The Northern Frontier; lilies, Latin, and illiteracy

Some readers, new to archaeology, particularly students like those on MOOC courses, discover that the evidence based arguments about Roman Military archaeology found on this blog , are not well received by their tutors.  It is important to understand that many academics can only understand archaeology when it is written down, having no experience of real archaeological interpretation. As a result, the text of an archaeological report, rather than the evidence can become an article of faith, and ideas become embedded at a fundamental level, immovable objects, that actual serve to inhibit understand in the subject.

Ideas developed around the evidence for a primary timber phase of Hadrian's Wall, based on the reevaluating archaeological evidence from an engineering point of view, have produced the only cohesive, coherent, and consistent account of the early phases of the Wall. [here]  However, while this blog may give the readers the arguments to deconstruct existing ideas, that is not the name of the game.

Disappointingly, for students, it is a game, a bit like Chess, only more expensive, in that the board and its pieces are fixed, you may not bring in pieces from other games or remove any existing pieces; the object is to remove the pieces from the box and arrange them in the correct order, going beyond this and start making moves is to lose.

It is not just using the evidence, but arguments about the engineering of timber structures is also going to get a chilly reaction; what cuts ice in Roman studies is Latin.

#BlogArch Carnival; Most Significant post? Hadrian’s Timber Wall

This month’s question posed for the participants in the blog archaeology Carnival over Doug’s Archaeology is fairly flexible, I have chosen; what was your most significant post?
Archaeological Blogging; Inadmissible Evidence

In terms of its significance, Hadrian’s Timber Wall is the post that stands out, as it encapsulates everything about this blog and why I created it. 

It is not even in the top 10 most read posts, or as contentious as those about Class Ei buildings like Stonehenge [1], but the Timber Wall was a totally new concept, an unexpected research bonus, which got worldwide publicity.  From the blogosphere via my local paper the Hexham Courant, it found its way into various media including the BBC and even made cameo appearance on the History Channel.  Recently, I met someone who had been involved at the time, who was surprised that it had not made my career; sadly, it probably had quite the opposite effect.

Until July 2008 I was unaware that there were postholes in front of Hadrian’s Wall, but this was precisely the type of evidence I had been researching, and,  intrigued by their layout, I took a close look at them. The result was a rather scruffy analysis of the Buddle St postholes which I circulated among colleagues at TWM and Newcastle University, [reproduced in Appendix below]. This was genesis of the Timber Wall, and for a fleeting moment I imagined there was a possibility of it being part of the 60th Anniversary Limes Conference, to be hosted by Tyne and Wear Museums with the University the following year.

It was never going to happen; whatever the merits of the case, the latter had effectively blackballed me, and, while the former had subsequent made me redundant, far more importantly, TWM was the proponent of the theory that these postholes represented a system of obstacles [or cippi] [2,3].  Whereas archaeology in the field is about team work, academic life is not, and those who contribute to the existing Roman Wall narrative didn't appreciate an uncalled for contribution from an outsider rocking their navicula.

Hadrian's Ghost Wall

The key to understanding Hadrian’s Wall is that the Romans built a temporary frontier of wood in the East, and wood and earth in the West, to protect them while they constructed the permanent stone frontier. It follows that there would also be temporary forts and other structures amounting to a whole ghost timber and earth version of Hadrian’s Wall.

Hadrian's First Wall - Free download

I am making my research into the earth and timber phase of Hadrian's Wall, covered in the previous three posts, available as a convenient electronic or printable copy. 

Since this amounts to 12,500 words, with 48 of illustrations, it is perhaps too cumbersome to work well as an on-line article.  I hope this may prove useful to those readers who interested in the archaeology of this period.  Please feel free to distribute it as you think fit.

Hadrian’s First Wall

32. Hadrian's Timber Wall

The latest research on this topic is presented here.
Between Hadrian’s Wall and the ditch to north, archaeologists have found three lines of double postholes running parallel to the Wall, which may represent an early timber 'Wall', albeit temporary, comprising a box rampart and the ditch. This was almost certainly the largest structure timber ever built in this country, its full extent is not known for certain, but it was quite probably 117 km long, and would have required an estimated 2.5 million trees.

30. Not going with the flow

I studied philosophy, so I know you are reading this, or at least you think you are, but I don’t know why, or whether you have done it before, and if so, how often. If you have read none of the proceeding 42,000 words, what I am about to discuss may seem a little unexpected, but I am trying not to repeat myself, and besides, those who have bravely trudged through it all deserve some reward, so I am going to give a brief glimpse of what's coming up in the next 30 posts, because from now on it’s going to get ‘interesting’. In terms of ‘why I blog’, this is my belated contribution to an interesting Internet discussion.[1] It also reflects my concerns about how I blog.
So, before we go any further, it's important we have a heart to heart about what’s going on here. We are meeting in rather unusual circumstances; my concern is what is going on in your mind when you read this, and you may be beginning to wonder about what’s going on in mine.