Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Writing an account of the earliest Roman penetration of what is now Scotland has never been an easy matter—not since we began to distinguish between history and archaeology. In early days, the difficulty lay in identifying the relevant archaeological material, which seemed all too sparse or elusive compared with the apparent richness of the literary account. More recently the positions have been reversed, and we now struggle to find a suitable place in a somewhat spindly historical framework for the burgeoning quantities of data relating to mid and late first-century Roman artefacts and military structures. It is rather like trying to follow the thread of a conversation at a crowded cocktail party, where the voices of adjacent guests intrude alarmingly upon one's thoughts, occasionally because of their loudness, but more often through having an equally interesting story to tell. Just as earplugs would be an inappropriate solution at a party (as would talking loudly in response), it is probably unwise to deal with such diversity by devising some kind of ‘unifying’ narrative, or concentrating on the discrepancies between the conclusions being drawn from different fields of study. What follows, therefore, is mainly a selective consideration of certain Roman sites and structures, or classes of structures, in the hope that more sharply focused examination or (re)interpretation may reveal ... log in or subscribe to read full text