tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post8374069564047146777..comments2023-11-29T07:39:34.401+00:00Comments on Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: Birdoswald Roman Fort: dating the post-Roman use of the siteCarlahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-12983997228990940322010-03-11T14:16:32.008+00:002010-03-11T14:16:32.008+00:00Rick - Yes, that was an offer not easily refused :...Rick - Yes, that was an offer not easily refused :-)<br /><br />Colin - Hello and welcome! That's a spectacular picture of Hadrian's Wall on the front page of your site. I'm afraid I won't be in the area for the lighting up - I hope it's a spectacular show for you.Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-35195001754714862432010-03-11T12:45:39.439+00:002010-03-11T12:45:39.439+00:00Hi Carla,
Will you be up by the Wall at the weeken...Hi Carla,<br />Will you be up by the Wall at the weekend when the torches light up all the 83 miles? I know that illuminating the wall sounds very much 20th century, especially as gas burners are being used. But when viwed from afar as the day darkens into night i hope that it will be a magical evening.<br />Many thanks for the article on Birdoswald...our limited experience of this period in time is more based up in the Cheviots and the Till plain.<br /><br />All the best<br /><br />ColinColinhttp://www.northumbria-byways.com/hadrians_region1.htmnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-91129825850277936632010-03-11T05:16:07.575+00:002010-03-11T05:16:07.575+00:00As I recall, Odovacar politely packaged up the imp...As I recall, Odovacar politely packaged up the imperial regalia and sent it to the Eastern emperor Zeno in Constantinople, saying that a separate western colleague was no longer required. Zeno could henceforth exercise undivided imperial authority, and Odovacar kindly offered to administer Italy in Zeno's name, complete with Zeno's image on the coins.<br /><br />How could Zeno turn down a gracious offer like that?<br /><br />Regarding the building position, I'd forgotten your point about it lining up with the gate, which sufficiently explains the relocation.<br /><br />Gildas is indeed consistent with the picture of effective power having slipped away from the center to local leaders. And we talked some time ago about the disappearance of coinage and the problems that posed for taxation.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-37554160833528110712010-03-10T21:26:36.280+00:002010-03-10T21:26:36.280+00:00Gabriele - absolutely. Marcus Didius Falco's o...Gabriele - absolutely. Marcus Didius Falco's opinion of Britain may well have been widely shared :-)Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-6375450804012972392010-03-10T20:09:48.808+00:002010-03-10T20:09:48.808+00:00Carla, one of the reasons Emperor Honorius told th...Carla, one of the reasons Emperor Honorius told the Romans in Britain they had to look after themselves now - after Constantine III had marched off with most of the army to kick Honny out - in 410 AD was indeed the fact that the Roman Empire had its fill of a place that kept breeding ursurpers pretty much since the early 3rd century. <br /><br />Then the remaining Romans and romanised Britons did what the rest of the empire did as well: hire German mercenaries. Problem is that those kept staying in the long run. *waves to Odovacar who sent the last Roman emperor packing and took the job himself* :)Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-19773394322241687042010-03-10T19:26:21.978+00:002010-03-10T19:26:21.978+00:00Gabriele - not so dissimilar to parts of the east ...Gabriele - not so dissimilar to parts of the east Anglian coast, where 5m elevation counts as a hill and there are quite a lot of dykes along the coast and estuaries. I don't think this side of the North Sea goes in for terpen, though.<br /><br />Rick - Never too late! The second wooden building is the last in the sequence on the north granary site; it wasn't the final building in the fort, as there is at least a medieval tower house, an early modern bastle house and the 17th/18th century farmhouse. The stone post pads for the second building had been laid in trenches cut through the floor of the granary, so I reckon the builders knew perfectly well that the granary was there. Shifting the building footprint as they did gets the new building to line up with the still-open portal of the west gate. The gate had originally been a double portal and the original granary was aligned accordingly, then the south portal of the gate was blocked up during the Roman period. The second timber building aligns with the edge of the remaining portal. I would say its siting was a deliberate decision - the guy in charge said "I want my hall right by the gate, so see to it". <br /><br />Local commanders and control thereof is a perennial problem. The Western Roman Empire must have got pretty fed up with legionary commanders in Britain using the troops under their local command to form breakaway empires or to make a grab for the top job. On a smaller scale, the sort of local warlord you describe is consistent with fragmentation of Roman Britain into little kingdoms (maybe partly based on civitas districts as sort of city-states), which may well underlie the conflicts in the Arthurian legends. You can cast Arthur, in sadly romantic vein, as a sort of fifth/sixth century Llewellyn the Last, trying to unite a quarrelling bunch of local rulers who were all more interested in grabbing what they could from their neighbours (including the central authority) than co-operating. Gildas is consistent with this. Camlann is in the Triads as one of the Three Futile Battles, which may suggest that even in sad romance its outcome didn't matter much. We've discussed before the possibility that early medieval/post-Roman Britain might have been ungovernable by anybody.Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-53880537288665718212010-03-10T18:38:58.037+00:002010-03-10T18:38:58.037+00:00Belated comment! I wonder about the final (?) wood...Belated comment! I wonder about the final (?) wooden building that was relocated somewhat from an earlier one, and no longer on top of the Roman granary foundations. Which might suggest a long enough period of disuse that the foundation had been buried. Otherwise why not re-use the handy existing granary foundation, which was about the right size.<br /><br />But it is equally possible that the Roman foundations simply no longer fit the land use pattern, and the guy in charge said 'Tear down that building and relocate it to leave room for Whatever.'<br /><br /><i>I suppose Birdoswald might be seen as a component of that overall command rather than as a power base in its own right</i><br /><br />This was historically the great challenge for extensive polities - whoever you entrust with the keys to a local fortress had better be trustworthy, or you just created a local warlord.