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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:49]
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- [01:22]
Tristan Hughes
Hadrian's Wall. One of the most recognizable Roman monuments from anywhere in the world, stretching from the Tyne Estuary to the Solway Firth. In Roman eyes, this was the northern edge of their empire, the endpoint of civilization. Today, it's easy to define Hadrian's Wall by the great sites dotted along its length. Forts like Halstead's and Chesters. But what about the people themselves? What do we know about the men, women and children who who lived their lives on this border of barbaricum almost 2,000 years ago? What clues have they left behind? This is the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is your guide to life at Hadrian's Wall. Our guest today is Dr. Francis Mackintosh, collections Curator for English Heritage at Hadrian's War Room. Francis, what a pleasure to see you again. It's great to have you back on the podcast.
- [02:27]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
I know it's been a long time. It has.
- [02:29]
Tristan Hughes
The last time we saw each other in person was we were talking just before going live. It was almost five years ago when we did the tour around Colbridge and Chester's Roman house.
- [02:38]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Exactly. We were exploring the ruins properly, weren't we, rather than just pretending.
- [02:41]
Tristan Hughes
It was very good fun. Well, we're still gonna really delve into the story today, but this is what I find so interesting about Hadrian's Wall. We've done the story of, like, the monument itself in the past and the various components of it, but I guess the most fascinating learning about the lives of the people who made Hadrian's Wall what it was, the people who lived along this frontier. This is such an interesting part of Hadrian's Wall story?
- [03:03]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm a small finds archaeologist, you know, a collections curator. I'm not that interested in walls and shapes of buildings. I'm more interested in what happened inside those buildings. Because you can relate to a lot more, can't you? And you know, if you can imagine how life for a normal person like yourself, hopefully I'm normal, you know, then I think it gets you more interested, doesn't it, and gets you wanting to find out more. Whereas if you can't at all place yourself there or imagine life there, you know, it's really difficult to sort of be interested.
- [03:31]
Tristan Hughes
And from the settlements along Hadrian's Wall, do we have quite a rich amount of archaeology surviving, which gives us insights into how these people lived?
- [03:38]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, absolutely. So we get everyday information from inside the forts as well as outside the forts. There's been a lot more work inside the forts. You know, the history of study has been a lot of men, you know, and also it's very influenced by the time that they're working in. So often it's the military that's more interesting. But there have been excavations and more so in more recent years and hopefully going forward into the settlements outside the forts and the. I wouldn't say the non military because they're all part of that wider military community, but they're not, you know, enlisted soldiers.
- [04:08]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, and that's the key thing to highlight straight away, isn't it? It is not just soldiers that lived in this, I guess, ancient militarized zone.
- [04:16]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
No, not at all. You know, people today, if they ever go to Catterick or, you know, anywhere around near Salisbury, the towns there are filled with people rel or providing a service for the army who were living inside the barracks. That's just what Hadrian's Wall was like. As any other sort of frontier on the Roman Empire, it needed that sort of backup to keep it running.
- [04:35]
Tristan Hughes
Well, we're going to explore a day in the life what we know from archaeology and whatever other records we have for people who lived, let's say like the high mark of the Roman Empire in Britain, shall we say, like the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. but beforehand? Let's set the scene a bit with Hadrian's World. Some big questions, first of all, first of all, like quite literally, I mean, how big was Hadrian's World and how long did it sp.
- [04:56]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So it was just about 73 modern miles, but 80 Roman miles. And that 81 is important to understanding how it's constructed. And it Runs from Wallsend, which is just east of Newcastle, all the way to Bowness on Solway on the west coast. So spanning the real narrow bit. If you look at a map of Great Britain and it's unsure quite what height it was along that 80 miles, maybe four and a half meters, we've not got any single section that stands to its full height. We look at, you know, what's remaining and also ancient sources. And every mile, which is why I said the Roman mile is important. There was a mile castle, so simple, you know, it's a mini fort. And in between each mile castle, two turrets, evenly spaced. And that was the original plan. But then partway through building, they changed their mind and added the forts in. So the forts are often the most famous thing, aren't they? You know, house steads up on the hill, or Chester Cavalry fort bed Oswald. Yeah, but they were a secondary decision and quite often some of those mile castles or turrets I just mentioned had to be demolished for the forts to be put in. So you can imagine the curses of the soldiers who are building it, because it's soldiers who are building the wall, not brought in builders. You know, the higher ups have changed their minds, haven't they? And they have to fit that plan.
- [06:10]
Tristan Hughes
And it's always attested, isn't it, the initial building of Hadrian's Wall, at least to that emperor, the Emperor Hadrian, in the early second century AD. And it was only recently that it was the 19. Well, the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian's Wall.
- [06:22]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Right, Yep. So we say, you know, Construction began in 1, 2, 2. Maybe it began in 120. Gonna be controversial here. Does two years matter? And it took maybe around 10 years to. To finish building and then it's occupied for nearly 300 years. So in 2022, you know, we celebrated the wall's birthday. That wasn't the official slogan. I wasn't allowed to choose. It was 1900 years of Hadrian's Wall. Yeah, it was a great sort of moment to reflect and look back. And lots of us, you know, on the wall, English Heritage, New English Heritage and the other organisations who helped look after stretches of the wall, you know, we did celebrations, we did new exhibitions, had events and things. It was great to sort of really, you know, remind everybody what the wall was and what it was there for.
- [07:04]
Tristan Hughes
And, and why do we think another these big questions, why was it built?
- [07:08]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Well, do we have three days?
- [07:11]
Tristan Hughes
We're gonna have to try and summarize into about three minutes, but good luck.
- [07:13]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. So probably no one single reason. Even if Hadrian had one in his head, there were other reasons that were just as important and it probably changed throughout its life. Hadrian is known as a consolidator emperor. You know, he seeds back land, you know, that his immediate predecessor had got. He puts lines in the sand or in the rivers etc. In other parts of the empire. In Britain our line ended up being quite big, quite a statement. It's stone. Is that because there's more trouble? Is that because, you know, he wanted needed to make more of a statement? In Britain? We'll never really know. It's probably a combination of defense propaganda, controlling trade and taxes. You know, running an empire costs a lot of money and if you can control access into and out of your empire of people and goods, it's going to save you or give you a lot of money. And then it also, you know, there is a. There will have been some defensive. Definitely, you know, both physically it stops people moving, but also that sort of, you know, metaphoric oh, there is a barrier. Now we have to think twice about trying to cross that. So it's got multiple layers and also
- [08:18]
Tristan Hughes
that idea, you know, for the people that they've just taken over south of the wall. Right. As you say, a symbol of power. The Romans saying we are now here, we can build things like this beyond your wildest dreams almost with the amount of manpower. You know, we are the top dog now and we are here to stay, I guess.
- [08:31]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. And it doesn't matter that you had some fields that are now south of the wall and some that are north of the wall. Tough luck.
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Tristan Hughes
Well, that being the question, do you think that the building of this wall would have displaced many, it would have affected their day to day lives?
- [08:44]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, absolutely. So most of the bits of wall that have been excavated haven't uncovered, you know, the foundations of a house that was there beforehand. But we know there's occupation in the area along most of the line in a couple of places, particularly Carra Bruff Fort where there's excellent mithraeum. There was evidence of plough marks directly underneath the foundation of the wall. So that's a ploughed field that someone's gone through. But it could well be that your land is split in half. You know, your family live on the north and you live on the south and now you can only go and see them through the gate.
- [09:14]
Tristan Hughes
There would not paying each time to
- [09:16]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
go presumably or, you know, not being allowed to take your weapon or, you know, sheep or cattle not being able to move without paying a tax. And it's not like now when HS2 is going through and you get compensated. I imagine none of that happened.
- [09:30]
Tristan Hughes
But do we think like the crux of those societies that were there before the Romans put this bigger line in the, in the dirt? I guess not really sand in northern England, you know, they were farming communities. They were these small groups of peoples, you know, linked together. We think of the roundhouse idea and all that and that. Should we be imagining those kind of communities?
- [09:47]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yes, absolutely. So it's small nucleated settlements. So maybe, you know, extended family living in one or two roundhouses within maybe an enclosure. And that's what George Joby is one of the famous excavators of, you know, these sorts of settlements up here. But also later on, Nick Hodgson and Tanner Weir archives and museums have found them along sort of the Northumberland coastal plain. And yeah, it's that smaller settlement where you know your neighbors and you might loosely be part of a wide tribe, but there's no large sort of what we would see, urban centers or anything like that.
