all about Roman camps in Britain. Not forts, not fortlets. There's a difference. But camps. These often temporary constructions built for a variety of functions, some serving as marching camps, others as practice camps, others as siege camps and some even as construction camps. To talk through what we know about these often elusive structures in Britain and why there is such a rich concentration of them in particular in what is modern day Scotland, I was delighted to get on the show

Dr Rebecca Jones from Historic Environment Scotland. Rebecca is a leading expert on Roman camps across the Roman Empire, but particularly in Britain. It was a pleasure to get her on the show and without further ado, here's Rebecca. camps in Britain. I mean, Rebecca, who would have thought that Britain, particularly Scotland, would be one of the best places in the world to find out more about these pivotal constructions of the Roman military? Yes, we're very fortunate that not only do we actually have a very good survival of the remains, but actually there's been a lot of interest in them. I think some of the sort of pioneering work on understanding what these things are was done over 200 years ago by some of the military people that did sort of some of the early surveying and mapping in Scotland. So as a result, they started recording them. So we've got a really long tradition of recording. And although there

are other parts of the Roman Empire, particularly on the frontiers, that have been playing huge catch-up jobs in the last sort of 20, 30 years and having some very exciting programmes of work. We're lucky that we've just got this huge wealth of evidence that's been gathered over two, 300 years. Well, we'll definitely delve into examples of that evidence during this podcast. But first of all, let's get the background sorted and no such thing as a silly question. Rebecca, first things first, what is a Roman camp? Well, the main thing to highlight is that it's not a fort, because although people sometimes use words in different ways, in essence, when we categorise things, because we do tend to categorise things in the past, a Roman fort is

something that's built and intended to last. It's a permanent base. It's built of timber or stone. It's got proper buildings inside it. Whereas what we would call a camp is a temporary structure. And it's something that the soldiers stayed in for a few nights, a few weeks at most, while they're traveling through a landscape. So you particularly get them in the sort of various conquest phases around the empire. But you also then get other ones that survive as a result of training exercises. And these could be training exercises, they could be manoeuvres that are just about training the soldiers, or about learning how to build camps, or actually some of them could be policing activities in an area that's already conquered, but perhaps isn't that secure.

Because these are only meant to be temporary structures, does it mean as an archaeologist trying to locate these camps in the landscape, are they quite difficult to find? Yes, they are. And one of the things we do find from them is the ditch, the rampart in the ditch. And although some of the classical authors suggest that they sort of destroyed a camp when they left it. We've got enough surviving to know that that didn't routinely happen all the time. And that was more on a case by case basis, depending on where they were. But in essence, if you're an army going into new territory, and you're wanting to protect your troops, you would lay out and there'd be certain

places where the tents would go, where everybody would camp, where you'd put the equipment and the baggage train and the things you've got with you. But actually, you would have that defensive perimeter. And again, some of the classical authors refer to palisades and perhaps using the stakes that the Roman army carried with them to actually demarcate a perimeter of the site. Now, if all you've done is demarcate it in a temporary manner and then take it away again, that's not really going to leave very much of a trace. But if you've actually constructed a rampart and dug a ditch, then you've got something that will leave a trace over hundreds of years later. But even then, some of these sites are huge. And if we find a stretch of ditch, you won't necessarily know until you excavate it whether it's got the classic

profile that makes you think, oh, I think this could be Roman. But you also then need other features. So the type of corners that they built and different types of gates that actually helps archaeologists to actually be confident that we're interpreting something correctly and that it is a camp. Because as you say, if it's only occupied for a short period of time, there's not exactly a lot of material culture and evidence left behind for us to find. And we're definitely going to get onto those gates in due course. But it does sound like when locating these temporary structures, it sounds like aerial photography, whether it's drones or cameras or whatever, must be absolutely crucial crucial beneficial to finding them yes it has been and in fact by far the majority of them it's something like 80 or more of the ones in certainly in northern britain and in scotland that have been found through aerial survey and that's usually

the crop mark demarcating although some of them are so huge that actually you find that there's a short stretch still surviving in woodland but it's not been interpreted as Roman until you actually see the rest of it in the crop mark that makes you realize oh that funny little earthwork in that bit of wood is actually part of the defenses of a Roman camp. As I said we will definitely get onto that in a bit. I'd like to quickly ask though though, first of all, about ancient literary sources, because, Rebecca, do we have fragments? Do we have information about the layout of these camps from ancient texts? We do. We've got the Greek writer Polybius, and some of his stuff is referring to particularly at times of the Roman Republic and the way that the forces were marching

at that stage and how they laid out their camp. We've got another one that's in the late first, early second century AD, so in the time of the Roman Empire, whose name is a bit disputed. He's generally referred to as Hyginus, but you'll see him referred to as Pseudo-Hygienus because we're not entirely sure. And he's done quite a detailed description. And that's really one of the most classic ones we use. But you do get lots of other bits and pieces of reference in literature. And so, for example, the Jewish writer, Josephus, who was writing about the Jewish wars of the Romans in the first century, he starts talking about what the army was doing, what it was like and building the camps and referring to a camp as a walled city that they carried about with them. So we have things like that. And then later