<br /><br />There are times and places when former fortresses are merely impressive buildings, but Britain before the 18th century was never one of them. Think of the Parliamentary 'slightings' in your Civil War. <br /><br />Here's a sadly romantic thought: Perhaps what the Arthurian story really conceals is that Camlann and even Mount Badon didn't really matter, because by then the central government's authority had already been usurped by local commanders. <br /><br />The sad romance came later, the Welsh being known masters of jive. At the time it might have been all rather graceful, an Anglo/Welsh version of the wonderful colonial Spanish, <i>Obedezco pero no cumplo,</i> 'I obey, but I do not comply.'Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-48723909424845952992010-03-09T20:13:58.917+00:002010-03-09T20:13:58.917+00:00Sounds like the same thing. The North Sea coast in...Sounds like the same thing. The North Sea coast in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as parts of the Baltic Sea coast, are very flat, and if you want some protection from floods, you have to put your houses on artificial hills, or build drainage systems and dykes. There are still mounds today, the Halligs, and dykes pretty much everywhere along the coast. Floods can still be bad news, modern floodgates nonewithstanding, like the big one in Hamburg in 1961. And the tunnel under the Elbe in Hamburg gets flooded on a somewhat regular basis.Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-7063045978901175892010-03-09T18:12:18.985+00:002010-03-09T18:12:18.985+00:00Gabriele - are those related to the settlements I ...Gabriele - are those related to the settlements I know as terpen? Low artificial mounds with a village on top. If you can catch fish and collect shellfish a coastal environment can be very rich, a lot easier to get food from than agriculture. Probably well worth the effort of building something to live on, assuming you like fish, of course :-) Surge tides must have been bad news, though.<br /><br />The Fantasizer - hello and welcome! This particular post isn't a book review, so no cover art available. Sometimes I post diagrams or photographs.Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-67877536138163155932010-03-09T17:33:39.755+00:002010-03-09T17:33:39.755+00:00I jst came upon your blog and i love it, though I ...I jst came upon your blog and i love it, though I do have a suggestion perhaps you could post cover art alongside the books you are reviewing that would certainly brighten up your blog a little bit. <br />Anyway I dont wanna sound critical, your blogs great as it is.The Fantasizernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-54512245461055946102010-03-08T15:27:16.442+00:002010-03-08T15:27:16.442+00:00Carla, you know it's difficult to trace remain...Carla, you know it's difficult to trace remains of timber and earth structures in a heavily populated country, but a circular pattern has been suggested for a few of those. The other pattern was to follow a river - that can be demonstrated in case of the migration of the Goths by finds in present day Poland; they went up the river Wisla (and others) a few miles every generation and would eventually reach the Black Sea. In that case it was a whole bunch of smaller group settlements that seem to have migrated more or less at the same time. There's still a lot of work to be done.<br /><br />The <i>worft</i> settlements on the German coastlines followed along the coast. For some reason the people stuck to the complicated construction of large earthen hills to put their houses on, and a system of dykes, instead of moving further inland. Probably liked fish a lot. :)Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-5835151153885965112010-03-08T09:34:53.378+00:002010-03-08T09:34:53.378+00:00Tenthmedieval - thank you. That reminds me of Ida...Tenthmedieval - thank you. That reminds me of Ida fortifying Bamburgh, which was presumably part of a foundation story about the origins of Bernicia, and would be consistent with your comment. If you buy the theory about a sixth-century attempt to recreate the command of the old Dux Britanniarum as an integrated entity, then I suppose Birdoswald might be seen as a <i>component</i> of that overall command rather than as a power base in its own right, but even so the commander of the reoccupied fort must still have been de facto the boss in his local area, even if he was theoretically subordinate to a high command in York.<br /><br />Gabriele - earth-fast timber posts do rot quite quickly. I've seen a suggestion somewhere (think it was in an article about the Iron Age) that it was convenient for timber buildings to last about 30 years as that meant each new generation built itself a new house. Something similar might have applied to the Germanic village migrations. Did the arable and grazing lands recover after a while, so the village could end up moving back onto lands it had vacated several generations ago? It would be possible to live in something like covered wagons for a while in the summer whilst building a new village - something like a summer caravan park :-)Carlahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11901028520813891575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-91898552262590568182010-03-06T00:09:33.340+00:002010-03-06T00:09:33.340+00:00Germanic village migration counts 30 years, but th...Germanic village migration counts 30 years, but those timber buildings had no stone foundations. And it was not only the buildings falling into disrepair, but the arable and grazing grounds no longer rendering enough result. So the whole village would pack up and move on, usually a few kilometres. It's assumed that they partly deconstructed the buildings and used those timbers still intact. I guess they'll have lived in tents or simple huts until the new houses were finished - those migrations must have taken place during summer.Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19922276.post-44003340521595554922010-03-05T11:58:52.117+00:002010-03-05T11:58:52.117+00:00Nice and careful post as ever, Carla! I just wante...Nice and careful post as ever, Carla! I just wanted to add to this:<br /><br /><i>The size of the halls implies that whoever ordered their construction controlled substantial resources of materials and manpower. It’s a reasonable inference that this was a local or regional ruler.</i><br /><br />I would say, further, that reoccupying a major fort is the kind of thing that no local ruler worth his salt would be happy with someone else doing, so whether or not the person so doing was such a ruler, he or she was probably setting out to be one...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com