RAG Vol 1 Issue 3

Roman Archaeology Group Inc Volume 1, Issue 3 July 2005 The RAG HADRIAN’S WALL INSIDE THIS ISSUE THREATENED BY TOO MANY VISITORS Letter from Prince- 3 be effective management of the route. ton - That hasn’t happened’, he said. ‘There David Kennedy is one person responsible for the whole 73 miles. It’s unacceptable. This is not Fishbourne Roman 4 - 5 the way for Britain to meet the obliga- Palace Sussex - tions. This needs more close manage- John Manley ment of the trail on the ground so that people can be moved a few yards one Jordan’s Jarash 6 way or the other and to encourage peo- Archaeological ple not to walk along the wall itself.’ Park - Anne Poepjes Things are likely to deteriorate, accord- Hadrian’s Wall near Vindolanda: Photo. Ed. ing to Mike Pitts, FSA, editor of British Archaeology , who said that some peo- Wine Production in 7 ple wanted to make the site an interna- Roman Britain? - Hadrian’s Wall could be placed on the tional attraction, ‘using words that David Kennedy World Heritage ‘in danger’ list. bring fear to some archaeologists - product development, marketing, In April the Times reported that 400,000 branding - they recommended invest- The Roman Painted 8 people have already marched along the ment of £56.25 million, predicting visi- House at Dover - Hadrian’s Wall Long Distance Path Trail tors would increase by a third.’ Natalie Cullity since it was fully opened eighteen Jim Crow, FSA, senior lecturer in Ro- months ago, compared with the 20,000 man Archaeology at Newcastle Univer- visitors that had been expected when sity, said that the trail had not been ac- The Romans and 9 plans for the path were drawn up in the the Acropolis of companied by resources to ensure the early 1990s. This volume of use is caus- Athens - wall was protected. ing severe erosion to the wall itself and Adding a location to the ‘in danger’ list Kevin O’Toole to the surrounding soil, which in turn can expose archaeological deposits and Exotic Foods in 10-11 structures to further wear and tear. In Roman York - some areas, part of the stonework is already collapsing. Emmie Lister Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquar- WHAT HAS THIS ies, Peter Fowler, an advisor to the GOT TO DO WITH THE UNESCO World Heritage Site Commit- ‘APPEARANCE’ tee, was quoted as saying that he had OF ROME IN opposed the trail’s creation. ‘We were BRITAIN? told that the structure and earthworks Another section of Hadrian’s Wall See Page 8 would be protected, and that there would near Vindolanda: Photo. Ed. Page 2 The RAG Volume 1, Issue 3 Page 3 is something the World Heritage Site Committee takes When he left the army he stayed in Britain, where the extremely seriously (at present there are twenty-nine epitaph notes that his heir had the tombstone ‘set up in LETTER FROM PRINCETON—David Kennedy sites out of 600 on the list). ‘Were something not done accordance with his will’; but the text ‘does not just After a productive and delightful few months at the in size – Jerash weighs in at c. 80 ha - but had serious to stop the erosion, Hadrian’s Wall could be added to tell the biography of an individual’, Dr Sauer says, ‘it end of 2004 at the Institute for Advanced Study here cultural pretensions. Most, for example, had a major the list’, Peter Fowler said. ‘I’m surprised that this also provides an essential clue to the whereabouts of in Princeton, NJ, I was gratified by the opportunity to theatre, several had two theatres and Jerash had three! should happen in an advanced country which appar- Vespasian’s headquarters for the conquest’. return here in March for a further few months. And There were hippodromes, public bath buildings, ently takes the world’s heritage seriously.’ now, thanks to a fellowship from Princeton University churches and miles of colonnaded streets. Extracted from SALON -IFA (113: 13 April 2005) - the The Latin author Suetonius tells us that Vespasian nearby, I shall spend December to February here as Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter, took the Isle of Wight and more than twenty fortified well. At the moment I am primarily concerned not with in association with the Institute of Field Archaeolo- oppida which are thought to include the great Iron buildings but with people; to be exact: How many gists. Age hillfort of Maiden Castle in Dorset. He became I am working on a book on northern Jordan. It is a people lived in towns like Jerash and Philadelphia? Emperor in AD 69 on the basis of his military reputa- most unusual and instructive region. In fact it is what a How many in the micro-region as a whole? How did History Rewritten by a