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A Sub-Roman Re-Defence of Hadrian's Wall?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

K. R. Dark
K. R. Dark
Affiliation:
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
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Extract

The absence of immediately post-Roman evidence from fourth-century Roman military sites in western and northern Britain, forming a pattern of widespread disuse in the fifth and sixth centuries, has been strongly established. South of the Mersey the post-Roman finds from Segontium are not certainly of pre-eighth-century date, and the apparent evidence at Brecon Gaer has now been discounted by J.L. Davies. So – unless we accept a post-Roman dating for the penannular brooch from Castell Collen – only Pen Llystyn, where there is a single, possibly fourth-century, potsherd, has produced what might be considered convincing evidence of immediately post-Roman occupation at a fourth-century fort site. At Pen Llystyn the evidence, albeit enigmatic, seems to indicate fifth- or sixth-century reuse (perhaps even by the Irish notable named on a nearby Class-I inscribed stone) of the disused Roman fort for the site of a palisaded enclosure. It must, however, be doubted whether the site was in use in the fourth century. In the North, sites with fifth- and sixth-century evidence are only a little more plentiful – Manchester, Piercebridge, and Ribchester have possible, or probable, evidence of such use.

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Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 23 , November 1992 , pp. 111 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © K. R. Dark 1992. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 For western Britain south of the river Mersey, see Dark, K.R., High Status Sites, Kingship and State Formation in Post-Roman Western Britain A.D. 400–700, unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation Cambridge (1990). The evidence for the North has been examined for this paper. Western and northern Britain are here defined as the pre-1974 counties of Somerset, Dorset, Cornwall, Devon, Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Cheshire, Herefordshire, and Wales for the West and Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham, Northumberland, and Scotland for the North.Google Scholar

2 N. Edwards and A. Lane, Early Medieval Settlements in Wales A.D. 400–1100 (1988), 114–16.

3 ibid., 24.

4 ibid., 24, 102–4, and 115–16. For the brooch from Castell Collen and its type, see Dickinson, T.M., ‘Fowler's Type G penannular brooches reconsidered’, Med. Arch. xxvi (1982), 41–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 P.T. Bidwell, The Roman Fort of Vindolanda at Chesterholm, Northumberland (1985), 38 and 45–6; for possibly contemporary internal occupation see 75; Frere, S.S., Hassall, M.W.C., and Tomlin, R.S.O., ‘Roman Britain in 1987’, Britannia xix (1988), 416–508 (436–7)Google Scholar; Selkirk, A., ‘Birdoswald, Dark-Age halls in a Roman fort’, Current Archaeology 116 (1989), 288–91Google Scholar; RIB 1722; Jackson, K.H., ‘Brigomaglos and St Briog’, Arch. Ael.5 x (1982), 61–8.Google Scholar

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10 RIB 2331. In particular the form of the B is unattested in Britain prior to the sixth century.

11 R. Miket, ‘A re-statement of evidence for Bernician Anglo-Saxon burials’, in P. Rahtz et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979 (1980), 289–305. Although Miket dated the Chesters brooch to the seventh century, a similar brooch from nearby Chesterholm is assigned to the sixth century (p. 293) and, given the uncertainties of the chronology of Anglo-Saxon metalwork, it seems possible that they are contemporary. For Carvoran see M.J. Swanton, The Spearheads of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements (1973), 28–33, 146, and fig. 5 (34). Note that similar spearheads come from Housesteads and South Shields. The dating evidence for spearheads of this group (Swanton A1) might be taken to indicate a fifth-rather than a fourth-century date, four of the remaining six examples coming from Anglo-Saxon graves, with the other two specimens, including the pieces from the Wall, not stratigraphically closely datable.

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14 For Catterick see J.S. Wacher, ‘Yorkshire towns in the fourth century’, in R.M. Butler (ed.). Soldier and Civilian in Roman Yorkshire (1971), 165–77 (172–4); L. Alcock, Economy, Society and Warfare among the Britons and Saxons (1987), 250–3. For Aldborough see D. Charlesworth, ‘The defences of Isurium Brigantum’, in Butler, op. cit., 155–64 (162–3). For York see J.S. Wacher, The Towns of Roman Britain (1974), 176–7; H.G. Ramm, ‘The end of Roman York’, in Butler, op. cit., 178–99; Frere, S.S., Hassall, M.W.C., and Tomlin, R.S.O., ‘Roman Britain in 1989’, Britannia xix (1990), 303–78 (325–7). For Malton see L.P. Wenham, Derventio (Malton) Roman Fort and Civilian Settlement (1974), 32–3; J.F. Robinson, The Archaeology of Malton and Norton (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Conveniently mapped by S.S. Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain (3rd edn, 1987), 264–5, fig. 11. See also D.A. Wellsby, The Roman Military Defence of the British Province in its Later Phases (1982), map 3 (unnumbered).