- [10:17]
Tristan Hughes
Then in come the Roman soldiers, in comes the creation of this militarized zone which is. It's a mile or so south of the wall as well that it goes. So it's quite a large area that Hadrian's Wall 10 takes up when we talk about Hadrian's Wall.
- [10:28]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, so I mean, you've got to go back 50 years actually. The Romans first rock up, you know, in say what we see now as Northumberland in the 70s AD and they've already been putting forts in place there. But then they're carrying further on because the Romans want to take the whole island. But then they wanted to obviously come back and put this line which is a lot more permanent. Yeah, it's not just the wall or even just the wall mile castle's turrets, forts. To the north of the wall is a double ditch. To the south of the wall is what we call the Vallum, which is another big ditch and that potentially could be hundreds of feet sort of wide from the north part of the north ditch, the south part of the Valor the mysterious to sort of COVID And so that's then all a no man's land or a no go zone or. Yeah, you know, you could only be in those places if you had permission or you're part of the military. So it does wipe out a large swathe. You know, the wall itself is only maybe 3,4 meters wide maximum. But it's not actually just that footprint. It's much Bigger. So. Yeah.
- [11:30]
Tristan Hughes
And the soldiers who become stationed along Hadrian's Wall, I've got a feeling they'll probably be quite a list, won't they? They're not just all local Britons or all from the heartlands of Italy, are they?
- [11:41]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
No. So probably neither of those actually. The Romans learned fairly early on in their imperial conquest that you should not station people locally from where you recruited them. The Batavian revolt in the first century went very badly.
- [11:55]
Tristan Hughes
We need to do an episode on that. We've never done one.
- [11:57]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. Because that's local troops who are then being asked to put down a local uprising. And as you can imagine, sympath are divided. So we know that there's British units, you know, units originally based in Britain, stationed elsewhere in the Empire. We also know where lots of the units from Hadrian's War forts came from. None of them were formed in Italy. The officers, you know, the high ranking ones might have been Italian or central Mediterranean because they're coming on basically their career path. They're there for three or five years in one post and that's it. But just as a quick sort of idea, we've got Burd Oswald, which in the west they had Dacians, which is modern day Romania. Yeah. At Karvoron we had potentially contingent of Hamian archers.
- [12:43]
Tristan Hughes
Syria, That's Syria, isn't it? Yeah. And they're well known for their archers, aren't they? Yes.
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Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. At Houseteads we've got Tungrians, they're from the Low Countries in Belgium.
- [12:52]
Tristan Hughes
Okay. Yep.
- [12:53]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
We had other units at houses also from parts of what the Romans would have called Germania. We've got Spaniards from Asturia at Chesters and at Great Chesters again at House there's Frisians, they're from the Netherlands. And then at Vindolanda and Cara Brough we've got Batavians from the Netherlands and then South Shields, which is not on the wall, but it's very much part of the system. There's a potential. They've got Tigris boatmen there.
- [13:15]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, okay.
- [13:16]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
You know the river Tigris. I mean it depends where upon it. But that's Turkey, Syria, Iraq.
- [13:20]
Tristan Hughes
Iraq, yeah.
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Dr. Francis Mackintosh
You know, there's a bruff on Sands, there's a unit of what the Romans would call Moors from North Africa. So there's no Italians wearing skirts and, you know, sandals with no socks, you know, up on the wall. But also there's no units that are, you know, recruited in Britain.
- [13:36]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah.
- [13:37]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
However, there's a big decision to be Made if you're part of the second Ally, Astoria. So the second Cavalry Unit of Asturians that's based at Chesters, how many of them actually came from Astoria by the time they came to Hadrian's Wall? And then that unit is based there for 150 years.
- [13:54]
Tristan Hughes
It's got to be reinforced, doesn't it?
- [13:55]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Are they always waiting, you know, the three months it might take for a letter to get back to Astoria to send up, or are they recruiting locally? And we just don't know these things. But what we do know is the names stay. And, you know, because the names are very important. And quite often traditions associated with the places that those units originally came from still remain as well. So there's some pride in keeping that link, whether or not any of them have ever actually even lived there.
- [14:24]
Tristan Hughes
I mean, even if they might. And then they might marry locally and then their children will then kind of take up the mantle when they grow up. Is that the idea?
- [14:30]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. And I suppose, you know, say, you know, you're from Astoria, I'm a local woman in the village, we marry, our children will be half historian. So it might still be that they still see themselves as being historian, even if they were born in Britain. And we know that soldiering has quite a lot of trades do become hereditary.
- [14:49]
Tristan Hughes
So can we imagine that with these communities, these soldier communities? But of course, much more than just soldiers and their families and so on. Do we think, as time goes on, that they develop quite distinct cultural identities along the wall because of the communities that they become associated with? They're not homogenously Roman as such?
- [15:07]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
No, I would say a. I would say there was no homogenous Roman.
- [15:11]
Tristan Hughes
That's very true.
- [15:12]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Anyway. And that if the alla Astoria had 100 years, say, based in France, they would have one identity, and then when that unit moves up to the wall, their identity would change again. Because I think there is a military sort of frontier identity, and you pick up things from your locale, you know, that affects you particularly, I think, to do with religion, but also you will hold onto traditions probably a lot stronger, more fiercely than you might if you stayed in a region. You know, there's that fact which may well be an urban myth, but, you know, there's more Welsh speakers in Patagonia than there are in Wales now because of a community that moved to Wales in the. When I say the 18th century again,
- [15:55]
Tristan Hughes
you know, the move to Patagonia from Wales.
- [15:57]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Got it. Yeah. And they. There's more Welsh speakers in Patagonia and, you know, you look at immigrant and diaspora groups now that the either version of the language they are still speaking or the traditions they hold on to are from when that group left their homeland. You know, whereas in the home, things have moved on and changed. You know, I've got a friend who's, you know, Polish, and she said, you know, we keep some of the traditions that aren't happening now at home, but because that's what I had when I grew up in Poland. And I think that's how we should look at these people who've moved to Hadrian's Wall. They might spend their entire career and their whole life at, you know, Hadrian's Wall, and they're gonna cling onto the traditions that mean something to them and then pass that on to their generation. So at Housesteads and at Berd also, where we know the Frisian units were found, we have very specific pottery that is only then found back in Frisia.
- [16:47]
Tristan Hughes
How interesting. Okay, so that really does endure. They keep that up on that.
- [16:51]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. Vivian Swan did some really interesting work on North African pottery and this casserole dish that's only found in North Africa. And that's because they're potentially continuing to cook in the way that they're used to.
- [17:05]
Tristan Hughes
Well, shall we now focus in on a day in the life of a man or a woman, quite frankly, on Hadrian's Wall, either a soldier or soldier's wife or family, and get more of an insight what we know from archaeology. We've mentioned the Asturias contingent already from Chesters. So should we maybe just use them as an example? Because it's lots of archaeology from Chesters as well, to learn more about it. So let's kick off a day. Let's say it's the end of the second century A.D. or sometime around that. Do we have any idea about the morning routine of a soldier or their family? Do we know when they would wake up, where they would be sleeping? What do we know about that?
- [17:38]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So if we're into the second century, the family are not living with the soldier.
- [17:42]
Tristan Hughes
Okay.
- [17:43]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
You are not legally allowed to marry at that point. It's not until 2 11ish. I can't remember. There's one date where they.
- [17:50]
Tristan Hughes
Septimius severance time, isn't it? Yes.
- [17:52]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
One decree gives them the right to citizenship, doesn't it, for everybody?
- [17:55]
Tristan Hughes
And one is the illegal or the edict of Caracalla.
- [17:57]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
That's the citizenship. There you go. Yeah. Do me a civilization. You can legally marry. They were definitely all married because we see diplomas that they get when they've, you know, retired from 25 years and they've got wives and children named but they would be living separately. So if we're in Chester's cavalrymen inside the forts, family outside. So let's go soldier first. He's sharing a room with two other men because they're part of a termer which is a different sort of division of unit than if you're in an infantry one and they're in one room and the room next door, they're three horses.
- [18:28]
Tristan Hughes
Look at the horses in the same room, don't you? Yes.