Tombstone tion, and reigned for a decade. recent important book on the Mediterranean environ- population size and patterns change? What caused ment calls a micro-region,* one of the hundreds of population in this micro-region to grow and spread out Also from The Times comes a report by Fellow (of the The site of his headquarters has always been assumed distinct micro-regions that make up the Mediterranean into the dozens of ancient villages of the pre-desert Society of Antiquities) Norman Hammond, the news- to be in the south because of the details in Suetonius, world as a whole. In this case there is an additional and to reach a level which was not to be seen again paper’s Archaeology Correspondent, based on an arti- but the Isle of Wight is the only place that he specifi- characteristic which makes it a micro-region of more until the mid-20th century? Why did population and cle that originally appeared in Current Archaeology cally mentions. ‘The Dorset hillforts could have easily than ordinary interest. It is what those same writers settlement decline sharply in the 8th century onwards? (No 196: 168-176), regarding an inscription on a Ro- been captured by a legion stationed in the Midlands’, define as a “virtual” island. man soldier’s tombstone found at Alchester, north of Dr Sauer argues. Also ‘there is no serious competitor These are serious questions. We cannot really under- Oxford. (A full copy of the article can be downloaded for Vespasian’s base’, and no other site ‘has yielded a stand the ancient world if we cannot put numbers on from www.archaeology.co.uk). shred of evidence for the presence of the Second Au- it. As one expert recently observed: “In the end, de- gustan Legion’. Since all known legionary veterans mography without numbers is waffle .” But it is not just The inscription describes the deceased soldier as a who chose to stay in Britain settled either at their main in this part of the Roman world that we are stuck for member of the Second Legion, commanded by the base or at one of the special ‘colonies’ set up for them numbers. Despite the enormous amount of data avail- future Emperor Vespasian. Eberhard Sauer, of Edin- at Colchester, Lincoln and elsewhere, and there is no able, there is no agreement on whether the population burgh University, has interpreted the inscription as evidence that Alchester was a colonia, it must there- of the Roman Empire at its height was 45-60 million evidence that Vespasian’s campaign headquarters fore have been Vespasian’s base, Dr Sauer says. or nearer 100 million. Nor is there agreement on the might have been located in the Midlands, rather than Extracted from SALON 111 (7 March 2005) - the So- population of the city of Rome itself – 1 million is in the south of England as has long been assumed. ciety of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter. commonly quoted but other influential voices argue for 500,000 and 1.2 million. These are big differences The memorial was found in fragments, buried in the involving factors of two between highest and lowest. foundations of the town wall. Roman Alchester over- Did Rabbits come with the Romans? Fuld Hall, the main original building of the Institute of Advanced lies the site of a fortress-camp, which has been se- Studies and where Einstein had his office. It does not seem likely that documentary evidence will curely dated by dendrochronology to the Roman inva- The question of whether the Romans or the Normans ever give us the answer. Rather, there is a growing sion period: a gatepost of AD 44 has been found at the introduced rabbits to Britain seems to have been an- consensus that archaeological evidence has the poten- entrance to an annexe built when the camp was ex- swered, according to Jayne Brown, of the Norfolk Ar- From the ruins of the Roman cities of the Decapolis tial to do so. We can measure the size of cities, count tended to accommodate more troops. chaeological Unit, which has found the remains of a which lie in this micro-region – Gadara, Gerasa, Pella, the houses, estimate occupancy, count rural sites etc. rabbit in a sealed context at Lynford, near Thetford, Philadelphia, Capitolias …. – it is barely a hundred Even where it cannot give us actual numbers it can The gravestone was of Lucius Valerius Geminus, a dated to the first or second century AD from the pot- kilometres to the Mediterranean. From high points on show us “change” as the number of sites rises and member of the Pollia tribe in northern Italy. The epi- tery fragments found beside it. The bones appear to a clear day you can see the sea.

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