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

Abstract

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.

New perspectives on the structure of the Antonine Wall

“…We should not assume that these construction techniques were limited to this sector: there is, in fact, evidence for turf cheeks in the central and western sectors (a topic that will be explored in a future publication). Further investigation along the line of the Wall is needed to confirm the extent of this variation but from what is already known, it is evident that the builders of the Wall were provided with considerable flexibility in how they achieved the desired end results (compare Hanson and Maxwell 1983a: 111) -that is, a superstructure that was probably intended to have a particular profile along its whole length; indeed they had to have had this flexibility since the Wall traversed such a range of landscapes, with different soils and vegetation coverage (Robertson 2015: 17;Tipping and Tisdall 2005;compare Macdonald 1925;1934: 86-87). This variation in building materials and techniques was not unique to the Antonine Wall: the builders of the original western section of Hadrian's Wall were also forced to adapt their approach, in most cases using turf, in other instances compacted or 'beaten' clay (Simpson and Richmond 1935: 14); again, this would appear to be a response to the varied terrain through which the structure was built.…”