Who built Handrian's Wall?

It was one thing for an emperor to conceive of a Wall, quite another for it to be built. The construction of Hadrian’s Wall was a colossal undertaking. Who undertook it?

Fortunately for us Roman culture placed no premium on modesty. Achievements in the Roman World, whether in public office, or in construction, were to be acclaimed and commemorated publicly. And there is a lot of evidence for the individuals who built the Wall. As you might expect, most of those attested are soldiers. We will discuss Rome’s army in Britain extensively next week, but for the moment, note that there is a striking pattern to the evidence. Inscriptions where a unit can be identified refer to units that consisted only of citizen soldiers – the legions. Three legions are known to have helped build the Wall, Legio VI Victrix (which arrived in Britain c. AD 122, just in time to start work on the Wall), Legio XX Valeria Victrix and Legio II Augusta.

By contrast the non-citizen units of the army, the auxiliaries, are very rarely recorded explicitly on inscriptions recording the initial building of the Wall. Indeed, the only inscription we have recording the work of an auxiliary unit at this time records not the building of the Wall, but the cutting of a ditch. Why? It is often assumed that this is because the legions were the only units with engineering specialists in their ranks, but other factors were probably at work. During later rebuilding work even labourers sent from southern towns are documented building stretches of Wall. Later we do in fact see auxiliaries undertaking building projects on the Wall, including the internal buildings of far greater structural complexity than the curtain walls and turrets the legionaries had once so proudly built.

In this video we see something of the challenges of Wall building and some of the inscriptions that record the builders themselves.

© Newcastle University

The ultimate barrier? Hadrian's famous curtain wall

The curtain wall, the most famous and instantly recognisable part of Hadrian’s frontier system, has fascinated visitors to northern England for generations.

It certainly looks as though it could present a formidable obstacle, but recent excavations have raised important questions as to just what its purpose really was. Large and imposing it may have been, but could such a wall really have stopped a determined army, or even a small group of fast moving raiders? Excavations at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall, at the aptly named Wallsend, have revealed more of the original wall, but also mysterious features on the berm, the strip of ground that lies between the wall and the ditch that ran along its northern side. How should these be interpreted? In this evidence we look at the Wall at Wallsend as it appears in both its surviving state and as a full scale model.

Any attempt to understand the role of the curtain wall must, of course, take into account the structures attached to it -the turrets, milecastles and forts which we will discuss in our next steps- but the question of linear barriers also touches on another unique feature of Hadrian’s Wall, the remarkable earthwork that runs immediately to its south known as the Vallum.

With its deep ditch, paralleled to the north and south by earthen banks, the Vallum must have been a major barrier in its own right. It was built within a few years of the Wall, blocking almost all access to the Wall from the south, and then slighted (cut through) when the army moved into Scotland. What does its shape, location and history suggest about Roman thinking on movement and control on the Tyne-Solway line?

For a magnificent technical guide to the Wall we recommend Breeze, D. J., 2006 (ed.) J. Collingwood Bruce’s Handbook to the Roman Wall, now out of print but some copies still available directly from the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle Upon Tyne: Newcastle Upon Tyne

© Newcastle University

The road before the Wall: excavating the Stanegate at Vindolanda

Roman commanders were well aware of the strategic importance of the River Tyne, to the east, and the River Solway, to the west, long before Hadrian’s Wall was constructed.

Excavations at Corbridge, where a major road (Dere Street) built to support the army’s northern campaigns crossed the Tyne, and at Carlisle, which lay at the head of the Solway Estuary, show that major forts were established at both sites in the early AD 70s. And crucially both were linked by an east-west road which endured into the medieval period when it became known as the Stanegate. Other forts, most famously Vindolanda, along with towers and fortlets were established on this road.

