This edited volume derives from a conference held in Newcastle in 2022, which in turn arose out of WallCAP, a community archaeology project designed to conduct research to understand the use of Hadrian’s Wall over time and secure its heritage for future generations. The primary aim of the conference was to ‘highlight the many examples of exciting and wide-ranging scholarship that engages with the incredible data available from Hadrian’s Wall’, providing an overview that moves away from the traditional emphasis on detailed structural analysis, thus making it more accessible to a wider audience.
The editors provide an introduction to the structural character, historical context and recurring debates about the Wall, but express the intention to look beyond those approaches to provide fresh perspectives that address its wider implications and impact. To that end, the volume is made up of a further 22 papers divided into six sections each devoted to a particular theme as follows: the Wall and its communities; stone from source to structure; conflict; religion and belief, in life and death; the stuff of life; and the Wall as a cultural phenomenon. While many of the papers are authored by established scholars, the editors draw specific attention to their attempt also to include early career researchers. In this context, brief biographies of the authors might have been of assistance to their wider readership. The editors have made a considerable effort to integrate the volume, not always the case with such collective productions, providing both a composite bibliography and a brief index. The whole is attractively presented with many colour photographs and a range of maps, plans and diagrams.
The character and role of the extended military communities along the Wall have been major foci of research in recent years. The topic is usefully summarised in the first section by Greene, who places a particular emphasis on the greater role of women and children in those communities and the more integrated nature of what might in the past have been considered separate military and civilian space. Perceiving military communities as closely linked to extended families puts a different perspective on the role of the latter in frontier society. The advocacy of an urban approach to frontier sites follows on logically. Teitz’s case study of Corbridge is appropriate as, with its granaries and military compounds at the centre of the town, it patently reflects the juxtaposition of military and civilian. The perception of the granaries, reflected in the development of the portico facing the main road, the changing role of the enigmatic Site XI and the use of the open-fronted strip buildings along the western Stanegate are all considered in the context of ‘Everyday Urbanism’. The significance of the construction of an elaborate public fountain as a manifest symbol of urban development is, however, surprisingly ignored. The indigenous population are well served by two papers. Hodgson provides a masterful summary of recent work on the indigenous society on which Hadrian’s Wall was imposed. Military vici are briefly considered, recognising that their inhabitants were predominantly immigrants, but the major focus is on the changes to and development of indigenous settlement in the area. To the north of the Wall intensively settled social networks were swept away, to be replaced by different social authorities who controlled the sources of livestock that the military required; to its south we see the development of production sites run by immigrants and the emergence of villa estates. Hunter then provides an excellent overview of the character of Iron Age society and its interaction with Rome over time in the area between the two Walls, with a particular focus on the artefactual evidence.
The first two papers of the following section look in detail at the stone used to build the Wall. Based on analysis done specifically for WallCAP, Kille attempts to characterise the diversity of geological material employed, focusing on the source of the sandstone that constitutes the Wall face and concluding, unsurprisingly, that this would have been local, with some specific sources identified. O’Donnell takes this analysis slightly further. Noting that the output from the known quarries would have been insufficient to meet the full needs of Wall construction, she concludes that many of the small undated quarries in the area must have been opened in the Roman period. Crow then provides specific and important detailed archaeological data from his unpublished excavation of a section of the Wall at Peel Gap, which highlights the structural complexity of the monument. He offers a new chronology for the construction of the Wall in this area, notes the recovery of large number of chamfered stones, seen as marking the transition from curtain to parapet, and draws attention to the discovery of an additional tower constructed in the Antonine period, which lies outside the currently understood sequence of minor structures.
The third section concerns itself with what for most readers is likely to be considered as fundamental, the Wall’s role in relation to conflict. Symonds provides a very useful overview of the design of the Wall with respect to interpretations of its function. He emphasises the multi-faceted, sometimes contradictory, nature of the evidence and the need to take into account the agency of the local population, before concluding, almost certainly rightly, that its primary role was as a defence against guerrilla-style combat. The following two papers take very different approaches. Birley and Buck utilise examples of more unusual disposal of human remains to consider the wider prevalence and significance of violence in frontier society, while McCluskey examines the interconnected nature of Iron Age communities in Ireland and north-west Britain, concluding that this relationship may have shaped frontier development around the Irish Sea.
Aspects of religion and belief on the frontier are considered in the next section. Cousins highlights not only the important role of religion in underpinning social cohesion in military communities, but, with specific reference to Bewcastle and Maryport, emphasises the importance of local religious dynamics and their landscape context. At the other extreme, Parker focuses on the variable evidence for amulets, objects believed to offer protection from supernatural harm, as an archaeological reflection of the personal belief systems which permeate all of Roman society. Finally, Wilmott provides a brief overview of the variety of commemorative cremation deposits recorded in military burials in the frontier zone, with particular reference to his important excavations at Birdoswald, establishing what might be expected as typical of auxiliary cemeteries.
The fifth section concerns itself with aspects of everyday life. Focusing on the evidence from Vindolanda, with its favourable conditions for organic preservation, Sands considers not only a selection of wooden artefacts that do not normally survive, but their manufacture and supply. Using material culture at the opposite extreme on the archaeological survival scale, Bidwell examines the history of changes in pottery supply, noting the increasing focus on more distant commercial sources in southern England, and considers the potential links between pottery forms and the presence of ethnic groups on the Wall. Finally, employing wide-ranging data, Stallibrass examines differing attitudes towards indigenous wild animals and the role of hunting in the broader context of northern Britain.
The final and longest section in the volume focuses on the Wall as a cultural phenomenon. Collins critically examines the popular link between the story of King Arthur and Hadrian’s Wall, drawing attention to the increasing amount of archaeological evidence for the occupation of forts on the Wall by high-status individuals in the fifth and sixth centuries, while Gillis takes us further into the realms of fiction with her overview of the cultural re-imagining of the Wall across various modern media. Returning to the archaeological evidence and its interpretation, Breeze considers how the study of Hadrian’s Wall relates to that of other Roman frontiers through the mirror of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire project that has sought to make them all part of a single World Heritage Site. This is followed by two papers that consider Community involvement: Shaw sets out to assess the success of participatory activities across Hadrian’s Wall, while Alberti-Dunn et al. address the specific motivations of volunteers at Vindolanda. The final paper by Gardner uses the example of the modern boundary between Mexico and the USA to address both what the complexities of modern borders can offer to our understanding of Hadrian’s Wall and whether lessons learnt from its study may be able to contribute to border debates in the modern world.
The editors are to be commended for bringing together an interesting and informative collection of papers on a wide range of topics relating to the Wall. It has been well put together and typographical or grammatical errors are few, though using Flavianic for Flavian in the introductory matter cannot go uncorrected in a volume aimed primarily at a more general audience. The editors have clearly succeeded in their primary aim, referenced in the opening paragraph above. It is perhaps inevitable, however, given the emphasis on the latest research, that for most of the themes the coverage is partial and highly selective according to the particular interests and expertise of the contributors. Bearing in mind that a secondary stated aim of the volume was ‘to provide an “entry” to Hadrian’s Wall for people with different levels of knowledge and expertise’, this reviewer felt that some themes would have benefited from the inclusion of wider introductory overviews.