- [18:30]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
There are no stables that we can find at any cavalry forts. And maybe they've got grooms as well on the, you know, we think maybe the sort of an equivalent of a hayloff. So the first thing you'd be doing is getting up and feeding your horses. I imagine it also depend on what your duties were that day. Were you on shift last night, you know, were you on night patrol duty, etc. But you'd be seen to your horse because your horse is both your armor because it's driving you, it's your weapon. But it's also a big investment, you know, it would be balanced against their sort of pay. So feed the horse, water the horse, maybe muck out, out. We presume they have sort of grazing, you know, areas outside. Maybe take them out for an exercise and then the men have got to think about breakfast. And there is no mess hall in a fort really. There is no catering unit. You know, if you think of a film set or if you think of a modern day army, there's no catering corps. So they would be feeding themselves from rations and they wouldn't be getting a red, you know, the equivalent of ready meal. They don't even get flour, they get given grain. So we imagine that the three men, or maybe with their neighbor, with the next three next door, they're working together. There's been a fair bit of work done. Alex Croomers worked out how long it would take to grind enough grain for one person's daily and it's about half an hour. So you're having to grind for half an hour to make yourself enough flour to make either bread or a cake or you know, some sort of pottage or things. And so they think that in an infantry unit where it's eight men per group to make up the 18th century, you'd probably be taking turns because I
- [20:02]
Tristan Hughes
guess this is different because if you think of like a Roman army or an ancient army, if you're thinking of a field army, they'll be given rations for X days on campaign. But of course this is a different setting. This is where they are every day of the year if they're a garrison kind of thing. So I didn't realize that of course, the making of your own food, how much time in the day that would have entailed and do we know much about where those cooking places would have been?
- [20:24]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yep. So we see quite often quernstone. So the small stones that you use to grind your grain, you know, they're found often in barrack rooms, particularly at Chester's. There's bred up ovens built into the walls of the fort. So if you think of the fort playing card shape, all your buildings are inside, but there's always a bit of a gap around the edge, you know, a wall space for people to walk around. And on the interior wall of the fort wall there's bread ovens. You know, you'd have them further away because initially barracks might be made of wood, but even if they're mostly of stone, you don't want anything burning, you know, nearby. So that maybe be, I don't know, one oven and everyone would have to take turns using it because you're not going to fill in even a small oven with, you know, even one term of 32 men's probably rations. But would say even on a campaign they're not given food. I think no, they're given rations as in they're given the basics but they're still gonna have to make it themselves. So. Yeah, so it's not that they get extra help. Yeah, okay. But you wouldn't spend half an hour grinding your grain. You'd have, you'd do something different probably and make it. Maybe have done some prep before you went.
- [21:25]
Tristan Hughes
And do you think the soldiers would have had servants to help in the fort for any of that stuff?
- [21:30]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
They might have had slaves. So we don't talk about servants. Yeah, it would be slaves. But yes, there is evidence that even a equivalent of the squaddie could have afforded a slave. And it is thought that the cavalrymen, so cavalrymen are better paid than infantrymen because they've got extra skills, but presumably they've also got extra expenses. And there's definitely thoughts that they would have had grooms to help them with the horses and they, those grooms are likely to have been slaves. At Corbridge we have a piece of Samian, the red shiny pottery that looks like a flower pot. It's a bit of a cup and it's Got a graffiti on, so you know, an ownership name, and it says Nico, slave of. So he's identified himself as that. So maybe yes, they would. Their slaves would be doing the cooking or the looking after the horses and
- [22:12]
Tristan Hughes
the fetching of water. We talked about food early on, but do we know much about the fetching of water and liquid? I mean, if it's not water, I guess milk from the local cows or anything like that. Do we know about that?
- [22:21]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So at Chester's we have a very nice well right in the center of the headquarters building, which is very close to the really nice stone phallus, you know. And forts needed to have everything they needed inside in case they were being besieged. So there would always be a water source. Yeah, inside. And you're gonna need a lot of water, particularly if you've got horses to feed. At Housesteads, we've got some great tanks that are taking with the gravity, so they're in the bottom corner of the fort. And catching that water again, getting water would be a huge task. You'd be constantly having to make sure you. You've got enough water and your horses. But also you need water for not cleaning yourself because you'd be going to the bath into about later, but probably cleaning your armor.
- [23:04]
Tristan Hughes
And so you mentioned how we put the scenario at the end of the second century in this particular case, where in the case of the cavalry at Chester's, three men, three horses in a barrack block. But you mentioned that after that decree that soldiers could marry. Do we see that reflected in the archaeology at all that the barrack blocks change, I guess, for both infantry and cavalry, that they could have a family with them.
- [23:28]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So there's not been any archaeological investigation that proves that the barracks at Chesters and so war's end is the one that's been really properly excavated. Much better actually than Chesters, which is the 19th century. But at Halsteads, that's our real sort of window into to what happens in the barracks in the 4th century. So they have excavated what's the north eastern quadrant. It's two rows of barracks and they originally are a long one long building with just dividing walls in the middle with eight men in each room. And then the fourth century they changed to being small individual buildings. They get called chalet barracks because Butlins was very popular when they were being excavated in the 70s and 80s. But, you know, there's these little ones, there's the tiniest gap in between them, I imagine. You know, you couldn't fit along there. Just get rubbish and rats in there, but you as a separ. Separate space. And also the civilian settlements around the outside. The forts seem to go out of use in the 4th century. Not everywhere, not exclusively. And more work is being done at the moment about whether they get reoccupied later. But there is a thought that by the 4th century, the number of soldiers living on the wall has reduced because troops are always being recalled for bigger problems elsewhere in the Empire. Obviously, soldiers are allowed to marry. And so perhaps the change that we see at Halsteads, which could be elsewhere and we've just not looked at it or found it properly yet, is that a soldier's family would move in with them and that's why they move to these individual buildings. But it's still sort of a lot of things that we don't know. You know, the higher up archaeology is in the ground, the later it is. And that means the later it is means it's more at risk for erosion. But also it's usually the first thing that's been excavated. And while we had some great work done in the 19th century, wasn't to the same standard, so a lot of 4th century material, which will be a lot more ephemeral and harder to sort of understand was, you know, sort of taken away by early excavators who didn't recognise what they were looking at. And that's why. So the work at Houseteads and then later as well, at Bird Oswald has been really key because we haven't got those later layers.
- [25:29]
Tristan Hughes
I just love the idea. It's always in my mind now, ever since going to Vindolanda and learning about that and seeing that wall of shoes they have of all sizes, just thinking that maybe in those later centuries, kind of walking out of the barrack blocks, seeing the soldiers huddled around stuff like their garrison duties, but also potentially seeing, you know, two children running around playing or like a woman with. With clothing or whatever like that. It's, it's, it's fascinating to kind of get that insight into a wall community as well, at the same time as just the soldiers from the archaeology.
- [25:59]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Well, so that wall of shoes at Vindolanda, they're all late first, early second century, because that's where they've got their waterlogged layers. So if you imagine the sort of range of people living there when it was supposedly solely a military space and, you know, not that it was, we know, but once sort of the fort walls have opened even More in the 4th century, the change in the people who are inside the fort would be Even. Yeah, even more marked. And it's really interesting because people think about Hadrian's WALL and imagine 300 years ago from today, 1725, how different life was and obviously when we're in a period where technology and things have changed a lot. But the soldiers, you know, who first went there in 1, 2, 2, how different their life might have been to those who were there in 380 and it's a huge change in it, so we should expect it's a complicated situation and that the guys in 380 wouldn't have recognized what it was like or, you know, maybe they thought they had it better or worse. You know, there's always going to be complaints, aren't there?
- [26:58]
Tristan Hughes
What if we kind of stick with like, you know, that turn of the third century, then if we were walking through a place like Chester's woken up, up, got the water done, the food, what types of clothing do you think we'd see? Both, like the, the armor of soldiers but also the everyday clothing.
- [27:13]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So, you know, this is traditional, isn't there? If you sort of ask most people to picture a Roman soldier or Google it often you see what is a Mediterranean, Central Mediterranean legionary soldier. So he's got that sort of leather skirt, hasn't he's got those sandals might be laced all the way up to his knees.
- [27:26]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, no socks.
- [27:27]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, no socks. Red tunic, you know, bare arms, bare legs, you know, that's not what we're seeing here. The Romans were not stupid, the army was not stupid. They knew they needed to keep their soldiers appropriately clothed. There would have been the equivalent of sort of leg coverings. I don't know if we probably can call them trousers, coloured trousers. They would have worn socks. We know that, you know, one of the Lyndolander tablets that's famous is asking for socks, isn't it? One of the exports from Britain was the Beerus Britannicus, a woolen hooded cloak. And obviously wool in its natural form is waterproof. Got evidence of layers of things because you need to keep warm, you need to keep dry. There'd be lots of browns and very muted colours because it'd either be the natural color of the fabric or you'd have a very simple dye. And they were wearing what in the Latin ends up being translated as sandals, but they're not open toed, you know, sandals, they'd be laced fairly tight. And we know there was also sort of boots and things. It's appropriate to the weather that they're in and they will have adapted and adopted you know, clothing and techniques from the rest of the parts of the empire or the provinces that became part of the empire after conquest.
