#Post Roman Britain

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 34: Medievalish and Earlier 3

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[shellsnroses]

Turned that comic into an animation

[olympeline]

Something something the poetic irony that England - one of the Roman Empire’s least loved, bastard sons - would someday grow into the personification with the strongest claim of them all to being Rome’s heir.

Taking up his loathed and lamented conqueror/father’s doctrine of Pax, and even donning a red coat to replace the old scarlet cape once worn by Rome. When the ancient empire walked and ground the world down under his heel, so very long ago

[ask-the-little-italian]

What’s your opinions on other nations?

Germania: Grandpa says Germania was always so smug as a kid, though I can't see it much

Grandpa Rome: I miss him so much. . . Grandpa was a strong country, I wish he stayed with us longer.

And Mister China doesn't seem to taking the news about the Empire's fall good either

Japan: He's a very private person, though I do wish we'd get to work together someday ^_^

Greece: Him and his mom are both like cats, always sleepy. Though I loved his plays and mythology

England: Always flustered around Big brother France, I'm not sure if they're enemies or are they married

Holy Roman Empire: It's so cute when Holy Rome tries to paint too, I still have his rabbit painting hidden away in my room

I miss him too

[vox-anglosphere]

Bless the young man who hiked 3 hours to plant a new sycamore tree

[chiropteracupola]

WIP guessing game: fire, foe, and fun!

eagle of the ninth temeraire au:

He remembered dragon-warmth, of the little couriers of the garrison at Isca Dumnoniorum, of his father’s dragon’s scales nearly steaming at a touch, like the hypocaust sunk beneath the baths. Esca, too, was warm, but only to the degree that a man was warm — no great fire banked itself behind Esca’s ribs. Still, Marcus pressed himself tight against Esca’s chest, and tried to push away the cold.

no instances for foe, and only sort of one for fun...

unnamed lurking sharpe story:

“He said it’d be all right ‘less it starts turning funny colors… it isn’t doing that, is it?” asked Perkins, fear suddenly creeping into his voice. “Dunno, sarge — would this be a funny color to you?” Cooper pointed, and Harper leaned down obligingly and screwed up his face in disgust.

[wizzard890]

some creative, wanting to make a King Arthur adaptation: "But how will people know it's for boys?"

his barista, trapped in this conversation: "What?"

creative: "You know, the knights and castles and magic and chivalry - I mean it's all kind of gay."

barista: "I--uh. Is it?"

creative: "Women are into that stuff, but they don't move tickets. I need to signal loud and clear that this King Arthur is butch, and that his knights are all rugged and masculine. --What's the most male time period?"

barista: "That's such a wild question."

creative: "I mean it has to be England after the Romans left, right? With all the Vikings and blue people and aqueducts and swordplay."

barista: "Isn't there still swordplay if they're all chivalric knights in the fourteenth century?"

creative: "No! No, that's gay, Rebecca, aren't you listening!"

rebecca: "Jesus."

creative: "What kind of guy is going to watch a movie about knights riding off to London when he could watch a movie about a warlord riding to Londinium?"

rebecca, pulling a quad shot with a thousand yard stare: "I honestly couldn't say."

creative, yelling into his voice memo app: "find and replace 'Merlin' with 'Taliesin'. -- God this is gonna be huge."

[medieval-elephants]

Finally, a real medieval elephant appears! Just not where you might expect.

Katie Hemer, Hugh Willmott, Jane Evans, and Michael Buckley have shown that this ring was made from an African elephant's (genus Loxodonta's) ivory tusk in the fifth or sixth century. It was probably used as a handle on a cloth bag. It was found in a grave in Scremby, Lincolnshire (UK), where it had been buried sometime between around 450 and 550 AD.

And this wasn't the only elephant ivory to show up thousands of miles away in northern Europe: elephant ivory rings have been found in over 70 cemeteries in the area that is now England, and some have been found in the area that is now northern Germany, too. These cemeteries seem to date to the period before the 7th century.

