Issue 102

Sept / Oct 2008

Contents

news

Windfarm dig finds boat in style of Sutton Hoo

Prehistoric village under Isle of Man runway

Rare house continues first farmers debate

In the press

In Brief & Phase 2

features

Hadrian in London
The 'Hadrian: Empire and Conflict' exhibiton is impressive

Hadrian's Wall
Abandoned after three centuries, but still alive

New WHS, the Antonine Wall
David J Breeze tells how to make a successful bid to UNESCO

THE BIG DIG: Stonehenge
Mike Pitts sorts out the technical data

additional content
Reading about the Archaeology of Stonehenge

The Stonehenge Olympics
Plans for the stones to get the new facilities ready for 2012

on the web

Recommended websites
Caroline Wickham-Jones explores the realms of archaeological fiction and a look at Barwick-in-Elmet Historical Society's website

letters

your views and responses

spoilheap

a piece about Bonekickers with no archaeological puns!

science

Seeking what is best for buried bones, Sebastian Payne looks at new leglislation

CBA correspondent

Campaigns, comment and communications from the CBA
Gill Chitty on the stones, the bill and beyond

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

features

A wall for all times

"The wall proved to be an impregnable barrier. For the first time, the Scots were trapped in their own wild country and the Romans and Britons could go about their business in safety." Gouache by Harry Green (b1920) for Look and Learn, April 1978

Hadrian built a wall in northern Britain in the second century AD. Three centuries later it was abandoned. Yet, as Richard Hingley and Claire Nesbitt show, curiosity, national pride and tourism have kept the wall alive.

Since its construction in the early second century AD, the barrier stretching 117km between the Solway and the Tyne has been known as the Roman Wall, the Pict's Wall and, most recently, Hadrian's Wall. It only came to be attributed to the eponymous emperor in the second half of the 19th century: before this, it was often thought to be the work of the emperor Severus.

Recognised as a highly symbolic, even magnificent, landscape, the wall has meant different things to different people. It is often described as one of England's two prime ancient monuments – the other being Stonehenge in Wiltshire. It is internationally recognised as a world heritage site, and appreciated locally and nationally as an iconic landmark.

Despite this renown, there are two commonm is conceptions. First, that the wallmarks the border between England and Scotland, and second, that its history and archaeology have been thoroughly investigated – there is nothing left to learn. In fact, the border is further north between Carlisle in the west and Berwick-upon-Tweed in the east. And we take a very different approach to the wall: there is always something new to learn.

Funded by theArts and Humanities Research Council, we are exploring the wall's history, and addressing the idea that themonument "lives" in the present. The wall did not cease to be significant when Roman occupation came to an official end in AD410: by then it was not just a structure in the landscape, but part of the landscape itself. So our research considers not just the Roman occupation, but also the wall's role in the lives of the local population and visitors who have engaged with it throughout history.

An enduring view has been that the wall was a barrier between two peoples, reflecting ancient sources that tell us only that Hadrian built it to separate Romans and barbarians. Recent research has argued for the wall as a frontier control where taxes were collected from those entering the Roman empire from the north, and as a decisive statement of the empire's limit. Whatever its original purpose, for centuries the wall has served the agendas of those who have described it. It has been a barrier against the uncivilised world, a ruinous reminder that north and south would no longer be divided and a proud monument to an inherited imperial past.

The earliest known post-Roman references to the wall are by the monk Gildas in the sixth century, followed in the eighth century by Bede. Their representations reflect the sociopolitical climate of their times. Gildas (cAD540) believed the wall was built by the native Britons, together with the Romans, to protect themselves from the Picts once the Roman military had gone:

[The Romans] with the help of the miserable natives, built a wall... by public and private contributions, and of the same structure as walls generally, extending in a straight line from sea to sea, between some cities, which, from fear of their enemies, had there by chance been built

Bede however, drawing on Gildas's writing, thought it was the Romans alone who built the wall:

Thinking that it might be some help to the allies, whom they were forced to abandon, they [the Romans] constructed a strong stone wall from sea to sea, in a straight line between the towns that had been there built for fear of the enemy, where Severus also had formerly built a rampart

Detail from map of Britain by Matthew Paris (cAD1250), with both Hadrian's Wall (to the south) and the Antonine Wall. Hadrian's often appears in medieval maps as the Pict's Wall or the Roman Wall, but the Antonine Wall is not recognised as Roman until the 16th century. Image © British Library

These authors reflect a perceived threat to Britain's borders, its Christian religion and its identity. This belief developed from the idea that the Anglo-Saxon incomers were an invasive force intent on making the country its own. By Bede's time the Synod of Whitby (664) had joined the fortunes of the Christian church in Britain to those of Rome, reinforcing an alliance that had already been established by the protective gesture of the construction of the wall.