- [28:34]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, no, exactly. That old Roman idea that anyone who wears trousers are barbarians is like, well, as soon as you get into northern England and you experience a winter here, you're going to be praying for trousers at the very least. Right, so.
- [28:44]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Exactly. You know, there's lots of, you know, what we would call, you know. No, are we sort of, I know, an urban myth. You know, the Romans were all clean shaven and they all did this and they all did that. But actually that's someone who lived in Italy or, you know, maybe southern Spain did. But they're practical. They're not going to let their soldiers start, get ill or, you know, lose fingers and toes through frostbite because, you know, or equivalent of sort of trench foot because they're not clothing them properly.
- [29:05]
Tristan Hughes
Could you still imagine like the, the prefect or the chief administrators at the, at one of the forts maybe wearing the equivalent of a toga or something more, I guess in the Roman mindset, prestigious to symbolize their rank.
- [29:18]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. So, you know, nowadays the modern British army and even, I suppose going back probably a couple hundred years, there's a uniform, isn't there? And it's very clear always what rank you are from what you're weari There wasn't so much a uniform in the Roman army. There was this conception initially that lorica segmentat, the big plated armor, which again, if you did a little Google, you would probably think as a typical Roman, that's supposed to only be the legionary soldiers who are the citizen ones who are higher paid. And then the auxiliaries either wear chain or scale armor. And it might be that the officers have either the cuirass, which is like a full body plate or you know, lorica. But also they'd just be wearing finer clothes. So it might be finer fabrics in particular, you know, the centurions and others would have specifically specific plumes on their helmets. There wasn't quite many occasions where you'd wear a toga, but you might wear finer clothes, more brightly colored, for example, because there is no uniform, the sort of foot soldiers or the, you know, the equivalent of the squadies. They'd get the basic tunics and an armor, but you could then accessorize it yourself. You know, when we talk about the soldier's belt and other things like that being very personal.
- [30:21]
Tristan Hughes
The reason I ask also is because it's only getting many of these forts. You get the, the commander's house. So you get the headquarters, you get the commander's house and you get the granaries in the middle of the fort. And when the commander's house sometimes, did we see it at housestate, it almost comes very much an Italian feel to it, a villa feel to it.
- [30:36]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah.
- [30:36]
Tristan Hughes
So do we get a sense that maybe if you're walking through somewhere like Chesters at the turn of the third century, you might be able to spot who was like the commander's wife or the commander's family because they might look a bit, you know, a bit more well cared for or something like that.
- [30:50]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, definitely. You know, a commanding officer lives in a house that is basically a miniature version of a big courtyard house that you'd find in the Mediterranean, you know. And we saw at Chester's, you know, it's got underfloor heating, you know, there's painted wall plaster house as well. And at houses, so it's a standard thing, you know, that you would have. And so the soldier, sort of, the lowly soldier will probably just have the same tune that he wears all the time. Whereas I imagine the cunning officer and his wife, they'd be having much nicer clothes. And the soldier would have off duty clothes compared to, you know, his sort of soldier clothes. Yes, and they would be much higher quality, you know, and the women are wearing what we might call like a stoler. So it's, you know, a long sort of draped equivalent, I suppose, of a dress, you know, and it'd be tied in at the waist, it might have broaches at the shoulders and maybe on the sleeves. You know, there's the jewelry as well, would, you know, really mark them out. And for women it's the hairstyles because you've got to have money and time and probably someone to do your hair into a fancy do. And so, you know, when we start to see lots of hairpins or other sort of dress accessories, you know, that indicates, indicates it's presence of women rather than just men.
- [31:54]
Tristan Hughes
Isn't there a big hairstyle shift in the early third century when an empress comes up to Hadrian's Wall? Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus. Do you think that becomes a trend along Hadrian's Wall?
- [32:03]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, so Septumius Severus brings his wife and the two sons, doesn't he? You know, they come and set up court and there's a lot more coinage around. Julie Dominer's image is on those coins.
- [32:12]
Tristan Hughes
And this is for, just say this were a big invasion into Scotland at the time.
- [32:15]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. You know, so he comes through the wall. We always tell we probably pass through Corbridge because that's the main route north. And anyone who wants to be fashionable or wants to curry favor will want to have the same hairstyle as the imperial household. So in York in particular, where she's based, gonna see people who are wanting to come to because basically the court moves, doesn't it? It's like when Henry VIII goes on his progress and things. So, yes, we see hairstyles change in the third century and in the first and second century. Hairpins are really fancy, particularly on the end bit that you see that sticks out of the hair. Whereas later in the third century country, they're plainer. Because actually the thing that you want to look at is the hairstyle and the design. And it's all these, you know, intricate plaits and. But there's no hairspray and there's no hair clips. So it's held in place by sort of beeswax and animal fat. And, you know, the beeswax boy smells okay, but animal fat. Yeah.
- [33:07]
Tristan Hughes
Well, moving on. You mentioned also that the soldier were on duty, so their armor. And you mentioned also earlier know, Cher and scale armor. Is that the types of armor that we should be imagining for people who were either cavalrymen or who are living either as infantry or cavalry, serving as infantry or cavalry on any fort along Hadrian's War?
- [33:27]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yes. So this lorica segmentata, or segmented arm, which looks like big plates, a bit like, you know, an armadillo. Traditionally that was thought to only be for legionaries. We know now it's not quite the case, but it was going out of use as we move into the time when Hadrian's Wall is active. And so, yeah, it's going to be scale armor or chain armor or mail armor. Mike Bishop will not let me call it chain mail. That is not the correct term. And that is made in a sort of mass production way. So I could make loads and loads and loads of rings. I didn't have no skill. But then you'd be the trained armorer who would then take all my rings and make it into the shape. And the same with the scales. Whereas a loric seguentata, you need to be skilled to make all of that. So you would have in a workshop, lots of people making the scales, making the rings, depending on what you're doing. And then you' need less skilled than a, you know, a triangle. And the higher up you go, that's where the skill is and they are the ones that construct it. So it takes a lot of time, a lot of it is unskilled and if you make it right, hopefully if a small section gets broken, you can place just that section and sometimes you do see repairs in this chain and the scale armor. But if you talk to reenactors, takes a lot of looking after.
- [34:39]
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- [36:11]
Tristan Hughes
Well, if we were first of all, let's say, a routine day in the life of a soldier, we can focus on cavalry to start with the Asturias and then we can look at infantry as well. But do we know much about the routine of a soldier if they were on duty that day? Do we know much about that?
- [36:26]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
That I'd like to say we do
- [36:28]
Tristan Hughes
shift on the wall.
- [36:29]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, we, yeah, we really don't. The glimpses we get off on the Vindland tablets where they have, you know, what we might see as the register, you know, or the roster for the day where it talks about this many men out on patrol or this many men out escorting the governor doing something, you know, and then we, you can start to extrapolate and look at other records, particularly in Egypt where, you know, sort of Vindalanda, it's the wet conditions allowed things to, to survive. Egypt, it's the dry. And we imagine, you know, particularly in an infantry barracks where eight men are sharing a small space, we imagine they're going to be split into shifts because they've tried all sorts of configurations about how the bunks would work and how you would all sleep. And so, you know, imagine that there'd be, I don't know, maybe there's three shifts of eight hours or two of 12. And, you know, you might be on guard duty at the gates. You know, there's four gates every fort, not more. Chess is the six, maybe. And we know. We think we know that was one fort. They seem to be sort of responsible for a section of the wall either side of them, including the Mile castles and the turrets. So some of your troops might be stationed there at Mile Castles, they could sleep over. You know, it's not. Not a sleepover. But, you know, because there's often Barrett buildings at turrets, we think they're just there for the day and then swap out. Okay, maybe you are going to escort a grain shipment, you know, into the fort or out of the fort if it's going somewhere else. Maybe you've been sent to escort, you know, a governor who's come in to visit.
- [37:50]
Tristan Hughes
And do you think escort missions would be a big part actually of these garrisons once in a while?
- [37:55]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
I think it depends. Yeah. I think it depends what's going on in the area, doesn't it? You know, there's also going to be patrol duties, you know, just going to check that no one south or north of the Wall is causing any trouble. Presence and visible presence is about, you know, sort of reminding everyone we're there and we're in charge. Every now and then, you know, there would be some fighting, so you're gonna have to be kept fit. So we're presuming they have regular training.