16 See, for example, S. Chadwick Hawkes, ‘The South East after the Romans: the Saxon settlement’, in Valerie Maxwell (ed.), The Saxon Shore (1989), 78–95 (especially 86–7); examples of cemeteries interpreted by Hawkes as containing the burials of Germanic mercenaries are those at Croydon and Dorchester-on-Thames.

17 L. Alcock, ‘The activities of potentates in Celtic Britain, A.D. 500–800: a positivist approach’, in Driscoll and Nicke, op. cit. (note 7), 22–39.

18 For Caerhun and Caerleon see E.G. Bowen, The Settlements of the Celtic Saints in Wales (2nd edn, 1956), 120; McCarthy (1982), op. cit. (note 12).

19 ibid., 243.

20 For example, see C. Thomas, The Early Christian Archaeology of North Britain (1971), 48–84. The point has been extensively examined by Dark, op. cit. (note 1); Breeze and Dobson, op. cit. (note 9), 231.

21 Frere, op. cit. (note 15), 417.

22 Bidwell, op. cit. (note 8), 46.

23 Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 1.23 and III.92; see also D.N. Dumville, ‘The chronology of De Excidio Britanniae, Book I’, in M. Lapidge and D. Dumville (eds), Gildas: New Approaches (1984), 61–84 (81–2). For the text of the De Excidio see M. Winterbottom (ed. and trans.), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Works (1978).

24 I. Burrow, Hillfort and Hill-top Settlement in Somerset in the First to Eighth Centuries A.D. (1981), 80–4, and 154.

25 D.N. Dumville, ‘The origins of Northumbria: Some aspects of the British background’, in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (1989), 213–22 and 284–6 (220).

26 A.L.F. Rivet and C. Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (1979), 278–80, and 301–2; N.J. Higham and G.D.B. Jones, The Carvetii (1985), 12–13.

27 The most recently published general account of the ‘tablets’ is by Birley, R., ‘Vindoland’, Current Archaeology 116 (1989), 275–9Google Scholar; see also A.K. Bowman and J.D. Thomas, Vindolanda: The Latin Writing Tablets (1983); Bowman, A.K. and Thomas, J.D., ‘New texts from Vindolanda’, Britannia xviii (1987), 126–42 (128 and 135–7).Google Scholar

28 R. Cramp, ‘The origins of Northumbria: the archaeological evidence’, in Driscoll and Nieke, op. cit. (note 7), 69–78.

29 An alternative view of the Brigantian polity is presented in Higham, N.J., ‘Brigantia revisited’, Northern History xxiii (1987), 1–19. If Higham is correct, the Civitas Brigantium was limited to a much smaller, West Yorkshire, core.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum 11.20; Gildas, De Excidio 1.17; see also Dumville, op. cit. (note 25); and Cramp, op. cit. (note 28).

31 Frere, op. cit. (note 15), 200.

32 See Miket, op. cit. (note 11).

33 Frere, op. cit. (note 15), 220–1, fig. 13.

34 Dumville, op. cit. (note 25), 214–21.

35 ibid., 217.

36 J. Campbell, ‘Bede's words for places’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words, and Graves: Early Medieval Settlement (1979), 34–54; C. Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to A.D. 500 (1981), 254, fig. 44; Smith, C.C., ‘Romano-British placenames in Bede’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 1 (1979), 1–19.Google Scholar

37 On periodisation of the Wall see Breeze and Dobson, op. cit. (note 9), 225.

38 For current debates on Gildas' reliability see Lapidge and Dumville, op. cit. (note 23); Sims-Williams, P., ‘Gildas and the Anglo-Saxons’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies vi (1983), 1–30.Google Scholar

39 Gildas, De Excidio 1.15 and 1.19.

40 Rivet and Smith, op. cit. (note 26), 261–2, and 420.