In this video, Dr Andrew Birley, Director of Excavations for the Vindolanda Trust discusses the evidence for this earlier period of activity discovered during excavations at his site. This evidence includes the celebrated writing tablets, which we will be discussing in the next few steps. Note how complex the Vindolanda site is, and how many phases of Roman occupation overlie the waterlogged deposits which date from before the Wall, to the time when the Stanegate road marked the line of Roman control along the Tyne-Solway Isthmus.

© Newcastle University

Postcards from the past: reading the Vindolanda tablets

Wooden writing tablets continue to be discovered in the excavations at Vindolanda, and have now also been identified at several other sites in Britain.

The Vindolanda Tablets are of particular importance to our understanding of life on the Stanegate in the decades immediately before the construction of Hadrian’s Wall.

Invaluable sources of information though they are, the tablets are often frustrating. Their authors knew of course to whom they wrote, and seldom needed to refer to the title and role of their correspondent. Tablets can be incomplete, the Latin is that of daily speech and sometimes littered with colloquialisms which we only partially understand. Additionally, diverse spellings, poor grammar and sloppy handwriting can all present challenges to translators.

In the following steps, we will look at two groups of tablets to see what they tell us about life on the edge of Roman Britain on the eve of Hadrian’s Wall. The translations used are the work of Alan Bowman and David Thomas and may be found on the excellent Vindolanda Tablets online maintained by Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents.

What does aerial photography tell us about the Roman advance?

For those unfortunate enough to witness its terrifying onslaught, the passage of Rome’s campaigning army must have been striking. Smoke curling up where villages had once stood, crows circling sites littered with corpses, the detritus left by the passage of thousands of soldiers. But almost two millennia later, it is much harder to track Rome’s murderous routes through northern Britain.

Yet, there are clues. We have just discussed the literary sources, noting that while they are essential reading, they have multiple limitations. And of course ancient writers did not really seek to give a detailed account of strategy or topography. They did not desire to act as war correspondents.

The fast pace of campaigning armies can mean that little endures of their passing for archaeologists to find. But Roman soldiers built temporary camps as they advanced into Scotland. Few of these contained internal buildings (tents sufficed) but ramparts were required to keep the enemy out and deserters in. These ramparts and their accompanying ditches survive. Eroded, diminished by centuries of ploughing, they can be hard to see from ground. From the air things look very different. An archaeologist trained in aerial reconnaissance can identify the tell-tale ‘ground responses’, the visual clues, that show the presence of even short-lived campaign camps.

There are three basic types of ‘ground response’: shadow, soil colour and crop mark. From the air it is possible to see the play of shadow on undulations in the ground over a larger area, making it possible, for example, to detect systems of banks and ditches. This ground response can be strong in low light conditions, and/or when there is snow or frost.

Soil marks sometimes show the presence of buried structures, particularly after ploughing, which brings elements of the buried feature to the surface. The problem with soil marks is that they indicate that the archaeological feature is being actively destroyed. Crop marks are the third type of ground response. Crop growth will be affected by what lies beneath the ground: a nice moist ancient ditch will foster growth, while an old stone wall will inhibit development.

Dr Rebecca Jones is Head of Archaeology Strategy at Historic Scotland, and a Newcastle University graduate. She is a specialist in aerial photography and Roman camps. Her book, (2012) Roman Camps in Britain, published by Amberly (ISBN 1848686889), is recommended for anyone trying to understand these extraordinary testimonies to Rome’s campaigns in northern Britain.

The conquest that never was: Rome beyond the Tyne-Solway line

It is clear that as he wrote the biography of his father in law, Agricola governor of Britain, the great Roman historian Tacitus was exasperated. Writing of Rome’s great campaigns in Northern Britain forty years before Hadrian’s Wall, Tacitus glorifies Agricola for advancing Roman control, but claims that at the end of his governorship: Britain completely conquered, was at once neglected (Tacitus Histories 1.2)

Is this true? Did the failure lie, as he claims, in the petty jealousy of an imperial tyrant (the Emperor Domitian) resentful of the governor’s successes?