Roman Empire, in a sort of roundabout the fourth century, you've got a writer called Vegetius who wrote in effect a military manual. So we have this sort of piecemeal range of sources, but actually quite a bit. And then alongside the written sources, we have things like Trajan's Column in Rome, which has these wonderful sort of graphic illustration. It's not a cartouche. I'm trying to think the right word for it. But you've got this wonderful sort of sculpture relief that goes up the column, which is actually in essence about Trajan's campaigns in Dacia, in modern day Romania. And there are illustrations of camps on that column. So we've actually got some form of graphic illustration of what these things look like as well, even though it's very stylised. Brilliant, a wealth of literary and

epigraphic material right there. And these camps, various types of camps, but let's focus in on, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, the main type of camp that we've got in Britain, these marching camps. Rebecca, first of all, what was the purpose? What was the function of a Roman marching camp? It was to provide an overnight base. And when I say overnight, it's probably several nights, but a base for the army when they're on the march. So that's why they're called marching camps. So you've got, as the Roman forces are moving through a landscape, for some reason or other, usually some form of conquest or policing areas, they built a defensive perimeter around them. Now we do get

some areas where we get stronger defensive perimeters than others. And in other areas, it may be that they just had a rampart, and that's since gone. But in essence, you've got troops moving through the landscape. They would have laid out their internal camp in a quite similar manner to the way a Roman fort's laid out, with sort of the headquarters and the administration in the centre, and then tents all around the bulk of the camp,

which would have contained the soldiers, similar to the barrack blocks you get in a fort. And then this defensive perimeter around them. But this is transient. They had leather tents, and they're travelling through the landscape. And we do have fragments of leather tents surviving from some sites as well.

One of the best places to actually see fragments of tents is at Vindolanda, because obviously they've got such good preservation of leather there. Is this something that we need to try and envisage in our minds Rebecca the interior of one of these marching camps you know not pristine beautiful open green spaces that we might think nowadays when we see the outlines of them in the crop marks or wherever but a busy bustling place soldiers everywhere tents everywhere lots of noise and lots of smells definitely lots of noise and lots of smells and actually when there have been some excavations on the interior of these sites because obviously there's been bits

pieces of excavations around the perimeter not least to confirm that this ditch that we're seeing is definitely roman but on the interiors we get evidence of different types of ovens for when they're actually obviously baking their bread and actually their foodstuffs and cooking food. And then also we get some refuse pits and some of which would have been toilet pits as well. And I think we've also got to imagine, obviously, when we conjure up images of the Roman army, quite often they're all pristine, whereas you've actually got to imagine campaigning through Scotland, even in the summer months, could be quite muddy. And you've got to conjure up this image of smells and noise. And as you say, and you also, and again, this is back to the classical authors, we know that there were soldiers stationed around the perimeter, manning

the site at all times. So even the tents weren't all fully occupied because you always had a certain number of troops on duty at different times of day and night so in terms of that defensive thing so yes it's a busy bustling place so even at night time when it's quiet you've got soldiers guarding the perimeter as well and these soldiers guarding the perimeter i mean what's all the hype surrounding the gates of these marching camps, Rebecca? I mean, the gates always seem to come up. I've done some research looking at some of your lectures and always talk about the gates. What is it about the gates which is so extraordinary?

Well, if you think about it, if you've tried to defensively protect your camp, then one of your weak points is the entrance. the entrance. So what the Romans did is they quite often constructed obstacles and different things at the entrance to a camp, which made it difficult to charge. So obviously you've got an opening, you've got an opening in the rampart and in the ditch, you've got this sort of gap. What they did quite regularly is put an extra short stretch of rampart and ditch some distance outside, maybe eight to 10 meters outside, which means that if you were trying to charge the camp, you couldn't charge it head on. You had to come around the side. And so these tend to be called traverse gates or titulus and tituli gates. And that's by far the most common type that you get. I mean, we also have a lot where there's just a gap only. so we don't know,

but it's quite possible they had just a rampart, or they may have had some temporary structure, again, sort of protecting the gate, almost something that you might need to move that may have been aspects of wood being lashed together or something that provided this temporary defensive feature. But we also get, particularly in the later part of the Republic and in the early part of the Empire, these particular curved gateways, which are known as claviculi. And they have a curved rampart, sometimes accompanied by a ditch, sometimes not. So we can't always detect them if the site's been ploughed out. But where the site survived as an earthwork, we get good examples, particularly of internal clavicular. What those serve to do is, you know, in terms of defence, if you've got soldiers or you've got somebody trying to invade and come into your camp, it immediately forces them to turn and enter it at a slight angle, in effect, exposing their weaker side. So on the assumption that most soldiers are, or most forces carry their weapons in their right hand, and we do have evidence for left-handed gladiators and things, for example, but in essence, on the assumption that most of it's right hand, you're actually forced to come