This particular elephant may have originated in the African Rift Valley, and its ivory may have been traded from the Kingdom of Aksum to Europe. The time when it was traded coincided with the political power of the Roman Empire crumbling in western Europe and some (but not all) trade routes being disrupted. Yet the world has always been interconnected: we can't ignore the history of any region or any time.

Katie A. Hemer, Hugh Willmott, Jane E. Evans, Michael Buckley, "Ivory from early Anglo-Saxon burials in Lincolnshire – A biomolecular study", Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 49 (2023), 103943, ISSN 2352-409X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103943. Read it here.

[phoenix-joy]

Author: Sonja Anderson Publication: Smithsonian Magazine Timestamp: January 22, 2024

Extract:

Researchers have long been puzzled by the Roman dodecahedron. More than 100 of these strange 12-sided metal objects have been found throughout Europe—but their purpose remains unclear. Now, another discovery in England’s countryside has reignited the mystery surrounding the ancient artifacts.

[...]

“[Dodecahedrons] are one of archaeology’s great enigmas,” [Richard Parker, secretary of the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group] says.

“Our example is remarkable. It’s in an excellent condition—considering it’s been buried for 1,700 years—and complete with no damage.["]

[...]

The hollow, grapefruit-sized object is made of copper alloy, as the Norton Disney group writes on its website. Its 12 flat sides are punctuated by circular cut-outs and studs on each corner.

According to the group, the discovery brings the number of dodecahedrons unearthed in Roman Britain to 33, while about 130 have been discovered throughout the Roman Empire’s northwest provinces. [The dodecahedron discussed in the article] stands out because it’s still in one piece, while many of the others were found fragmented or damaged.

[...]

Some Roman dodecahedrons date to as early as the first century C.E. However, no visual or textual references to the objects have been found in historical records. [...]

“Nobody knows for certain how the Romans used them,” wrote Smithsonian magazine’s Sarah Kuta last year. “Some theories are that they functioned as measuring devices, calendars, ornamental scepter toppers, weapons or tools.”

[...]

[...] the group agrees with experts who think dodecahedrons were used for ritualistic or religious purposes. [...] researchers at Belgium’s Gallo-Roman Museum have hypothesized that Romans used the objects in magical rituals, which could explain dodecahedrons’ absence from historical records: With the Roman Empire’s eventual embrace of Christianity came laws forbidding magic. Practitioners would have had to keep their rituals—and related objects—a secret.

/end of extract

"12-sided Roman relic baffles archaeologists, spawns countless theories"

Author: Leo Sands Publication: The Washington Post Timestamp: April 30, 2024 at 11:09 a.m. EDT

Extract:

“One reason that it is so captivating for the public is that it’s hard to believe that we have anything from the Roman period that we don’t know what it’s for,” Lorena Hitchens, an archaeologist specializing in Roman dodecahedrons[...] “It’s very tempting to want to solve that mystery.”

[...]

Internet sleuths have joined the speculation [...] with many gravitating toward an explanation that revolves around their use as tools. [...] knit and crochet pattern designer Amy Gaines posits [...] that dodecahedrons may have been used to knit gold chains, constructing a 3D-printed replica to demonstrate her theory.[...] English Heritage lists theories ranging from a tool for finding the best date to sow grain, to functioning as a candleholder, a polygonal die, a range finder, a surveying instrument, or a way of knitting gloves.

But academic archaeologists shy away from the suggestion that they were practical objects used as everyday tools. “I know that because I’ve examined a lot of them, and they don’t have the kind of use wear you’d expect from a tool,” Hitchens said.

“They’re also much more delicate than people realize,” she said. “They would be broken very quickly.”

[...]

The most popular theory among academic experts [...] is that dodecahedrons held religious or ritual meaning, linked in some way to local practices on the Roman Empire’s fringes.

Proponents of this theory [...] point to the intricacy of the object itself, suggesting it probably had special value. According to Hitchens, the relic was made using a lost-wax bronze-casting process, an extremely technical feat — made even more challenging by the fact that the final product was hollow. [...]

/end of extract

[anywayhereskirkwall]

Tevinter is so Roman it's wild. Like I would bet money that someone on the staff had experience in classical studies or at least took a class at some point when they were writing the conversations you can have with Dorian.

