There are some great detective stories on the Wall, all based on attention to detail. There is a lot more I could do, and many fellow bloggers are already doing it. Having material universally available, in colour,in any language, and linked to similar material, engenders a different approach to writing. I am trying to present my research in a new way, making use of a new type of media to do so. I think writing fiction, re-enactment, feature films, and gaming, all have legitimate questions to ask of archaeology, which in turn force archaeologists to think about the past in different ways. Small world Doug I worked for Philip Crummy I supervised some of the excavations at Culver St Colchester, biggest, ugliest, most complex, hole in the ground I was ever involved with. I never take someone else's conclusions for granted - sometimes when you're living it through your characters you get a different idea - but all that wonderful archaeological detail helps you build the foundations. For my latest book Hero of Rome, I relied on Phil Crummy's City of Victory to help me paint a picture of Roman Colchester. When I lived in Melrose I must have read Curle's book about Trimontium thrice. Personally, I love archaeological reports. I'll be very interested in that one Geoff, one of the ideas I have for the future is a novel that takes the wall from it's first days to the end when Rome cut Britain off something like Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum. I still going to have to write a further article to cover the bigger picture, and how both the Timber Wall and Vallum fit with it. I hope any more specialist readers will be able to fill in the blanks, and make the connections for themselves. I am trying to write for a variety of different audiences, so I look for the key incite-full detail, and I try to hold back other things, or put them in a drawing. The detail is important, but often boring. "The devils in the detail", - and I'm a bit between a rock and a hard place on that one. Great to hear you write so you will know the problem of knowing what and how to write. I do a bit of writing and it's the tiny details most people don't know about that can sometimes make a big difference. Thanks Geoff, I stumbled on your blog through a Twitter reference today and I'm looking forward to reading your back catalogue. The way the trench is built up over soft ground at White Moss was once described as "like a canal", but this is consistent with it being a trench for a road bed. That's a great idea that has to be considered as a possibility, but sadly the levels don't really work, and bits of it are simply too steep. The sourcing suitable materials for the road bed would be a longer term project. Work tends to organised in seasons, and I suspect the Vallum was dug in a single season. This freed up the skilled army units for the more specialised building. What I think is that the Romans had a pool of less skilled labour for basic physical tasks like ditch digging. I also wonder if Roman engineers, who were as you point out remarkably efficient, would start a project without sourcing the materials (the backfill) to complete at least part of it?Ĭould it have been a temporary canal to transport supplies and construction material for the wall? Maybe the mounds were for escorting troops or guards to have a better view of the countryside and to protect and conceal the workers digging the canal? I'm not an engineer or an archaeologist, but I can't imagine a scenario where someone would build a 74 mile foundation trench and then go back to the beginning to fill it in. ![]() Roads are, and as far as I'm aware, always have been, built in relatively short stretches for reasons of efficiency, ease of supply and use of manpower. ![]() You make a well-structured argument for the vallum's purpose as a potential roadway, but as someone who has helped build roads (tamperman, Tilcon: Haltwhistle 1974) I have a problem with the theory. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.Great article and another remarkable insight into Hadrian's Wall. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it.
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