- [38:16]
Tristan Hughes
Well, yeah, that's another question. Do we know, you know, training yards about how I get not. Not exercises as such, but, yeah, drill, I guess.
- [38:24]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
We don't know loads, so we know quite a bit about how you get trained to become a soldier. At the beginning, there's sort of manuals on how to train a soldier as they enter the army. We've got the Hippica Gymnasia, which is a text, and it's about. It's basically a bit of a show for the cavalry to put on and show all the moves they can do with the horses. But presumably that would be something you would train for. A bit like our Horse Guards parade now, because it's showing that how one you are with the horse and the maneuvers you can do. They must have been doing regular training, because otherwise, if all you're doing is standing On a wall walking, you know, you're gonna not be fit. And although the wall isn't overrun very much, even if you believe all the sources that say we were overrun, there's going to be basic training. So you'd imagine there's a routine and, you know, every three days you're on, I don't know, sword practice or, you know, a lot of it. We would have to sort of guess, but you would guess based on how, you know, the army works. And at Bird Oswald, they found a building that they have identified as a training hall, an indoor one, because, I mean, you're gonna. Soldiers need to be used to going out in the bad weather, but equally, if you've got covered, you know, space, then that's probably better because if your weapons and your armor gets wet unnecessarily, it just adds more time to the care of them. So, you know, maybe you could do some of your indoor exercises.
- [39:41]
Tristan Hughes
So how have they been able to identify it as a training hall? Have they found plastic. Well, not plastic straw dummies on the ground or anything like that?
- [39:48]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
I would say, and I'm a bit cheeky because obviously I've stood a long time to get to this position, but a lot of archaeology, it's kind of like pairs. So you find something and you've either seen it before or someone else has seen it before, and you're looking at other places where there's similar structures or other places they're similar objects and working out. And so from the layout of the building where it is in the fort, looking at other examples, the most likely is it's a training hall and it's the same house as we have a hospital building in. It wasn't because we found, you know, a thing that says the doctor's in and, you know, inscribed on the door. It's looking at what is most likely and what similar. What are the things that the army might need and what can we see in other forts across the Empire And Bird Oswald, you know, Tony Wilmott found that there because it's more permanent. So the record, you know, it remained in the record. There'd be similar structures elsewhere, you know, as well as outside sort of marching grounds and things. But it's very easy to say, oh, that's a flat bit of ground outside the fort. Yeah, that's probably where they'd marched and the training. Like, what's that thought that's like on the.
- [40:48]
Tristan Hughes
In the hard knots?
- [40:49]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah.
- [40:49]
Tristan Hughes
I was literally, you know, what I was actually gonna say I went to hard Knock Roman fort in the Lake District a few months ago. And like beautiful. And then there's that large, like flat plane which people say that's the parade ground.
- [41:00]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
It's a bit of flat ground, isn't it? You know, I'm sure they did it, they use it for that. But whether they, you know, designated the training ground, you know, and it's the same with people are always desperate to find equivalents of amphitheaters only once there's a hollow in the ground. So I like being an archaeologist and studying the wall because there's lots we know and there's lots we don't know. But we can kind of join the gap with them sometimes by making, you know, educated suggestions based on our evidence and our understanding of people and society.
- [41:27]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, absolutely right. So I mean, going back to the, the duties of a soldier. So you mentioned kind of being on guard on the wall if he did have a walkway, presumably it did have a walkway. That's another big debate.
- [41:38]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Oh, it's a whole other day. I'm not putting any money on anyone. I don't want to, you know, get taken out on the way home.
- [41:43]
Tristan Hughes
Okay. Being on guard, maybe on patrols, maybe doing escort missions, which is also really interesting given that the soldiers were involved in the building of Hadrian's Wall itself. If there was a case where a part of Hadrian's Wall had fallen down, can we presume that a team of soldiers from one of the forts, whether you're a cavalry or infantry, would be sent out to help rebuild the wall at that part?
- [42:03]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, absolutely. So obviously the wall was built by the legionary troops, not the guys who station on it, which is the auxiliary troops. But yes, you would be expected to do repairs and we see that. So, you know, Hadrian's Wall, we say it's being built about 122, Hadrian dies. 138 Antoninus Pius comes in and like, nope, we'll go further north, you know, and they build the Antonine Wall. And when they come back from the antonine wall, about 160ish, there's lots of repairs along Hadrian's Wall, basically because it's been left unattended. You know, maybe just a skeleton or caretaker crew on there. And there's loads of inscriptions saying we've fixed this. And that's the soldiers who are also based there, you know, they're expected to do everything. They're that the army is meant to be a self sufficient unit and it might be that there's more skilled I don't know bricklayers in one unit than another but they should be able to function as that unit on their own to do everything they need which is get food, keep their fort safe both from outsiders and from, you know, it falling down.
- [42:56]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah. So the day goes on and let's say you finish your shift at the end of the day you want to eat once again it's dinner time. Can we imagine that the almost said that this the forbidden R word, the rations word again. But can we imagine that the food is similar to at the beginning of the day kind of making bread from flour? Or do we have any ideas that there was more substantial food available that they ate in, you know, not metals as you said there were metals, but maybe a more communal meal in the evening. Any idea around that?
- [43:22]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
We have no evidence that they're sitting down and eating communally. That's what happens in the pre Roman period. So what we call the Iron Age. There's lots of large big serving dishes. The houses also the, you know, big bowls, one pot, you know, it's a one pot meal. So everyone wants now isn't it that's over the fire and people eat from the. That the Romans come in and it goes to individual dining. People are interested. Hillary calls from some excellent work on dining and the how you can see the change in consumption by the stuff they're eating off. So the plates and the crockery and so no, each soldier probably has his own little beaker, his own cup or bowl. They would also have their own pan. You know, if you looked and we could do a whole thing about how much a soldier has to carry, you know, if it's his kit, it might be communal that they sit together which is not communal dining. And we think so the eight men in a. It's called a contubernium. They're the ones that march together. They you know, have a tent together, they stay in their barrack. They're probably communal dining in some way.
- [44:19]
Tristan Hughes
This is the infantry.
- [44:21]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So then you know, an eight sort of makes sense but you know, it's three in the term whether they band together because three is a bit different. But no, it's really interesting. We can see there's not that sort of thing and I think you can call it rations but it's just the food stuffs rather than stuff, you know. So they would have still seen it as rations or the equivalent of. But yeah, they're not given getting given a meal. It's the means to make a meal. Yeah.
- [44:45]
Tristan Hughes
And so how Would the supplies, whether it is just, you know, the wheat or supplies for the wall and maintaining the wall and so on. How would supplies reach a fort on Hadrian's Wall? Do we know much about that logistics system that was, you know, behind it? Or what would you see. Would you see pack animals coming in to and from. From the Force and so on?
- [45:04]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, definitely. So we talked at the very beginning, didn't we, about what the wall was? And it was the wall with this wide swathe of land that was bordered by two ditches and south of the wall, but inside the military zone was what is called the military road, military way. And that's kept open and running for communication, but also trade. And then there's other roads. So Deer street goes all the way from York and it goes past many forts, comes up through Corbidge, hits Hadrian's Wall at the port gate, and then carries on north to the sort of outpost forts and. And these roads are maintained. We've got in the Vindolander tablets again, things talking about supplies coming in by cart and coming to Corbridge, going to collect it at Corbridge. Corbridge seems to be a bit of a point, but transport by water is always cheaper and quicker in the Roman period. This is excellent resource online called Orbis, where you can have a look. You can do point to point and see how much. How long it would take and what it would cost with the different means of transport. But South Shields, we've mentioned, is on the coast, on the Tyne. Fairly large ships could come up the east coast, dock at South Shields, things could be offloaded into South Shields and put onto smaller boats. And then we've got the tine, haven't we? You know, it's a huge shipping route now, but it would have been then. And there's not been any boats, Roman boats found in Northumberland, but in the Netherlands, the Low Countries, they found quite a lot because again, of the soil conditions. And their barges are very shallow.
- [46:25]
Tristan Hughes
Well, yeah, well, shallow bottoms.
- [46:26]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, very shallow bottom. You know, hardly any sort of depth in the water. So when you have boats that. It makes you think again about how navigable the river is and how far, because you could move things that way. So transport is key. Often the transport is more expensive than the thing itself, which is. Changes, isn't it, with certain items today? And things will be coming and going all the time. An army marches on its stomach. That's a modern phrase, but that still
- [46:50]
Tristan Hughes
an army garrison's on its stomach at the same time.