[historyfiles]

Northern Britain: Coel Hen is a familiar figure in many ancient Welsh genealogies, with most of the kings of the north of Britain being able to trace their descent from him.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

love when i see a book rec list where half the items on it are things i liked / thought were okay / haven't read but am intrigued by... and then there's just one thing on there i hate and it ruins the whole list for me. i'm like. sorry. if you enjoyed the vibes of XYZ i cannot trust your taste at all. i object.

[transitofmercury]

thinking about them again

(honestly, when am I not thinking about them???)

[healerqueen]

.

[fivenightsatcorans]

ancient briton themed porno titled "battle of mons pubonicus" is that anything

[blueiscoool]

How Hadrian’s Wall is Revealing a Hidden Side of Roman History

A party invitation. A broken flipflop. A wig. Letters of complaint about road conditions, and an urgent request for more beer.

It sounds like the aftermath of a successful spring break, but these items are nearly 2,000 years old.

They’re just some of the finds from Hadrian’s Wall – the 73-mile stone wall built as the northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire, sealing off Britannia (modern-day England and Wales) from Caledonia (essentially today’s Scotland).

While most of us think of Pompeii and Herculaneum if we’re thinking of everyday objects preserved from ancient Rome, this outpost in the wild north of the empire is home to some of the most extraordinary finds.

“It’s a very dramatic stamp on the countryside – there’s nothing more redolent of saying you’re entering the Roman empire than seeing that structure,” says Richard Abdy, lead curator of the British Museum’s current exhibition, Legion, which spotlights the everyday life of Roman soldiers, showcasing many finds from Hadrian’s Wall in the process. A tenth of the Roman army was based in Britain, and that makes the wall a great source of military material, he says.

But it’s not all about the soldiers, as excavations are showing.

A multicultural melting pot

Hadrian, who ordered the wall to be built in 122CE after a visit to Britannia, had a different vision of empire than his predecessors, says Frances McIntosh, curator for English Heritage’s 34 sites along Hadrian’s Wall.

“All the emperors before him were about expanding the empire, but Hadrian was known as the consolidator,” she says. He relinquished some of the territory acquired by his predecessor Trajan, and “decided to set the borders” – literally, in some cases, with wooden poles at sites in Germany, or with stone in Britannia. Where those poles rotted thousands of years ago, the wall is still standing: “A great visual reminder” of the Roman empire, says McIntosh.

It’s not just a wall. There’s a castle every mile along, and turrets at every third-of-a-mile point, with ditches and banks both north and south. “You can imagine the kind of impact that would have had, not just on the landscape but on the people living in the area,” says McIntosh.

And thanks to the finds from the wall, we know a surprising amount about those people.

Although historians have long thought of army outposts as remote, male-dominant places, the excavations along the wall show that’s not the case. Not only were soldiers accompanied by their families, but civilians would settle around the settlements to do business. “ You can almost see Housesteads as a garrison town,” says McIntosh. “There were places you could go for a drink and so on.”

The Roman rule of thumb was not to post soldiers in the place they came from, because of the risk of rebellion. That meant Hadrian’s Wall was a cultural melting point, with cohorts from modern-day Netherlands, Spain, Romania, Algeria, Iraq, Syria – and more. “It was possibly more multicultural because it was a focus point,” says McIntosh, who says that the surrounding community might have included traders from across the empire.

Soldiers were split into two groups. Legionaries were Roman citizens from Italy, who had more rights than other soldiers and imported olive oil, wine and garum (a sauce made from decomposing fish).

They worked alongside auxiliaries – soldiers from conquered provinces, who had fewer rights, but could usually acquire citizenship after 25 years of service.

Soldiers carved their names and regiments on stones to show which part of the wall they built – around 50 of them are on display at Chesters fort.

But the wall shows that women and children were equally present.

McIntosh says that pottery brought to the camps – from the Low Countries and North Africa – shows that the soldiers “brought their families, who cooked in traditional style.” Archaeologists have found what seems to be an ancient tagine for North African-style cooking.

