{"id":314,"date":"2019-05-24T12:15:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T12:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/guard-archaeology.co.uk\/wordpress1\/?p=314"},"modified":"2019-06-05T15:14:30","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T15:14:30","slug":"new-evidence-for-roman-conquest-of-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/?p=314","title":{"rendered":"New Evidence for Roman Conquest of Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

GUARD Archaeologists have discovered a hitherto unknown Roman\nmarching camp that was constructed during the Roman conquest of Scotland, new\npublications reveal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Formation of Roman Camp at Ayr and radiocarbon dates \u00a9 GUARD Archaeology Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The discovery was made during archaeological excavations undertaken by GUARD Archaeology prior to the building of the new Ayr Academy in 2015. At the time it was not obvious that a Roman camp had been found, because there were no Roman artefacts present, only fragments of much earlier Neolithic pottery and an Iron Age bangle from a seemingly random spread of pits and post-holes. However, during the subsequent post-excavation analyses, radiocarbon dates revealed a regular pattern of features that date to the Roman conquest of Scotland in the latter part of the first century AD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stone-lined oven and rake-out material at Ayr Academy \u00a9 GUARD Archaeology Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Roman features comprised 26 large, often double,\nfire-pits that were distributed evenly in two parallel rows 30m apart,\u2019 said\nIraia Arabaolaza, who directed the excavation. \u2018The arrangement and uniformity\nof these features implies an organised layout and the evidence suggests that\nthey were all used for baking bread. The location of the oven was recognised by\nthe scorching of the subsoil base, stone slabs and burnt clay fragments, some\nwith wood imprints and with dome moulding. Ash pits were identified at the\nopposite end to the ovens within these figure-of-eight features, filled with\nburnt and charcoal-rich soil comprising the raked-out material from the clay-domed\novens.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The radiocarbon dates from these fire-pits overlapped between the years AD 77-86 and AD 90, which accords with the conquest of Scotland by the Roman general Agricola from AD 79 until AD 83 and the subsequent Roman consolidation. Agricola\u2019s son-in-law, Tacitus, who wrote an account of the yearly campaigns, reported that \u201cin the fifth campaign, Agricola, crossing over, subdued, by frequent and successful engagements, several nations till then unknown; and stationed troops in that part of Britain which is opposite to Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now, the only two known routes for the Roman invasion\nof southern Scotland were further to the east; the present-day M74 and A68\nroads follow these same courses. But the new marching camp at Ayr reveals\nanother route down the west coast towards the south-west tip of Scotland, from\nwhere Ireland is readily visible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Map of Agricola\u2019s army\u2019s marching camps across Scotland \u00a9 GUARD Archaeology Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There was a ford across the river Ayr just below the Roman\nmarching camp while ships may have been beached on the nearby shoreline\u2019 said\nIraia Arabaolaza. \u2018The Ayr marching camp is 20 miles from the nearest Roman\ncamp to the south at Girvan, which corresponds to a day\u2019s march for a Roman\nsoldier. There is a little more distance to other Roman camps to the north-east\nnear Strathaven. Altogether this suggests that this site was chosen as a\nstrategic location for the Roman conquest of Ayrshire.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roman marching camps have been described as the temporary\nbases of a tented army on campaign. Whilst most Roman camps are usually\nrecognised by the regular linear ditches that enclose them, landscaping or\nploughing at the Ayr Academy site appears to have destroyed any such remains. The\ncamp at Ayr Academy, however, shares other similarities with Roman camps in\nScotland, which have also revealed similar formations of fire-pits or\ncamp-ovens. The distance of 30m between the two rows of fire-pits at Ayr\nAcademy accords closely to the length of area allocated to the ten tents of a\ncentury in ancient Roman military manuals. The rectangular formation of\nfire-pits at Ayr Academy may represent the ground where up to eight centuries,\namounting to 640 legionaries, were once encamped. It is also possible that the\narchaeological remains only represent a portion of the camp, which may have\nextended into the flat land to the north, where the modern racecourse is\nsituated.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fragment of shale bracelet from Ayr Academy \u00a9 GUARD Archaeology Ltd<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Romans, of course, were not the first people to occupy this site. While little trace of the local Iron Age people was recovered during the excavation, save a fragment of a shale bracelet which might date to this same period, the GUARD archaeologists uncovered numerous pits and post-holes that date to much earlier times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence for Bronze Age ritual activity from the late third\nand second millennium BC, a Neolithic settlement from the fourth millennium BC\nand a Mesolithic hunter\/gatherer camp from the sixth millennium BC was also\ndiscovered, revealing this to be one of the earliest and most complex\nprehistoric sites in this area of the west coast of Scotland. To put this into\nperspective, the earliest occupation of the Ayr Academy site goes back to\naround 5200 BC, roughly 2\u00bd times as old <\/em>as\nthe Roman Marching Camp is to us. As the excavation at Ayr Academy\ndemonstrates, Scotland was not an untouched wild landscape that the Romans\nmarched into in AD 79 but already an ancient land inhabited by communities\nwhose culture and heritage stretched back millennia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The archaeological work was funded by Kier Construction Ltd\nand was required as a condition of planning consent by South Ayrshire Council\nwho are advised on archaeological matters by the West of Scotland Archaeology\nService, who considered there to be a potential for hitherto unknown\narchaeology to be buried at the site due to the proximity of known prehistoric\narchaeology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A Roman Marching Camp in Ayr<\/em> by Iraia Arabaolaza is published in the Britannia<\/a> Journal, while ARO33: Beside the River Ayr in prehistoric times: excavations at Ayr Academy <\/em>by Iraia Arabaolaza is freely available to download from Archaeology Reports Online.<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GUARD Archaeologists have discovered a hitherto unknown Roman marching camp that was constructed during the Roman conquest of Scotland, new publications reveal. The discovery was made during archaeological excavations undertaken by GUARD Archaeology prior to the building of the new Ayr Academy in 2015. At the time it was not obvious that a Roman camp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guard-archaeology.co.uk\/GALNews\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}