in in such a way. If you've got your shield in your left hand, but your right side is exposed because you've had to turn left to come into the camp. So they're quite clever in that way with regards to actually having this additional form of defense that just makes it harder to invade and come into the camp. And then in some other ones, there are some other bits and pieces which are around having additional stretches of rampart and ditch and things to help protect them. having additional stretches of rampart and ditch and things to help protect them. We have one peculiar series, which you may have heard me speak on, which is known as the Strecathro gated camps, which only occur in Scotland and were first recorded in the 20th century at a place called Strecathro in Angus. And they've got sort of one of these sort of curvy claviculas, but they've also got an extra stretch of ditch running at an angle on the outside.

So, again, it's this extra level of protection. And we've only got a dozen or so of these things and they're all in Scotland. So it's almost like we've potentially got a particular camp prefect, the person responsible for laying out the defence. This is his gate type and this is what he does. So it's almost like we can potentially see one or two specific regiments or particular camp commanders that are actually using this. And although you do get claviculi across the empire, this particular type with this oblique traverse alongside this oblique set of ditch coming out from the ditch of the camp alongside this curved stretch of bank and ditch are peculiar to Scotland. I mean, I'm glad you mentioned Scotland right there, Rebecca, because it begs the question,

why out of all places in the Roman Empire do we have such a rich amount, rich concentration of marching camps in Scotland? I think it's to do with a lot of effort, a lot of attempts at conquest, and not a lot of actual success in terms of permanent occupation. If you think that for the Romans, conquering the whole of Britain always made more sense than building a wall across the middle of it somewhere and manning that wall with huge numbers of personnel. Britain always had a large military presence in a way that, for example, the Iberian Peninsula, which took quite a long time to conquer, after it was conquered, they left a single legion at Leon in northwestern Spain, whereas Britain always had three to four

legions in it and obviously a whole raft of auxiliary troops as well so it was always very resource hungry from a Roman perspective and so I think conquering the whole of the island would have made sense and they had multiple attempts and again back to the literature we've got these references in the first century to the Flavian campaigns and we've got quite a lot of rich archaeological evidence. We've got an alleged battle that was fought in the early to mid 80s at Mons Graupius, which we've never located, even though there are lots of lovely ideas for where it might be.

And that, in theory, saw Britain conquered, is what the classical authors tell us. But then it was immediately thrown away because they actually pulled back. They needed soldiers on the Danube. And so as a result, there's a pulling back. And that line then gets fossilized as the line that then became Hadrian's Wall. But then Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, then comes back into Scotland. So, again, there's more marching camps from that period and the Antonine Wall. and then the holding of Scotland for roughly 20 years at that point,

or holding of southern Scotland with this line across, sort of this Edinburgh to Glasgow line between the rivers Forth and Clyde. And then you've got a retreat back. We know in the early 3rd century, you've got Septimius Severus coming up again. We've got literary references. We've got some archaeological evidence for his campaigns and those of his sons and are pulling back. But then after that, we've got these little bits of information that refer to trouble with the Picts or, you know, fighting up north. And so there's suggestions of further bits and pieces, but potentially these are single season campaigns.

And because, as I said, quite a lot of these sites are quite difficult in terms of dating, because if you've got a ditch, you might be confident saying it's Roman, but which period of Roman might be a bit more challenging. So we've got this ebbing and flowing of Roman conquest. And when you get that, it leaves quite a big footprint. And the Romans kept coming back to the same points a lot of the time. They used the itineraries they'd written and they needed water for supplying the soldiers and the animals that came with them on the march. Not that actually finding a stream or a river is too tricky in most parts of Northern Britain,

but you've got them coming up and doing that and building these sites and then coming back to the same site. So as a result, you get sites that are reused, that you get overlapping. So in some areas, you might be able to look and you say, actually, I can see 10 different camps here. All on these overlapping at different angles with different gateways. So you can start to think about periods.

If we've excavated between them, we can start to think about phasing. So it is this constant conquest going on. But actually, if it was fully occupied, then once it was conquered, you don't need that, which is why, as I say, in some parts of the world where you have got evidence for a lot of conquest, they're starting to find quite a lot of camps as well. So we know they're there if you look for them. But I think because, in effect, north of Hadrian's Wall, we've got repeated campaigns. That's why we've just got so much. Well, let's do a case study now of what you've just highlighted there, because let's focus on one area that I know both of us have done some work on recently near Perth, near Stirling.