These questions matter because the abandonment of the campaigns Tacitus claims were so important ultimately led Rome to place most of its British army on the line that was to become Hadrian’s Wall. They also matter because they raise questions about how we balance different types of evidence, in this case, a literary account against archaeological data. Take the picture above for example. This helmet dates from the period of Rome’s first campaigns in Northern Britain. It has a Roman form, but is decorated in a Celtic style. Literary sources have nothing to say about it, but to archaeologists this combination raises important questions about culture conflict and cultural change.

Much of Britain remained under Roman control for centuries, but despite several brutal campaigns in the north, the Romans never conquered the land beyond the Tyne-Solway. This raises the question of of how significant Agricola’s campaigns into Scotland really were. For these we have two sources, Tacitus’ account and compelling archaeological discoveries. Both have weaknesses.

Let’s look at the literary evidence first. Not only was Tacitus writing about a relation (hardly the recipe for objectivity) but his Life of Agricola was also written as a moral argument. Tacitus was interested in what a good person, by his definition, should do in a position of influence at a time of tyranny. Gnaeus Iulius Agricola was governor of Britain c. AD 77-85, and his governorship coincided with the reign of the Emperor Domitian – a man reviled as a savage despot by historians. Tacitus presents Agricola (who probably was talented - the governor of Britain was a prestigious post) as an idealised figure to whom he attributes all Rome’s military and civil ‘achievements’ in Britain.

Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that some changes Tacitus attributes to Agricola were probably undertaken by previous governors. Whist it is difficult to date events precisely enough to link them to alleged and real historical events, there is no doubt that Roman soldiers established major military bases along the Tyne-Solway well before Agricola. Dendrochronology (the dating of tree rings in timbers) shows that the Romans were already preparing a fort at Carlisle in AD 72/73. To the east, we have evidence for early work at Vindolanda and Corbridge. That said, Agricola’s presence probably coincided with a turning point in the campaign. Tacitus writes engagingly of a decisive Roman victory (which we will look at in detail next week) before claiming that Britain was neglected. He thus implies that proper consolidation of victory (the incorporation of what is now Scotland into the Empire) would have required a commitment that was lacking.

Archaeological evidence also suggests that the Romans had control of Scotland in mind. In addition to many smaller installations, they began work on a legionary fortress at Inchtuthil. The decision to abandon this was almost certainly not as whimsical at Tacitus implies. Soldiers were urgently needed to bolster Rome’s positions on the Danube, then under massive pressure from a new superpower, the Dacians. With reduced numbers, the first great advance gave way. The soldiers fell back to the Tyne-Solway, a line allowing better communication and supply (by land and sea) than any Rome could afford to occupy to the north. Consolidation in this zone led to the establishment of what we speak of as the Stanegate system, and in turn Hadrian’s Wall.

The line was held, with varying degrees of success until the closing stages of Roman rule in Britain in the early fifth century. But even when the Wall was established Roman commanders did not see it as a barrier to their operations. Shortly after the death of Hadrian the army pushed north to establish a new wall, the Antonine Wall, between the Forth and the Clyde in southern Scotland. This was occupied for a generation, before the army withdrew south and reoccupied Hadrian’s Wall (c. AD 158).

Other campaigns followed. In AD 208 the Emperor Septimius Severus led a substantial field army and his warring sons into the north. His operations, which concluded in AD 211, were savagely criticised by Cassius Dio, a contemporary writer (Dio Roman History 77. 11.1-77.15.4). We discuss the evidence for the Severan campaigns in more detail in week five. Further campaigns are known to have taken place in AD 305 and 382 (Panegyrici Latini Veteres 6(7).7.2). But Rome’s presence was not limited to sporadic campaigning – it also used outpost forts, patrols, spies and alliances to maintain its interests in Northern Britain.

There is a full online version of Dio’s Roman History available online in several different formats if you are interested in exploring it further.

Dio's Roman History

Tacitus, the Agricola and Germania (1894)

Hadrian's wall

Hadrian' s Wall

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