- [46:52]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Exactly. You know, and it Would have been vital that the soldiers are fed as vital as they're being paid, you know, and money's also got to come in. And so, yeah, things are coming from all over you. You know, we are at the northwestern edges of the empire, you know, da, da, da. But we are not out in the sticks. They are well connected. They are getting the things they need and if they can get it locally, they will. So they will take tax off people in grain or purchase more grain. Same with, you know, livestock. There's a really interesting project based out carved. If it's coming to an end, which is looking at cattle and the cattle that are found in the fort Sanhedrins will born. Are they growing up locally or are they being brought in? And they're doing that with isotopes. And so we're starting now with science to get more of an understanding of how far foods have to travel. You know, certain things, olive oil, wine, garum, you know, the fermented fish sauce. That's going to have to travel quite far. But if you'll get things locally, you would, because it's cheaper and quicker.
- [47:48]
Tristan Hughes
It's just one of those other amazing things of imagining a day in the life of Hadrian's Wall is, you know, you'd see the soldiers, you see their wives and children and so on, but you would also see lots of donkeys, mules, horse and carts coming to and from the granary or wherever. Or as you say, barges as well. The. The river right next to Chesters as an example, does that ultimately connect to the River Tyne?
- [48:08]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yes. So the river at Chesters is the North Tyne and it's one of the tributaries that in is into the tine. So whether or not that was navigable, I mean, in the summer now, no way is it navigable. But in the winter it's high, you know, and you can get canoes along. Why could you not get shallow drafted, you know, barges in? Because it's smoother sailing than going along a road. So we do need to think about all these things and also think about how the river courses might have changed at Bird Oswald, the river there, you know, we know that's changing, but how far was that navigable and how did that help with supplies at the fort?
- [48:41]
Tristan Hughes
Very interesting. Okay, leisure time. We've talked about shifts and food and it's not just the soldiers and getting a sense of that. But of course, once you've done all of that and you need to kill time, what sorts of activities were available for someone who was based at a place like Chester's possibilities are endless.
- [49:04]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So it depends if you've got a pass to leave the fort. We don't know whether you had to have a pass to leave the fort, you know, but that's one suggestion. If you couldn't, if you stayed in the fort. There's gaming boards found all over fort.
- [49:15]
Tristan Hughes
Gaming boards. This is one of the best parts of Roman archaeology. Gaming boards.
- [49:19]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. You know, and dice and counter and knuckle bones. And they genuinely were actual knuckle bones, you know, they're not little toy pieces that we make today. Gambling is, you know, quite a big thing. They're found, really interesting. Lindsay Elson Jones did a study of what's found in Mile castles. There's a lot of gaming boards in Mile Castles because imagine you're quite bored when you're on sentry duty there. If you're allowed out of the fort, you're in the civilian settlement or the extramural settlement or whatever, you know, you want to call it there, where there'd be taverns, you know, with all the things that they might offer there, which is probably more gambling, you know, know, food, alcohol, maybe ladies, maybe boys, depending on what you want. And then there's. There'd be other things, there'd be shops. Maybe your family is there and you want to go and see them. Maybe you're trying to make a bit extra money and you're also trading and you're, you know, you've got shares in one of the pottery shops in this town and so that's what you're doing elsewhere. You could go hunting. There's a lovely altar at Bed Oswald that's been dedicated by the venatores of Banner. So Banner is a Roman name. Hunting would be a way to supplement your food.
- [50:20]
Tristan Hughes
So deer, we thinking, or boar or both.
- [50:23]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. Rabbits.
- [50:24]
Tristan Hughes
Fishing.
- [50:24]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, they definitely go fishing. There's loch. So it's not the loch lots, it's L O U G H up here, but you know, that. Supplement your diet or your pay. Yeah. So a fair few things. Yeah.
- [50:36]
Tristan Hughes
And any amphitheaters in the area? Obviously we've got a couple near. Well, there's Tremontium, isn't there? So there's an amphitheater even further north.
- [50:42]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah.
- [50:43]
Tristan Hughes
So we know that they did build amphitheater theatres in this area of Britain. Any evidence for one along Hadrian's Wall?
- [50:48]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
There's not one so far. The closest is something near Bird Oswald that people are desperate to say is. And. But Tony Wilmot, you know, who's the expert, is not convinced. But Equally it's a circular depression that could well have been used for people to sit around and be entertained by the plays or gladiators or things like that. One of the recent finds that I've been working on is a little knife handle in the shape of a gladiator that was found in the River Tyne at Corbridge. You know, so gladiators are across the world and they're, you know, a form of entertainment. Just because we haven't found a really nice, I would say to say the one at Richborough is, you know, fantastic doesn't mean there's not temporary structures that then leave no footprint. You know, maybe there's a traveling, I don't know, you know, show of either actors or gladiators or, or other things and you know, we have pop up shows now, don't we? And they leave no physical trace afterwards.
- [51:35]
Tristan Hughes
And of course we should mention, because you mentioned them earlier as well, well, the baths, that's another pleasure that they can have without. If they, let's say hypothetically they don't have a pass to leave one of the forts, they will have the bars to go and relax.
- [51:47]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Well, baths are not normally inside the fort.
- [51:49]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, so even just to go down to the river because I'm thinking Chesters is right next to them.
- [51:53]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, but it's outside the fort, isn't it? And if every gate is guarded, you know, we, these are the intricacies. We don't know. Every gate presumably was guarded. Yeah, and you may be you don't need to pass to get out. Maybe you just need the password, particularly if you go into the bathhouse. But no, because the bath house is not something you would need in a scene age. So if you think about what's in the four but you know, and the bath house is not, it's not a luxury that is an essential. An essential is, you know, it's part of Roman life. Soldiers would be expecting that, you know, and we don't know did they go once a week again, that sort of thing. We don't know. But it was seen as a real essential part of Roman life. You know, there's olive oil, there's wine, you know, and bats. And bathing. And bathing isn't just going to get clean. It's a social occasion. You know, you go and you sit with your fellow soldiers and particularly the ones that we know about say in Rome, you know, that's where business deals are done, isn't it? And gossip is heard and things like
- [52:46]
Tristan Hughes
that, where you vent as well if need be. No, if your commander or something like that.
- [52:49]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yes. Doesn't need to check, he's not next door.
- [52:52]
Tristan Hughes
I must also ask though about. Because I found this very interesting. We've actually talked about one interesting example of this in the past. Crime and Punishment. Let's say you went down to the local town and you like for a lot of drinks or whatever. You get into an argument, you've. You've done badly at gambling or whatever and it's broken out into a broad and maybe there's even been a murder or something like that. Do we know anything about that? If things get a bit too out of hand.
- [53:16]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So there are sort of bits of evidence, not upon Hayden's world but elsewhere of sort of civilians complaining about soldiers bad behavior and trying to go to their, you know, their officers and saying, know centurion so and so beat me, blah, blah, blah, you know, and the commanding officer would have to try and sort it out. But I don't think there's much, probably much redress if a, if a soldier is not good towards a civilian, you've probably not got much of a chance. I imagine there's a lot of brawling. The famous one that, you know, we have at Halstead. So there's a tavern or what we've identified as a tavern basically two doors down from the south gate of the fort, which when they excavated there was two bodies found buried under the floor. Floor. Now it is illegal or it was illegal to bury somebody within the boundaries of a settlement. So immediately that's a bit suspicious. You know, they have to be outside of the, the boundaries of the settlement. You know, they're underneath the floor. Also a bit weird, you know, it's not like you've been, you know, buried your dog in the back garden or something and then one of them had a dagger in the ribs.
- [54:13]
Tristan Hughes
Oh yeah, that's quite. Yeah, that's quite big.
- [54:14]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. So it's, you know, what we cheekily call the murder house. You know, what's going on in there? I mean you'd have thought even with the smells of sort of the ancient world, the smells of two bodies might have raised something. But no, we, we have no idea. One's a man, one's a woman. We think need to get sort of Osteo to double check that nowadays. But yeah, what's going on there? Who knows? I mean you've got say at House Studs when It's fully garrisoned, 800 men who are trained to fight, you know, haven't really got anywhere to go. There's going to be trouble, isn't there? I think, and. Yeah, yeah.
- [54:47]
Tristan Hughes
And do we have any examples then, like, of health care then? For instance, if you were living in a fort at that time, if there was, you know, someone got injured for one reason or another, was there the equivalent of a hospital they could go to? They could call 1x1x1x, yeah.