And that is the area of Ardoch, because it seems like a perfect example of what you were saying there, of where we seem to see multiple different marching camps possibly dating to different periods as well. Yes we've got overlapping camps we've got camps which look like they've got more than one phase or annexes attached to them one of the camps there looks like it's possibly got a reduced phase there's a sort of a line down the middle of it there's a lot of overlapping going on. And the overlapping helps us to start thinking about sequences, because actually, if you've been in an area, quite often the ground, you wouldn't necessarily want to come back to it again in a hurry, because you have had toilets, ovens, rubbish pits, everything else there. So actually, there's quite often there might be a time lag. And because we've got potentially quite big time lags between some of these, and in the case of our dock, we've got

bits and pieces survivors earthworks. There's a fantastic stretch at Blackhill Wood at Perthshire, where you've actually got bits of two of the large ones surviving. But some of these are absolutely huge. And you've then got earthworks that sit across other earthworks. So you can sit there and see the phasing and say, right, well, for example, one of them, there's a stretch of rampart that sits across a watchtower, which we're fairly confident has been dated to the first century and date. significantly later. That's not a first century camp. One of them also sits over the annex to the fort. And as the fort was occupied in the first century and the second century, at the very earliest, that big camp is late second century and quite possibly third century. So we think that one, for example, that really large camp is associated with the campaigns of Septimius Severus. And that's part of some of the largest camps that you get in Scotland. And if you think an emperor would have been traveling

with an awfully huge entourage, his praetorian guard, everything he needed to run the empire from what is now a series of fields somewhere in Scotland, you know, that does actually make you realize that that's one very good explanation for these really, really large camps that we get. And Ardagh, yes, has quite a number of camps overlapping each other, just immediately to the north of the fort. So it's quite likely that one of the features there may well have been before the fort was built, when they were doing a reconnaissance of the ground, or alternatively, that might be under where the fort is now. That's feasible that they started off there and said,

actually, this is the best place for a fort. But they kept coming back to that location. And there were probably times when the army was marching through where there was a regiment stationed in the fort and there would have been a large army outside in these camps as well. So there would have been contemporaneity between some of them, but there are other times they would have come back to use the landscape when the fort had been abandoned. And Rebecca, when trying to date these marching camps, is there a certain method that you

use? Say, oh, X marching camp is X big, so it's probably Flavian, or it's Y big, so it's probably Antonine or Severan, or it's got this type of gateway that we think belongs to X or Y or Z. What things go through your mind when looking at a camp and trying to figure out when it possibly dates to? Well we've got obviously different ways of dating they're sequencing so if you've managed to excavate and you can say well this camp is earlier than this one or if you've actually got an upstanding material you can see in the landscape that one of them clearly cuts through another one so therefore it's a later date. We've had some excavations and some of these have given us dates whether it's the finds which are relatively few and far between but they may be datable

for some reason and some of them have produced, coins are quite rare, but bits of pottery. One camp has produced a fragment of glass, which is very unusual. I'm presuming it's from some kind of drinking vessel or something. But you have got these tangible small pieces of dating evidence. The ovens, some of them have been radiocarbon dated. And so we've then got actually quite good dating that makes us say, okay, well, we're confident that that's first century. And because some of the camps morphologically, they look the same, you could sort of draw a whole bunch of them out and stick them on top of each other. And they would look very, very similar, same number of gateways, same type of gateway, same approximate shape, certainly same size. And some of the ones that are the same size are roughly 20 to 30 miles apart, which is a feasible day's march.

So once you start sort of saying that, well, actually, we might have a sequence of six camps, for example, that are all appear to be about a day's march apart that look the same. If you manage to date one of them through excavation or sequencing or something like that, or sometimes through association, which is sort of the hardest way to date things because that is plucking it slightly from the air. But if you manage to date one, then you can be relatively confident that you can date that sequence. And so you do get the opportunity to actually suggest dates for these things. Having said that, we've got huge numbers that are completely undated, but we have got some. So if you've got a particular routeway or particular set of roads, for example, that's Antonine in date, and you've got camps following those roads, some of those camps may well be second century in date, although of course that routeway may have been used in the first century. So again, it's how we then go, what's association and what can we definitely tangibly say? So it's not an exact science, I think it's fair to say, but obviously in some areas,

you have got tangible dating evidence and we use that where we can. We'll be right back. program. They've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Hello. If you're enjoying this podcast, then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the history hit warfare podcast. From the polionic battles and Cold War confrontations to the Normandy landings and 9-11, we reveal new perspectives on how war has shaped and changed our modern world. I'm your host, James Rogers, and each week, twice a week, I team up with fellow historians, military veterans, journalists and experts from around the world to bring you inspiring leaders.

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some of the largest marching camps in the whole of the Roman world. Yes, we've got a set of four huge camps just off the A68 Deer Street in the Scottish Borders, one of which at the site of Newstead, and there's another one, so they dock just south of Edinburgh. And they're 165 to 170 acres in size, so that's sort of 67 to 70 hectares, depending on how you want to characterise that. So these are vast and they are slightly irregular in shape because, as you can imagine, you can't just plonk because most Roman sites are sort of square or rectangular. And these are sort of slightly off-shape rectangles, most of them. They've got six entrances because they're so huge. They've got two entrances in the sides and

one entrance in each of the ends normally just protected by titularly on that particular instance but again you can see the movement of a large army and again not dated but the one at newstead that sits across the southern annex to the fort and is thought to be later than the southern annex the fort so again we're sitting there saying that's one of the latest things on site. So actually suggesting that it's these early third century campaigns makes sense. And then elsewhere in Scotland, they seem to reduce in size slightly. So it's possible that the army has split.

