With the publication of the excellent Roman Camps in Scotland (RCS), Rebecca Jones completes the publication of a trio of volumes on the camps of Britain, complementing Roman Camps in England, by Humphrey Welfare and Vivien Swann (Welfare and Swann Reference Welfare and Swann1995), and Roman Camps in Wales and the Marches by Jeffrey Davies and Jones herself (Davies and Jones 2006). Having worked extensively on the camps of Wales and Scotland, Jones may now claim to be the leading scholar in this field, and has distilled her knowledge in popular form in Roman Camps in Britain (RCB).
Roman Britain has an immense heritage of Roman military monuments, the most numerous (and possibly least known) of which are temporary camps, including marching camps, siege and practice camps, and camps used on major construction projects, such as the building of Hadrian’s Wall. These monuments were all built for specific, short-term purposes and were occupied for a very short period. The range and number of camps in Britain are greater than anywhere in the Roman Empire.
RCS is a beautifully produced volume at a remarkably reasonable price. It is in large format, and is lavishly illustrated with excellent clear photographs, maps, line drawings and antiquarian illustrations. The nature of the subject demands that most of the photographs are aerial images. The choice of these is excellent, and the standard and clarity of reproduction is admirable, though the choice to exclude colour images is perhaps a little surprising.
The book is divided into two sections. The main part is a 217-page gazetteer listing every known, probable or possible camp. Each camp is fully described, including reference to all archaeological survey, excavation and previous scholarship on the site. The format enables each camp to be illustrated on a clear OS-based map. Because of the very large size of many camps, these maps cannot be presented to a common scale, but this is rectified by a useful set of drawings of the outlines of the camps presented at 1:10,000 for comparative purposes in a nineteen-page illustration section.
The gazetteer is preceded by ten chapters of discussion and analysis, of which the first examines the Roman historical sources and the classification of camps. Three chapters on the exploration of these sites follow, the first covering the antiquarian tradition represented particularly by Melville and Roy in the eighteenth century, when the nature of temporary camps was first appreciated. The second chronicles the immense contribution of aerial photography, by which 82 per cent of known camps have been found, and the third deals with ground survey and excavation. This is followed by an essay on the distribution of camps in Britain and elsewhere in the Empire.
The synthesis of the field evidence lies at the heart of the book. Here individual components and aspects of the camps are compared, including defences and gates, morphology, orientation and the provision of annexes. Alignments of pits seen in aerial photography, and the astonishing new evidence for internal arrangements, including oven alignments at Kintore, raise hopes for further understanding of the internal arrangements of the camps and the activities of Roman armies in the field. Evidence of the Roman reuse of camps, post-Roman use of their remains as enclosures and the place of such use in the survival of camps is also considered here. Again, Kintore is a type site, showing that reuse by Roman armies after a period of time can be reflected in dating evidence from features in the interior, and need not be accompanied by a recutting of the ditches or refurbishment of defences – the only type of evidence previously deployed to argue for reuse. Lack of such recutting in previously excavated ditch sections, therefore, cannot be taken to imply ‘single use’.
A group of three chapters then examines the historical context of camps, the evidence for series of installations and issues of dating, with overall conclusions. A very brief chapter sums up the historical context of Roman penetration into Scotland. Wisely, this summary leaves open the question of the attribution of forts, or series thereof, to historical events known from surviving literature, as the situation, especially in southern Scotland, must have been more complex than we can know. Despite this, it has long been clear, largely through the work of J K St Joseph, that series of camps, which must reflect routes of penetration at different times, certainly do exist, and in Chapter 9 these series are described and critically discussed, with due circumspection in attributing series to events. Chapter 10 reveals the paucity of dating evidence from the sites. Most radiocarbon dates derive from Kintore. Other than this there are a number of small ceramic assemblages and several relative stratigraphic sequences recorded in excavation and survey where successive camps intersect. Dating has also been suggested on the basis of morphological similarities, association with other Roman features and historical context (thus the series north of the Forth–Clyde isthmus are logically broadly attributed to the campaigns of Agricola and Severus, following St Joseph).
RCS is an admirable basis for further research on these installations. Its production is timely. Past evidence can now be synthesised with new discoveries, particularly from Kintore, to show that temporary camps have the potential to address new questions on the layout and function of camps, length of occupation and provisioning. The integration of the field evidence with other aspects of archaeology in the location of camps may give indications of the relationships between the army and the peopled landscape within which it operated. There is no shortage of new questions that can be addressed by further work on these sites.
Jones’s popular volume, Roman Camps in Britain, reprises the themes in RCS and summarises them for a general audience, extending the coverage to the whole of Britain. Again the illustrations are well chosen, though here a colour-plate section is also included. Necessarily for a work of this kind a short account of the Roman conquest of Britain forms the first chapter. The second defines a Roman camp and examines Roman historical and sculptural sources for camps. This leads on to a chapter on ‘layout and holding capacity’, which draws on the literary sources cited in the previous chapter and on the archaeology, but includes aspects that are discussed with the field evidence in RCS. This is followed by a history of archaeological discovery. Again the field evidence is at the heart of the book and this is summarised in two chapters, one on ‘reuse and survival’, the next on the form of camps, again comparing defences, gates and annexes. For this reviewer the general structure might have been improved by including the ‘layout’ chapter with this group, but this is a very minor quibble. The final chapters look at distribution, chronology and context, and offer general conclusions.
RCB is written in a lively style, which reflects the author’s enthusiasm for her subject. This excellent summary makes a somewhat abstruse topic wholly accessible to the general reader for the first time.