- [55:02]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So at Housesteads, we've got a building that we've been identified as a hospital. It's the only one along the wall. But each unit would have had a medicus and would have had orderlies and we find medical equipment at all the sites. We've got lots of lovely ones at Corbridge, although some of them are a little bit gruesome when you start to think they don't. They performed cataract operations.
- [55:20]
Tristan Hughes
Oh, God, the Roman eye surgery stuff is horrific.
- [55:23]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah, yeah. You know, there's lots of probes and long things and I think, particularly men, there's quite a few listed, you know, those. But medicine is very bound up with what we would now see as magic and religion. And so there's Asclepius, you know, the God of healthcare, and his serpent. That's still, you know, symbol of pharmacies, isn't it, now? And, you know, amber and jet and other sort of. Sort of specific sort of minerals had these magical properties. Maybe they were electrostatic and they were thought to do, you know.
- [55:54]
Tristan Hughes
So you might be jet as well, so.
- [55:56]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Quite exactly the jet. Yeah. You know, jet is electrostatic, so it's thought to have magical properties. So you might go and see a doctor, but you might also make an offering to Asclepius and you might also. Greek is often used in magical texts. And so, you know, you make an incantation in Greek over something. I think the soldiers would have had fairly good medical care for the time. And the Romans understood the basics. It, you know, they understood that stagnant water wasn't good, so you need to keep your water moving and keep it fresh. They did understand about fresh air, obviously they didn't understand about germs passing. And, you know, all their tanks are lined with lead. There's lots of lead water pipes. You know, let makeup. If I was a woman. So for the time, the soldiers got probably access to fairly good medical care, but it's all still relative.
- [56:35]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah. Gosh, that's very interesting. Well, you mentioned religion there in passing. If you're one of these. These soldiers on these. These communities on the wall, were there any gods that you were more likely to pray to? Than others. Were there any particular gods that we know from archaeology were more popular than others for communities along the wall?
- [56:55]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. So it's a real mix of what we find. And there are deities that are only known about on Hadrian's Wall, not anywhere else. And one of them, for example, is the Hutu or the Veterans or that. There's many variations. How you spell it. And they're a group of deities, a single deity, a pair we don't know because there's never any real information about who they are that we only really find on the wall. So we think they're a local deity that the soldiers have realized they have to keep happy because of.
- [57:25]
Tristan Hughes
Like Aqua Sulis with the Roman bar.
- [57:27]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. So we don't know, you know, what the hoita is. The veta is variants of what they did, but they were important. Obviously Mars is fairly common God of war, but then there's also lots of other very specific local ones like Coventina, and then there's ones that they bring with them. So Mithras is an Eastern God, so from Turkey, his worship is spread through the soldiers and the army, and he's pretty popular up on the wall. And then we've got a really unusual God called Mars Thingskus, a housestead. So Mars, God of war thinks so it's a hybridization or syncretism of, you know, two cultures. But it's not of a local deity, it's not of a, you know, a deity from around house deads. The current thinking is it. It's actually a German God.
- [58:11]
Tristan Hughes
It's Tyr. Is it Tyr?
- [58:12]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. Which means like sort of all, you know, because that's thing and, you know, and they've been merged together because we've got troops from what we would call Germany now, Germania, what the Romans would call. And they've brought things along the Rhine area with things. Yeah. And they've merged them with Mars because they're both sort of warrior. Warrior gods. But we don't really understand quite who Mars Thingskus is and what they thought he was doing for them. We've all seen also got the Alisagi and there again a deity from Germania that's been brought over. And so you can see kind of like we're talking about with cooking and with other sort of cultural things. These people are moving around, though. Maybe they were the. The first unit were recruited in, let's say, tungria. They move up to Hadrian's Wall, they keep some of the Tungrian things, but then they're also adopting Stuff from this wider Roman pantheon, Mars. And they also take on what's happening where they are based because it's important to keep the local gods happy because in Roman religion they re the gods really had an impact on you. So if there's a God of that hill or that stream, you need to keep them on side, you know, as well as the gods you give him from back home, plus the gods that look after the army, you know, so it's, it's really complicated and it will have changed over time as then, I don't know, a unit came over and said, oh, have you heard about mithras? You know, and then Mithraism comes in.
- [59:37]
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- [60:07]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Seguramente estas manejando entrenando oasiendo tip rapido TikTok no es solo entretenimiento ajos practicos
- [60:17]
Tristan Hughes
para la vida real descarga TikTok aura. Do you think most soldiers in place like Chesters and other forts along Hadrian's wall, do you think most of them would have joined a cult or two?
- [60:45]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So cult is a very loaded word and it's a modern word and a lot of Roman religion wouldn't have been sort of cultish and what's the word where, you know, you only worship that. So we often talk about Mithraism as being more like a cult. However, you could worship Mithra and still believe in other deities and still believe in them. And that's why mithras and, you know, all the other gods were allowed to exist and continue as long as you did, you know, worship the top Roman gods that the empire recognized. But it's then the reason why Judaism and Christianity were not accepted at the beginning because they're monotheistic and so they're more maybe what the Romans might have thought of as a cult because they are exclusionist, aren't they? If you believe in Jesus and the and God for Christianity, you can't then believe in any of the others. And the same with Judaism. And so all soldiers on the wall would have believed in deities, gods and goddesses. Absolutely. Whether they were sort of members of specific groups of religion, be different. So myth, racism, could only be a man, so you'd be allowed to worship him. But I couldn't. I suppose I could have worshipped him, but you know, I wasn't allowed into that. And Mithraism seems very specific in that you went together and you did stuff at the temple as I think a lot of other deities, you know, you could just believe in them and you didn't have to necessarily put go to a temple and do specific activities. And we know quite a bit in some ways about what happens in a Mithraic temple. And it's more sort of, it's a set down sort of process, almost like a mass or a, you know, a sort of religious ceremony, whereas it's not the same for a lot of other deities. So. So I've danced around that question. No, that's right.
- [62:22]
Tristan Hughes
I think it was a difficult question.
- [62:23]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
I think it's really interesting, you know, what do we think of as a cult now? You know, you say cult now and that's such a negative connotation. And it's not always just religious, isn't it? It could be about the world ending or, you know, that you think, you know, the government's taking it down. And I think, yeah, yeah. Its meaning would have had something very different in the Roman period, but everybody believed that the deities had an impact on their life and that, you know, if you didn't keep them on side, they could screw you over.
- [62:45]
Tristan Hughes
There we go. So we've covered quite a lot already, haven't we, with the life, you know, life on Hadrian's Wall and how to survive. I guess we mentioned a bit about the kind of traders as well because there's that famous Palmyran Berati's. Was he a flag seller or a flag carrier?
- [62:59]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
We don't know, do we?
- [63:01]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, but like, but you got people from Syria that there as traders, not, you know, just coming back and forth
- [63:06]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
and some of them would have been local already. Some of them, you know, might have come up from York or other parts of Britain because then once Hayden's walls settled, that's a good market, isn't it? You know, some of them would have come from further afield. There's an amazing pair of altars, one in York and one in Bordeaux.
- [63:22]
Tristan Hughes
Amazing.
- [63:22]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
That's set up by the same person. The trader saying he leaves York says, help me get to Bordeaux safely. He's obviously been in dork doing business. And when he gets Bordeaux he says, thanks, I got here safely. And, you know, that's not for them all. But that sort of thing is happening all the time. Traders are moving around because they're following the trade. And you also think certain things. There wouldn't be a big enough market for someone to stay there all the time. So there'd be itinerant traders as well who are just visiting for a week and then they go from Chesters, then they go to houses, then they go on and then they do the circuit to come back.
- [63:51]
Tristan Hughes
So interesting. So many other things we could talk about. I will ask quickly about. Well, we are recording this interview in December, when the days are very, very short and it gets dark very, very quickly. Do you have any idea how people living along Hadrian's Wall would have thought about that? You know, the changing the seasons, being somewhere so far away from their homelands, you know, so far north, where, you know, during this time of the year you don't get much sunlight.
- [64:16]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
I mean, actually, do we get that much less sunlight than Belgium and France?
- [64:22]
Tristan Hughes
Okay, fair enough. Maybe I'm thinking of Syria.