There may have been people left in certain bases. And you've then got a series that runs up sort of north of the Forth, up towards sort of Montrose Basin, Kincardineshire, heading towards Aberdeen, that are 130 acres in size. So they're a little bit smaller. Also, again, one of them's at Ardoch, the latest thing on site there. So again, saying that we think these are Severan is the most likely context for those camps. And you mentioned, obviously, about being some of the largest in the Roman world. We were very proud of the fact they were the largest anywhere in the Roman world until a few years ago when an academic who's been doing a lot of work at Dura Europos in Syria,

because of obviously it's not possible to actually continue working in Syria anymore, Syria, because obviously it's not possible to actually continue working in Syria anymore, started looking at satellite and aerial imagery and started recognising outside on the plain beyond these huge, huge camps. And these are even bigger than ours, I'm sad to say. And although there's some debate as to whether they're Roman or actually indeed later, if you think that that's a part of the world where you've got a very good, strong tradition of archery, one of the suggestions is that actually you need the perimeter of your camp quite a long way from where you've stationed your troops because of archers and arrows being able to travel quite a decent distance. being able to travel quite a decent distance. So the armies may themselves not have been necessarily have been bigger than the ones we see up here, but the camps appear to be bigger.

So I always say that we've got the largest ones in Europe now. That's still definitely something to be proud about. I mean, quick tangent before we go on to the next one, which is practice camps I've got on my list. Maybe quite a nerdy one for myself, but I put lots of hours into a video game called Rome 2 Total War when I was growing up. And Rebecca, one of the interesting things here when you were talking about gates, when you're talking about tituli or titulus, is it tituli or titulus, Rebecca? Tituli is the plural of titulus. Although some people refer to it as titulum, but that's a whole different debate amongst Latin scholars. Brilliant. Yes, exactly. Let's not go into that one today. So i'm going to say titularly but it's really interesting when you used to play that game if you were in a fortified

position the camp or the force it was a timber palisade or whatever anyone else who played this game will know what i'm talking about but you will have that layout of the camp that isolated piece of wall as it were further out from the main surrounding defence of the camp. So it's quite interesting when looking at the aerial photography, when looking at the crop marks, where you can identify gate markers like that in the actual archaeology. And then you can actually see how that's been reconstructed in a video game in the 21st century. It's a tangent by myself right now, but I think that's really interesting. Yeah, absolutely. And it just goes to show the scale of interest, but also how if you're dealing with warfare that's non-artillery

based warfare you know that's actually based with swords, slings, archery and that side of things then actually you've got to have your defence for that. You're not defending against cannons and guns it's defence for the purpose and for the time. Exactly defence for the purpose and for the time. Exactly, defence for the purpose and for the time. Now moving on to the next type of camp, the practice camps. We've just talked about some of the largest camps, if not the largest camps in Europe. But when we go down to practice camps, Rebecca, this feels that sometimes we go to the complete opposite end of the scale in Britain. We have some of the smallest. We do. And in fact, actually, some of the best examples are in parts of Wales, particularly in parts of Snowdonia

and sort of places like Gelligar Common in South Wales, where you've got clusters of tiny camps. And one of the camps in Snowdonia has actually got these internal clavicular gateways coming in. And it's got four of them and they come in so far that you wouldn't be able to pitch a tent inside it so it's clearly that that camp has never been used for accommodation in any way shape or form and they are building they're concentrating and the bits they're concentrating on is they're learning how to build corners and they're learning how to build gates because one assumes that building a relatively

straight stretch of rampart and ditch is the easy bit and so you only need something that's relatively small because you need to build corners and you need to build gates and we get little clusters of them and they're still surviving as earthworks in quite a few places obviously some are known as crop marks but quite a few are surviving as earthworks in quite a few places. Obviously, some are known as crop marks, but quite a few are surviving as earthworks. And they are these tiny camps. They're normally a short distance, a shortish march from an auxiliary fort. So we have speculated in the past that perhaps this is the training of new recruits and auxiliary regiments. And quite a few of these were relatively new auxiliary forts in the sort of latter part of the first century AD so you can almost envisage parts of Wales as being sort of the Salisbury

plain training area of Britain with all these sort of clusters of practice camps there are other types of practice camps that are a little bit bigger than are known around the legionary fortresses particularly at Chester and York they are bigger bigger, but again, they sort of cluster around. They're all a similar size, although they're not these tiny ones. And it's possible that, again, these are training. These are legionary training. They may well have used them for overnight stays,

