The Body by the Wall

It's good to try new things.  So when an opportunity presented itself I decided to spend my annual Spring archaeology jaunt not at Vindolanda, as I have for the last 15 years or so, but at another site on Hadrian's wall called Magna.  It's not "totally new", being run by the same Trust and largely by the same people, but new to excavation.  Nobody knows what's down there.

Of course you start from the top.  Last year there was a limited excavation.  Heavy layers of turf were removed - this is a farmer's field after all - and things started to turn up.

The initial dig was focused on a "mile castle", the little fortlets logically built every mile along the wall.  These were felt to not be fighting, defensive positions so much as a place where traffic in and out of a gate could be observed, taxes collected etc.  In support of this theory they did uncover a Roman scale, the kind of thing you'd perhaps use to weigh....well something small, not cart loads of grain.

There was a road leading from this area to the fort proper, and an assortment of pits, perhaps a well.  The finds were few compared to most digging at Vindolanda, and ranged from Roman through late Roman and into medieval.  You'd be surprised how many times a road will be resurfaced over the centuries if it still goes somewhere useful.  Or as in this case, to Scotland.

So far so good, until something unexpected turned up.  A body, carefully buried in a grave snugged right up against the junction of the Wall and the milecastle.

Human remains are always excavated with great care.  Not just out of respect for the dead, although there is certainly that, but because anything could turn out to be the key.  A single tooth can help tell the geographic "home base" of a person.  A tiny glass bead, a small cut on a bone, which way the body was facing, all can be clues.

The analysis in this case is ongoing and should be interesting.  The preliminary thoughts are that it is female and Late Roman.  How Late?  How Roman?  Romans never buried people inside their settlements, and even though this was Outside it was next to the Great Wall.  In long years of excavations up and down the course of it this has been seen only very rarely.

There is a curious transition from the regimented, rule based system of Imperial Rome on into the sub Roman times.  When the troops are mostly of barbarian or at least Local stock, how long does it take for the old ways to reassert themselves once the payroll stops coming north from Londinium?

More information here.

And here is a slightly more understandable drone view.  The mile castle is in the upper left of the excavation.  Hadrian's Wall is just foundations running across the top of the exposed area.  Where did all the wall stones go?  Mostly to Thirlwall castle which is about a half mile away and made of some really swell stones.  The Romans did good quarry work.