The Twentieth Legion and the history of the Antonine Wall reconsidered

Abstract

The study of utilitarian pottery from the Antonine Wall has distinguished small numbers of locally made vessels with North African affinities at nine or ten forts. Similar vessels at Chester and others made by Legio XX at the Holt works depot, one with a potter's graffito in neo-Punic suggest the presence of North Africans. It is suggested that detachments sent from Britain to Pius' Mauretanian war of AD 146-49 may have brought North Africans back with them to Britain. At the western sector of the Antonine Wall, changes in the legionary work-stints may be linked to troop reductions for the war, as the mural barrier and Bearsden Duntocher fort interiors were still unfinished. After the conflict, Bearsden and Duntocher were each partitioned to make an annexe and their internal buildings re-planned and completed; a programme of annexe construction began at other forts, and secondary alterations were made to many existing fort interiors. All may be connected with changes in units or in the composition of the returning garrisons, now perhaps mixed and augmented with small numbers of North African troops. Possible relevant epigraphic evidence is examined.

A Roman burial from Cramond (Edinburgh) rediscovered

“…The wheel-thrown pottery vessel used for this sparsely furnished cremation is therefore of no little interest, as a further indication of the spread of local pottery production in Antonine Scotland (cf Breeze 1987, fig 1) and as an example of the export of vessel-shape traditions from the south of the province. It can be added to the evidence of locally made cooking wares of North African type discussed by Ford (forthcoming) and by Swan (1994, 4-5;1999), to the Antonineperiod oxidized ware production at Inveresk (Swan 1988) and, from slightly further afield, to the copies of Hadrianic-Antonine Verulamium Region and fourth-century Dorset BB1 wares recently published from northern England (Bidwell & Croom 1997, 100-1;Busby et al 1996).…”