but that's possibly more training in terms of maneuvers. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts in terms of maneuvers. workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. So it's a different form of training than what you seem to get in parts of upland Wales, or certainly what survived. They're probably known elsewhere, we just haven't found them. I mean, Rebecca, it might be a difficult question, but do we know, do we have any idea why North Wales could have been this Salisbury plain equivalent of ancient Roman times? I mean, if I've got my memory right, in the first century AD, this was home to some of the most

ferocious anti-Roman people on this island. Yes. And I think one of the reasons we've sort of partly speculated that and around the dating, again, and I think one of the reasons we've sort of partly speculated that and around the dating, again, partly because of dating of gate types, is because there's almost this show of force. This is relatively newly conquered. Wales took quite a long time to conquer. And so you've got the Roman army freshly conquered, potentially with some relatively fresh recruits, probably from the content, perhaps from the sort of lower Rhine, the Netherlands, Germany area, and they are being brought there and trained. And what better way to do a show of force than actually have your soldiers being very visible in the landscape. So that may be a component part of that, that it's a quite a

heavily military occupied part of the country because as you say there was a lot of resistance it took a long time so there's that dimension to that with regards to show of force training of recruits and actually we need a strong presence in the landscape here so we're going to keep these bases here and that potentially makes them good bases for training. Well, let's move on to the next type of camp and that is the siege camp, Rebecca. Very, very well known, very popular on the continent. Yes, we've got lots of examples. And of course, again, a lot of that's tied in with literary references in quite a few places as well. And some of the more famous examples being places like Umanitia in Spain,

where you've got the Iron Age fort on the top, and then you've got, in effect, an encirclement of camps around it. One of the other really famous ones is Masada in Israel, and then neighboring site of Machairas in Jordan, which are around sort of aspects of the Jewish revolt. Some of these siege camps are associated, are accompanied by sort of circumvallation. So there is this starving out. One of the other famous examples is Julius Caesar's work at Alesia as well, where we've got a lot of literary reference for that. And you've got this building of this fortified sort of circumvallation to try and in effect starve out the Iron Age community that's living on the hill. But in other types, depending on what the terrain was, they used siege camps in different ways.

So the use of two camps on either side of a hill in what's referred to as a pincer movement is something you get in quite a few places as well. And there is a speculated site on the Welsh-English border that's generally been discounted as the site of the Siege of Caractacus, that particular one. But there's also the site of Burns Walk in southwest Scotland, which has camps on either side. So it fits with this pair of camps. There used to be speculation about circumvallation, but I think it's generally felt that actually we've got a series of medieval and later trackways, which people's eyes have been drawn to, but we don't think that's Roman. But we do have these two Roman camps there. And that has been the subject of a huge amount of

debate as to whether it's a genuine siege, whether it's actually a practice siege again back to this show of force wanting to be visible in newly conquered territory and there's still a huge amount of debate there's people who feel very strongly on both sides but as a result it's been the subject of some recent research and what they have got is lots of ballista bolts now recorded showing that there's a huge amount of slingshots and things going up onto the hill and not being picked up afterwards. Now, whether or not the Romans should have gone up and picked up their stuff afterwards, if it was a practice siege as opposed to a genuine siege, is still something that's debated. And to the extent of how big the community was on the fort at the time,

again, it is still debated. But at the the end of the day we have a strong contender for a siege works at burns walk in southwest scotland burns walk rebecca that name as you say so much debate still surrounding it but whenever we talk about roman siege camps in britain that name inevitably comes up it's always right at the center because as you say it's such an extraordinary site but also the mystery surrounding it seems to always just keep it right at the forefronts of people's minds when you think about Roman camps in Britain. Yes. And I think also because the earthworks weren't really properly understood until probably within the last 20 years, because as I say, there was a suggestion of this circumvallation,

which, as I say, we no longer think that those features are Roman in date. There was also a suggestion that actually one of the two camps sits on top of a Roman fortlet. But that's been reinterpreted as potentially an earlier Iron Age structure that had fallen out of use. So that then allows opportunities to re-evaluate the dating. that then allows opportunities to re-evaluate the dating and as I say the recent work that's happened has suggested that actually the usage of that site is early in the Antonine conquest of Scotland so there's a suggestion that actually when they first decide to move north from Hadrian's Wall and come into Scotland it's almost the first site you come to after you cross Hadrian's Wall and certainly the top of the

hill of Burns Walk Hill is visible for most of the western stretch of Hadrian's Wall. So it's a very visible mark in the landscape. And so there's this suggestion that they've come up there with this really dramatic tactic of firing huge amounts of ballista bolts up to what was possibly quite a small community on the top of a hill. So it may have been a show of force that massively was totally unwarranted and was beyond what would have actually been required. So if you go with the siege theory, then it's possible that they've done this big show of force, but possibly didn't quite need to go as all out as they did. But as I say, this dating to the early Antonine period does seem to be the strongest

dating at the moment. So yes, it's a very topical site. And because the research is all very recent, it's all very current. And it's the topic of quite a lot of hot debate in Roman circles at the moment. Absolutely. I'm going to put my two pence out there and say maybe it was the home of the people who the Romans considered people who were raiding perhaps that area around Hadrian's Wall and they wanted to vent their anger out. And then when they did head back north. As you say, the debate continues. I'm not going to dip my toes, my feet into that too deeply. But moving on then to the fourth and final type of camp, Rebecca, the construction camps. What are these? They're ones that would generally have housed the soldiers who were building something.

