Excavating history on Hadrian's Wall
A talk will take its audience through dig discoveries which show that life on Hadrian’s Wall was for many years a thriving and settled scene. Tony Henderson reports from the frontier
Archaeologists will lay out their findings from a series of digs on Hadrian’s Wall which show that a Roman fort was, in fact, part of a frontier garrison town.
The collaborative project between Historic England and Newcastle University, spanning five seasons at Birdoswald fort near Gilsland on the Northumberland-Cumbria border, explored the eastern, western and northern areas outside the walls of the military base.
The fort had a garrison of 1,000 troops and with the unit originally raised in Dacia, now modern day Romania.
The excavations were led by Historic England senior archaeologist Tony Willmott and Newcastle University’s Professor of Archaeology Ian Haynes, who supervised teams of archaeology students from the university.
Now they will give a talk on the Birdoswald discoveries as part of the INSIGHTS series of free public lectures at Newcastle University.
It will take place on Wednesday, October 30 at 6pm in the Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, Newcastle University. Booking is required and is open from October 23. Call 0191 208 6136 to secure a place.
The lecture is presented by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Geophysical surveys had indicated the existence of settlements outside the fort walls.
Tony Willmott said: “The general feeling was that this was just a series of shanty towns , but it was bigger than that. There were high quality buildings. The fort was part of a garrison town.”
Settlement beyond the fort walls to the east, west and north was carefully planned, and there were big differences in the types of buildings and activities across the site, withs separate industrial and residential uses, and a possible market place. and cemetery extension.
A deliberately planned community which was thriving and trading has challenged assumptions that civilians were sheltering to the south of the fortifications.
It suggests that the frontier was a zone, rather than a distinct line or boundary.
It lasted for around 150 years from the mid-Second Century and, with the fort garrison, the population may have been around 2,500.
A modern comparison would be Catterick in North Yorkshire, said Mr Willmott.
The star find of the project was a sophisticated stone bath house with an exceptionally well preserved furnace room and evidence of a water supply carried by wooden pipes from the north of the site.
Prof Haynes said: “Birdoswald holds the key to many of the big questions about Hadrian’s Wall and the cosmopolitan communities who lived on it during and after the Roman period.“
But the excavations have ended on a note of mystery. The civilian areas areas appear to have been abandoned at the end of the Third Century, but the fort continued.
“The question is where did all the people go?” said Mr Willmott.
Earlier digs uncovered evidence for continued occupation of the site after the Roman occupation ended, with a large timber hall, from the Fifth to Sixth centuries, being built over what had been the fort’s granaries.