Excavation of Roman Sites at Cramond, Edinburgh. By N<scp>icholas</scp>H<scp>olmes</scp>

Hodgson, Nick

doi:10.1080/00665983.2003.11078193

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

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“…Traces of ploughed soils stratified beneath Roman structures are also recorded. A direct relation between native settlement and Roman occupation is often argued for, as at Callendar Park, Falkirk (Bailey 1995a), but at Cramond, Holmes (2003) argued that cultivation was separated in time from Roman settlement because a grassland sward seemed to have been criss-cross ploughed before Roman occupation. This perhaps tenuous argument has a resonance, however, in recent debates at sites on Hadrian's Wall where ploughing has been seen as ritual ground preparation rather than indicating cultivation (Wilmott 2003).…”

Section: Land Uses and Land Use Change: Synthesis And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The cultivated soil at Cramond may have been replaced by grassland before Roman occupation (Holmes 2003). The broch at Fairy Knowe is argued to have been abandoned before the Antonine period (Main 1978).…”

Section: Land Uses and Land Use Change: Synthesis And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Caches of charred wheat at Westerwood (MacDonald 1934), for example, have no correlative in the on-site pollen record (see above). Imports to Roman forts in a range of foodstuffs have been explored (Dickson 1989;Dickson & Dickson 2000), and can be explored also in timber resources: at Rough Castle, hornbeam (Carpinus) and silver fir (Abies) were imported (Barber in Mate 1995); and at Cramond, wood for furniture from beech (Fagus), walnut (Juglans), pear (Pyrus) and lime (Tilia) came from outwith Scotland (Holmes 2003).…”

Section: Land Uses and Land Use Change: Synthesis And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mudflats in the Forth estuary, filling the embayment west of Bo'ness, would have had comparable impacts and presumably necessitated the development of docking facilities further downstream. Cramond has often been seen as providing these (Shotter 1996;Hunter & Collard 1997) yet there is currently no archaeological evidence for a port here (Holmes 2003); perhaps ships of deep draught anchored in mid-estuary. A more typical native craft of the shallows would have been the logboat (Mowat 1996;Hale 2003).…”

Section: The Seamentioning

confidence: 99%

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The landscape context of the Antonine Wall: a review of the literature

Tipping¹,

Tisdall²

2006

PSAS

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The landscape, environmental and land use changes before, during and after Antonine occupation are examined for the region of central Scotland between the Southern Uplands and the Grampian Highlands, principally from the published literature. The purpose is to synthesize and make available a range of new palaeoenvironmental data, to evaluate critically these new data-sets, to search for significant shifts in landscape or land use and to characterize their timings and effects, thus placing the Antonine occupation in a coherent landscape context. It is established that economic expansion in the region occurred in the later Iron Age, demonstrably before Roman military occupation. This expansion developed from Bronze Age and earlier Iron Age small-scale farms and gathered pace in the last cal 200–300 years BC, for crop growing as well as pasture, and was continued rather than intensified in the first two centuries cal AD. It is difficult to see differences in this economic expansion north and south of the Antonine Wall itself, or east and west of the Forth–Clyde isthmus, but it is tentatively suggested that in the foothills of the Southern Uplands the Romans entered a landscape already decaying. Roman influence is perhaps recognizable at some localities in a reduction of cereal production and the expansion of grazed pasture, assumed to represent a restructuring of the native economy to support a new market. It is presumed that imports of foodstuffs continued to be important to Roman forces during Antonine occupation, although possible reconstructions of the sediments in the Forth and Clyde estuaries suggest these may not have provided ideal harbours. There is little evidence that this increased pastoral economy imposed stresses on soils or plant communities, and the market seems to have been readily supplied within the agricultural capacity of the landscape. Nevertheless, the native economy was probably artificially buoyed by the Roman presence, and withdrawal eventually led to what is best described as an agricutural recession, not population collapse.

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Section: Land Uses and Land Use Change: Synthesis And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Land Uses and Land Use Change: Synthesis And Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%