So it's for the construction workers, as it were. And again, there's probably more of them than we recognise or interpret as such. But we have got a few places, and the best example actually being on the Antonine Wall, where we've got a set of camps with a relative evenness of distribution, where we found that there are some gaps, similar sizes at key points on the wall that would have been a perfect location to house soldiers. And a couple of them have produced dating evidence and they've produced dating evidence to that early part of the Antonine occupation. So the idea that they're contemporary with the construction of the Antonine Wall is a strong hypothesis to pursue. And because there's a similarity, we've got about three or

four of them, which are a bit bigger. And they are in sites that are key points in the landscape when you're actually thinking about how to lay out the wall. So it's possible we've got these sort of three or four larger ones that were involved when they were first laying out where the wall was going to sit. So a couple of them are next to some of the really early forts that were built on the wall, because a couple of the forts on the wall have got aspects of stone in their construction, which most of the other forts don't, which again, that's an early phase before they realised that actually constructing the entire wall of stone was not a viable proposition in that part of Scotland. So we've got these larger ones and then we've got, they're almost in pairs as you go along.

Now, whether or not you've then got one housing the troops involved in the rampart, another at the ditch, or whether actually they're going off in different directions and they're building out, we're not entirely sure. But we can also pair some of them up with this wonderful set of distant stones that we've got from the war, which basically say this legion built a certain amount of miles or paces or whatever of the war. So we're quite confident, as I say, because a couple of them have produced this early Antonine dating, that we have a sequence of construction camps. And in one or two other places where you've got a camp immediately outside a fort, it may be that one or two of those are actually construction camps. And in one or two other places where you've got a camp immediately outside a fort, it may be that one or two of those are actually construction camps. And one or two forts, when they've been excavated, have produced evidence for possibly something underneath.

And again, it's possible that the construction workers for that fort were actually housed within the fort whilst they were building it in temporary accommodation. And then also the building of Roman roads as well is something else. Interestingly, we can't say the same about Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian's Wall has got a huge array of camps along its length, but it doesn't have this grouping and consistency that the Antonine Wall has. Again, partly because Hadrian's Wall was occupied for so much longer, whereas the Antonine Wall has again partly because Hadrian's Wall was occupied for so much longer whereas the Antonine Wall just does really have an up to 20 year life cycle but that does give us this sort of microcosm and we're quite confident and again parts on the continent there have been a few sites in Germany where people have suggested what they've actually got is construction camps for major frontier works. I mean, Rebecca, we've talked about Scotland,

we've talked about Northern England, and we've talked about Wales. It's quite striking that Southern England, South East England, Southern England, it doesn't really get as much of a mention with marching camps. Why is that? I think it's twofold. Firstly, I mean, we think that parts of Southern England were conquered relatively quickly. If you think we've got some quite early dating from some of the sites as far north as sort of Oxfordshire, suggesting that after the invasion of 43 AD, there was quite a rapid progress through parts of the countryside. But also, we've got reference in a book called Germania about some of the campaigns in Germany, where they refer to the use of palisades, ditches on some sides, but palisades

on the other. So if you've only used a palisade, if you haven't constructed a ditch, you know, and obviously in parts of southern England, you've seen large agricultural improvements in a lot of areas. So actually, if there was something that was perhaps surviving as a slight subtle earthwork above ground earthwork, if it wasn't accompanied by a ditch, certain types of ploughing would have actually taken that away. So unless you've got a level of depth and potentially some ovens or something like that, if you've just got a single linear crop mark, unless you dig that linear crop mark, you're not going to sit there and say, well, that's clearly Roman. And if they haven't needed to have corners or fancy gates, then you wouldn't necessarily

interpret it as such. So it's not to say that you haven't got the soldiers moving through the landscape, but I think you haven't necessarily got quite the same form of defence utilised that's leaving a trace that we can detect now. wrap up in regards to these marching camps do we have any ideas of any camps which let's say the romans they lay down a marching camp with an intention to go further north somewhere but then they find out that actually let's create something more permanent on top of this temporary feature rebecca do we know of any places where a marching camp transforms into an actual roman fort i think there may have been some where you've got some on top. Actually, it's the examples I can think of are more likely to have a fortlet inside them rather than a fort. But it's more common that actually they're just next to it. And you wonder if actually when they're building the marching camps, they're potentially sort of recognising that bit there is perfect for a fort. So that's not necessarily where they put their camp but