Ever since, the wall has been extensively written about and documented; it has been captured by maps, paintings, poetry and photographs and its appeal has been wide-reaching. The wall's monumentality provided a flexible concept that depended on the socio-political climate of the day, with different authors emphasising its ruination or grandeur appropriate to the image they were trying to promote.

The significance of the wall in medieval times is evident from the fact that it is often one of the few features marked on maps of Britain. It appears on those recently explored by William Shannon in his book, Murus Ille Famosus (see Books, Jul/Aug). Shannon argues that the Roman wall may have helped to create ideas of English nationhood by focusing attention on the monumentality of this physical boundary.

Since the late 16th century, the wall has been seen as an icon of national and imperial identity. At a particularly troublesome time in border relations in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the idea was mooted that the wall be refortified to protect the English from invasion from Scotland. The English may have seen themselves as direct inheritors of the Roman civilisation, while the Scots became the descendants of the barbarous Picts and Caledonians whom classical writers had recorded as living in northern Britain.

Interest in the wall waned in the 17th century but revived during the debates of the late 17th and early 18th centuries that led to England and Scotland finally uniting in 1707. The wall's ruination was emphasised by some writers. Jonathan Swift, the pro-English writer living in Ireland and author of Gulliver's Travels, wrote a political tract in 1707 that reflected critically on the Union. He described the monument as "an old broken wall" dividing the lands of a gentleman (England) and a rather cantankerous mistress (Scotland).

In the context of the growing power and wealth of 18th century England, the grandeur of the Roman wall was emphasised, reflecting the idea that England had drawn on Roman greatness. The famous antiquary William Stukeley had already undertaken extensive antiquarian travels across southern Britain, and in 1725 he visited the north. He felt that the Roman wall was comparable to the Great Wall of China as an undertaking and remarked on "The amazing scene of Roman grandeur in Britain". Stukeley proposed that, during the Roman period:

...we may imagine the glorious show of towns, cities, castles, temples, and the like, on the south side of this Wall, by contemplating the prodigious quantities of their ruins and memorials beyond that of any other part of Europe, scarcely excepting imperial Rome

He had never visited Rome, but his suggestion about the comparative grandeur of the Roman wall was repeated by later writers. Stukeley was trying to encourage young gentlemen to visit the wall rather than making the Grand Tour, the long trip to visit the antiquities of Rome.

A contemporary Scottish antiquarian, Alexander Gordon, had a very different view of the purpose and function of the Roman wall. Describing the Roman military remains of lowland Scotland and northern England in some detail, he remarked that:

If Scotland boasts of being numbered among the Nations which never bowed their Necks to the Yoak of the Roman Bondage, I think, from the foregoing sheets, it appears plain, that their Pretence is not built upon a wrong Foundation: For, from the Tenor of the whole Roman History in Britain, it cannot be shewn, that the Scots and Picts ever suffered the least Part of their Country to lie under Subjection, any considerable Time, without re-possessing themselves thereof, and taking a just Revenge upon their Enemies and Invaders

In contrast to Stukeley, Gordon saw the scale and magnificence of these remains as honouring the ancestors of the contemporary Scots.

Immediately after the devastating Jacobite rebellion of 1745, and the invasion of northern England by a Scottish army loyal to the Catholic Bonnie Prince Charlie, English writers made new proposals to refortify the Roman wall. The antiquary John Warburton viewed the new military way, which the Hanoverian army had built in the 1750s and which destroyed a substantial section of the wall between Housesteads and Newcastle, as a refortification. The English and Lowland Scots loyal to the king were seen as the inheritors of Roman civilisation, while the Scottish Highlanders, loyal to the Catholic Pretender, were the barbarians.

Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated and the second half of the 18th century brought a new period of unity as attitudes to the frontier between England and Scotland began to change. Valiant Scottish soldiers fought in British armies, campaigning for the expansion of Britain's growing overseas empire. The significance of Hadrian's Wall was transformed in this context to reflect the growth of Britain's extensive empire.