- [64:24]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Yeah. So for places like that. But also. So, yeah, it would just be. There would be no accommodation. I don't think you'd be like, oh, it's dark. Oh, well, still going to stand on the Wall, you know, you're still on guard duty, you know, wrap up. But it's really interesting. Yeah. How did they see to do things? Your working day is hugely restricted, isn't it, because there is no natural light to do things. And so you would have had to change how you work in that sense, because you could only do certain tasks in a certain time because a candle or a lamp is not going to bring you enough light for certain tasks. And, you know, you can imagine the centurions or the decurions, you know, who having to do all the admin. It would make things a lot harder.
- [65:04]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, very much so. A couple more questions before we completely wrap up. We've talked a bit about the settlements nearby and I think I'm going to ask you a bit more about your particular work on Corbridge in our next bonus chat in a bit and your work there. So stay tuned for that. But I would also like to ask about one thing. I remember doing an interview with Duncan Keenan Jones recently about aqueducts, and he actually mentioned how there are a lot of aqueducts along Hadrian's Wall that begin north of Hadrian's Wall. So can you paint us a bit of a picture of that? Like, do we know much about the aqueducts and the Running of water that way for forts along Hadrian's Wall, what you would see.
- [65:41]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So, you know, we don't. In terms of, you know, how high they might have stood or, you know, we've got. Got loads of bits and bobs of them. So particularly at Corbridge, which I know we've just said, you know, we've got a fact. We've got a public fountain at Corbridge. We're really impressive. Well, we have the foundations of a really impressive aqueduct. All the stones been stolen, you know, by those medieval and later people, but they'd only need to be that high and that big. If you've got to keep the water out of the way of other people or you've got to come a really long distance, you have to start high, you know, sort of to get it down. So actually a lot of them would have been smaller that you'd only raise it up as much as you needed to get the angle going. I know Northumbria University been doing work on looking at aqueducts and pipes and because they're amazing mathematicians, the angles of sort of movement of things there. So. No, but, you know, they're north of the Wall, which shows. It's not just barbaricum, is it? It's not as in George R.R. martin, it's not, you know, the White Walkers north of there, the line of the Wall was just the narrowest point. It's where they set it. You know, it's not as stark as we, you know, jokingly often say to people.
- [66:46]
Tristan Hughes
Do you think it would be? Is it realistic actually, to say that someone stationed at one of the forts, let's say they've got permission to leave the fort, maybe with their family and go somewhere. I'm not thinking of a Butlins or a holiday, but, you know, but. But to travel somewhere that, you know, there was potential that they would travel north of the Wall, they would visit somewhere north of the Wall. They wouldn't be scared out of their wits to go beyond this frontier.
- [67:08]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Oh, not at all. Also, there's outpost forts. So although the Antonine wars only occupied, you know, for 20 years of 140s for about 20 years, there's Outpost forts that are occupied right through so high. Rochester, for example. And there's huge amounts of trade that must. That we know is going on, you know, north of the war to Prain Law. I'm sure you'll have done an episode on Toprain Law with Fraser from nms and, you know, they've got huge amounts of Roman stuff there. Where the Romans are paying, you know, the peoples north of the border to keep on side when it doesn't work. That's when September 7th comes up. But yeah, it's not this wild untamed landscape. I'm sure people were going hunting and
- [67:50]
Tristan Hughes
hunting of course would have been, you
- [67:51]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
know, north the wall and equally on a much smaller scale. Fairly recent excavations say at Benwell and at Burd Oswald have found that the civilian settlement that we talked about being around the outside of the fort, you know, and the murder house, attack at houses, some of that activity is actually north of the wall. So even there's industry and other sort of occupation north of the wall, even just on that small scale. So I don't know, stretching 30, 40ft, meters or something. So you know, it's. The line is what was drawn by surveyors as the simplest point to draw the line. It is not the end of the safe zone.
- [68:21]
Tristan Hughes
It's not like we talked about escorts earlier, that every person who goes north of the wall to visit that industry has to be escorted by 10 soldiers to get there and back.
- [68:29]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Oh no, that would be if you're, I mean some of the escorts are probably within the empire but if you're taking a paychest or huge amounts of other supplies, you're going to be a target for anyone. You know, it's. Just because you're within the empire doesn't mean there are no brigands or you know, no completely.
- [68:46]
Tristan Hughes
Francis, we covered lots of different questions. I've got a couple just to finish off. At its height, the height of Hadrian's Wall, how many people do we think? Men, women and children? I know it must be so difficult to get an estimate, but do we think would have been living at settlements all along Hadrian's Wall to the forts and I guess the, the settlements that grow up around them.
- [69:04]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So I was having to think about this and I was thinking cuz I'm not very good at maths on, on the fly but so say there's 16, 17 forts, depends on, you know, which ones you count and in each of those there's 500 to 1,000 men depending on the unit. Each civilian settlement outside the fort could be the same as that. So if you say, say 16 to 20,000, I don't think that's outlandish. You know, it's, it's impossible to know how many people lived in all the buildings in the civilian settlements. Often the civilian settlements cover a bigger area than the forts, but they might not as be densely occupied because if you think about how many men, soldiers are crammed in barracks, but it's a huge number of people.
- [69:41]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah, completely. You mentioned earlier how this is several centuries that the Romans are manning the walls, and how it's like us going back to 1725, at 300 years ago. How do we think everyday life changes as we get to the end of Roman Britain and you get those frontier communities that have been living there for generations, quite frankly, by that point.
- [70:03]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
So, you know, 4, 10. That's our end date, isn't it, when the letter goes out for help and they say, no, you're on your way. Probably the changes had already begun because, as we talked about before, lots of troops have been withdrawn to other areas of the empire that were seen as more troublesome or more valuable to protect. And the thing that changes is there's nobody higher up making the decisions. There's nobody saying, right, these soldiers are here and they've got this task to do and they're being paid. The vast majority of people who lived on hadrian's wall in 409, you know, are probably still there in 415, but by that point, they are already generations into living in that area, I imagine, and so they just have to manage themselves. And so, you know, Rob Collins, who I know has talked on here before, you know, talks about sort of these. They're becoming little equivalents of warlords or little sort of communities. So the soldiers who are already based at Bird Oswald probably continue on doing a similar sort of thing, but there's no central control, there's no money coming in, they're not being paid, there's no one controlling trade and things like that. So they'll just manage themselves. But they were probably doing quite a bit of that already. And it's just. It'll be a gradual change in terms of. So. But also, Tony will not, as, you know, excavated what we think is this sort of long house, and that's not made of stone, presumably because they haven't got the manpower and the sort of the system behind them to go and quarry more stone. And they're also losing the skill of stone making, stone working because they're not using it. You know, it becomes more small scale. Everything just becomes more small scale and you're not connected. So sort of levels of literacy seem to reduce. Trading in money is less common. It goes back to more of a barter economy because you're working more local equally.
- [71:42]
Tristan Hughes
But that just shows, doesn't it, you know, how the everyday life of these people, even though those communities Those faults, they endure past the end of Roman Britain, that it does very much change. And so we've largely focused on, you know, the beginning of the third century A.D. you know, stressing once again how parts of daily life would have changed over those many different centuries. But still, it's a wonderful way to explore the story of Hadrian's Wall. We have done in the past the story of the big monuments and the stone and what it's made up of. And. But to do this one where we've been able to explore different parts of actually someone stationed on the wall and learn more about their lives and what they would have experienced, it gives you a much more human experience of what is one of the most famous, one of the most recognizable ancient landmarks in Britain.
- [72:24]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
I think so. I think, you know, a lot of the soldiers a lot of the time on Hadrian's Wall are just doing the same thing every day. It's kind of boring. You're on guard duty this week. Next week you're on escort duty, you know, the week after. You've got to do this. But there's peaks of activity, I imagine. But it's just a fairly ordinary life.
- [72:41]
Tristan Hughes
An ordinary life, indeed. Francis, this has been absolutely fascinating. It just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.
- [72:47]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
You're very welcome.
- [72:53]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Francis McIntosh talking you through a day in the life of someone on Hadrian's Wall. Daily life, how, how to survive on this northern frontier of the Roman Empire. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I absolutely loved recording it. It was lovely to meet Francis again in person. It'd been a few years, but yes, it was wonderful to get her back on the show. And if you'd like to hear more about Hadrian's Wall, and in particular on Corbridge with Francis, where we have our special bonus episode with Francis being released right after this one for our subscribers. Subscribe. Make sure you become part of the Ancients team. If you subscribe, you can also listen to that bonus episode, too. Thank you once again for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll also be doing us a big favor. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Now, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week.
- [73:52]
Dr. Francis Mackintosh
Week.
- [73:52]
Tristan Hughes
Sign up@historyhit.com subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
- [74:10]
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