there's not to say that that didn't happen on occasion and so some of them may well have done or there's an overlapping certainly I think there were excavations at Maryport on the west end of Hadrian's Wall a few years ago where just outside the fort a ditch was uncovered with first century sort of 70s AD material coming from it. So the most likely explanation for that is that's a camp. It's not necessarily in the best spot. The fort's in the best spot. So did they actually look at where the fort is and say, that's the best place for a fort? We'll go here. Did they actually have their mind on fort locations as they built? Possibly. We don't know. But also, if you have soiled the ground in effect the last thing you

want to do is put a fort on top straight away anyway because potentially as we've said earlier you've got because some of these camps when we haven't talked about numbers but there's been speculation for example that Agricola when he's coming through Scotland if you look at the literary forces had potentially somewhere between 18 and 21,000 men with him. And so when we start saying the size of some of these camps, the volume and the numbers of men that you're talking about is vast. And that's going to have quite an impact on the landscape, even if they're only staying there for a few nights. That's quite a lot of waste as much as anything else and you wouldn't necessarily want to come back to that in a hurry

although having said that we think when they were marching north and then they came back south again they did possibly reoccupy some of them on their march back south again but it may be that as i say there's an aspect of choice around where they put their sites but inevitably they're on as flat land as they can possibly get close to watercourses and some camps you can see differences in camp prefects the people designing the layout of the camp some of them are actually quite topographically astute they follow the landscape in certain areas there's a boggy bit of ground they'll skirt around other ones have just plonked a rectangle on a sharp hill. And so there's bits of it where they can possibly have pitched a tent here because it just wouldn't have been viable.

You couldn't sleep at that angle. So there's almost a jobs worth mentality of the soldiers who are when they're building those ones so you do get these sort of differences and the sizes so actually trying to determine how big they are and the size of the army but we are talking huge numbers absolutely and then severance it's unlike 50 000 and the accompanying fleet it's unprecedented numbers to wrap up then from all you've been saying rebecca it really as we said right at the start of the podcast scotland is this jewel in the crown when wanting to study marching camps, when wanting to look at the archaeology to understand more about these important, these vital structures of the ancient Roman military. Yes, as I say, again, because it's this ebbing and flowing, plus we've

got the campaigns of Septimius Severus, we have these huge ones so yeah it's a very very rich place to study and indeed so are parts of northern England as well but you know that whole area sort of around Hadrian's Wall and to the north of it is an incredibly rich landscape for understanding the movements of the army. Absolutely and I'm guessing it's one place that you might be having a look at in the future always got your eye on is the elusive battlefield of mons graupius and the roman camp which they mention in the text as being close to that battle site yeah i live in hope that we'll discover it one day i mean we do every once in a while somebody from the continent will discover a new battlefield site and we'll all get really excited and find out what they've discovered but a lot of the time these are battlefield sites where

the romans lost and we're dealing one obviously with Mons Graupius, where the Romans allegedly won. And also, it may have been a glorified skirmish. It may not have been quite as huge as the literature would suggest. But if you think that the word Graup, we think comes from the same root as the word Grampian for Grampians. So the idea that it's somewhere up there is plausible. We've got an arc of camps coming round the Grampian mountains. So various ones have been suggested at various times as being the location. So I live in hope that it'll get found. Well, we've got more information on Montegraupius coming up.

We've got Andrew Tibbs on the show not too long after this one to talk even more about that elusive battlefield and the battle site lastly rebecca i must mention the work that you and your team at historic environment scotland and local communities have been doing on this key roman feature of scotland which is the antonine wall yes we're incredibly lucky to have this project running with the support of local communities, various trusts, and the National Heritage Lottery Fund, as well as the five local authorities and ourselves. And we've got a range of sort of building projects, things that are being built. We've got a series

of play parks. We've had some new Roman sculpture that's gone in. We've got some lovely replica distant stones that have been put back into the landscape because they're in a museum for their preservation, but we've been able to do very exact replicas and put them in the landscape and then we've also got a series of projects that we're doing with the local communities to help bring Roman history to life and make it more accessible not this dusty thing that's done by academics but actually this thing runs through our back garden what is it tell me more about it absolutely brilliant and last and certainly not least in this case your books on camps are called yes i've got roman camps in britain with amberley press i've got roman camps in scotland with the site of antiquity scotland but that's sadly now out of

print so we're looking at possibly trying to put it online which would be the most accessible way of doing it and then a few years ago i worked on a Roman camps in Wales project, and that's also published. And that's also sadly out of print. So I'm afraid they're quite difficult to get hold of. But certainly Roman camps in Britain is still available. And I think watch this space to see if we can get the Scotland book online. Exactly. Roman camps in Europe next. Rebecca, just goes for me to say, great to see you again. And thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast.

Thank you for inviting me. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push.

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