Ruinous stretches of the wall continued to provide tantalising hints of its former appearance. The remains captured the imagination of the famous Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott in the early 19th century, inspiring the following verse in his work Harold the Dauntless (1817), which refers to the site of the castle at Sewingshields in the wall's central sector between the forts at Carrawburgh and Housesteads:

No towers are seen
On the wild heath, but those that fancy builds,
And save a fosse that tracks the moor with green,
Is nought remains to tell of what may there have been

The poem resonates with the desire of the visitor to know the wall in its original state and to understand its role and appearance, but the wall's decay also served a significant purpose for other authors.

In 1850, John Collingwood Bruce led a tour along the wall. This was the first of a regular series of "pilgrimages" (the 13th occurs in 2009). Referring to these pilgrims, antiquarian ladies and gentlemen with an intellectual interest in the wall, Bruce said:

The Roman Empire was an Empire of strength, and as they traversed the Wall they would see how great was the vigour of that mighty people, how vast their enterprise, how great their determination

The pilgrims, said Bruce, could not help but feel that they were the successors of the Romans. Viewing the ruins of Housesteads with them in 1850, Bruce reflected on the "broken column and prostrate altar", observing that:

Another empire has sprung into being of which Rome dreamt not... In that island, where, in Roman days, the painted savage shared the forestwith the beast of prey – a lady sits upon her throne of state [Queen Victoria], wielding a sceptre more potent than Julius or Hadrian ever grasped! Her empire is threefold that of Rome in the hour of its prime. But power is not her brightest diadem. The holiness of the domestic circle irradiates her

Reflecting further, Bruce suggests:

We can hardly tarry, even for an hour, in association with the palmy days of the Great Empire, without learning, on the one hand, to emulate the virtues that adorned her prosperity, and on the other, to shun the vices that were punished by her downfall. The sceptre which Rome relinquished, we have taken up. Great is our honour – great our responsibility

Bruce thought that the ruined sections of the wall, and the tombstones and broken columns, emphasised the idea that the British Empire might one day decline and fall. The tone of his comments is quite in keeping with many Victorian views of the grandeur of the British empire, although he anticipated future troubles.

The English writer Rudyard Kipling's influential novel, Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), is set partly in Roman Britain. Through the Roman scenes Kipling emphasises the dichotomy between barbaric and civilised. The centurion Parnesius's description of the transition from the luxurious villas in southern England to the bleak north where wild animals roamed and the buildings were fortified and grey, reflects his understanding of the Romans as a civilising influence on a barbaric native landscape. The barren picture that he paints of the north allows us to imagine the wall as an enclave of Roman-ness within it, albeit one of iniquity and corruption.

Just when you think you are at the world's end, you see a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn, and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind – always behind – one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!

The ruination of the Roman wall inspired cause for concern, since Kipling could foresee the potential decline and fall of Britain's own empire. For him, Roman Britain presented an analogy for the British in India, and perception of the wall forced attention on the need for vigilance in protecting the frontiers. The two Roman soldiers in the novel are burdened with the defence of Hadrian's Wall for three years to save Roman Britain from the barbarians. Parnesius recalls his father's words to him:

There is no hope for Rome... She has forsaken her Gods, but if the Gods forgive us here, we may save Britain. To do that, we must keep the Painted People back. Therefore, I tell you, Parnesius, as a father... your place is on the Wall

Hadrian's Wall Heritage Ltd now encourages public exploration of the wall.

Through the message conveyed by the novel, Hadrian's Wall provided a contemporary lesson, since it was envisaged as a frontier which would defer the military and moral collapse. By educating school boys with ideas of imperial defence, Kipling hoped that the British could avert impending disaster.

The observations of Bruce and Kipling coincided with the growth of serious archaeological research in Britain. Over the past 150 years, extensive sections of the wall have been excavated, consolidated and displayed for the public. Today the wall attracts large numbers of scholars, artists, photographers, writers, walkers and families, and regional, national and international visitors.

As time goes on, the community of people studying the wall has also grown. Hadrian's Wall is now not only protected as a concomitant of its world heritage status, it is also managed by several organisations including English Heritage, the National Trust, the Vindolanda Trust, Hadrian's Wall Heritage Ltd and National Parks. The importance of continued structured research is demonstrated by the Hadrian's Wall research framework, which brings scholars together to consolidate knowledge and understanding of themonument and to drive forward new research agendas. Despite this, the wall is asmuch of a mystery today as it was in the time of Gildas and Bede. There still remains much work to be undertaken to reveal the secret life of the northern frontier.

Richard Hingley is a reader in archaeology at Durham University and director of the Tales of the Frontier project. Claire Nesbitt is a post doctoral researcher on the project and an expert on Byzantine churches.

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