A tombstone from Arbeia fort for a woman named Regina shows she was a freed slave from southern Britain who was bought by – and married to – a Syrian soldier.

Another woman buried at Birdoswald fort was laid to rest with chainmail that appears to be from modern-day Poland. “Perhaps she married someone in the army,” says McIntosh, who calls the wall a “melting pot of people from all over the world under the banner of the army.”

“They brought their own religions, as well as worshipping Roman gods and adopting local deities,” she adds. At Carrawburgh, a temple to Mithras – an originally Persian deity – sat near a spring with a shrine to a local water spirit.

‘Wretched little Brits’

Some of the most extraordinary finds from the Roman empire are coming from one site on Hadrian’s Wall: Vindolanda. Here, archaeologists have found a wealth of organic remains because of what curator Barbara Birley calls the “unusual conditions onsite.”

At Vindolanda there are the remains of at least nine forts over 14 levels. “When the Romans would leave, they would knock down timber forts, and cover the area with turf and clay, sealing the layers underneath,” she says.

“Because it happened so many times, the bottom five or six layers are sealed in anaerobic conditions, so things don’t decay. When we get down there, we get wooden objects, textiles, anything organic.”

Vindolanda has the largest collection of Roman textiles from a single site in western Europe, as well as the largest leather collection of any site in the Roman empire – including 5,000 shoes, and even a broken leather flip-flop. “We probably had a population of 3,000 to 6,000 depending on the period, so 5,000 is a lot,” says Birley. For Abdy, the shoes evoke the conditions of the wet borderlands. “Women’s and children’s shoes are hobnailed – you needed it in the mucky frontier dirt tracks. They’re very evocative.”

There’s even a wig made from a local plant, hair moss, which is said to repel midges – the scourge of Scotland during the summer. A centurion’s helmet is also crested with hairmoss – the ancient equivalent of spraying yourself with insect repellent.

The first woman to write in Latin

One of the most famous finds is the trove of wooden writing tablets – the largest found anywhere.

“They give a snapshot of what life was actually like,” says Birley. “We understand so much more from written correspondence than from ‘stuff,’ and, archaeologically, it’s the stuff that usually survives – things like metals and ceramics.

“These were written in ink, not on a wax stylus tablet, and we believe they were used for what we’d put in emails: ‘The roads are awful,’ ‘The soldiers need more beer.’ Everyday business.”

The tablets – or “personal letters” as Birley describes them – were found on the site of a bonfire when the ninth cohort of Batavians (in the modern-day Netherlands) were told to move on.

“They had a huge bonfire and lots of letters were chucked in the fire. Some have been singed – we think it may have rained,” she says. One of them calls the locals “Britunculi” – “wretched little Brits.” Another talks about an outbreak of pinkeye. One claims that the roads are too bad to send wagons; another laments that the soldiers have run out of beer.

Among the 1,700 letters are 20 that mention a woman called Sulpicia Lepidina. She was the wife of the commander of the garrison, and seems to have played a crucial role. There’s a letter to her from another woman, Paterna, agreeing to send her two medicines, one a fever cure.

Birley says it’s similar to today. “If you’re a group of moms, still today we say, ‘Do you have the Calpol?’ It’s very human.” For Abdy, it’s a sign that women were traders. “She’s clearly flogging her medicines,” he says. “It’s really great stuff.”

Another tablet is an invite from Claudia Severa, the wife of another commander at a nearby camp. It’s an invitation to a birthday party. Under the formal invitation, presumably written by a scribe, is a scrawl in another hand: “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul.”

Presumably written by Claudia herself, it is thought to be the earliest example of a woman’s handwriting in Latin.

Without the organic finds – the shoes and the letters that indisputably belonged to women, unlike jewellery or weaving equipment – it’s difficult to prove conclusively that women lived in significant numbers. Vindolanda “illustrate the missing gaps,” says Abdy. For Birley, they prove that women were as crucial a part of army communities as men. “Before the Lepidina tablets were found we didn’t really understand the interactions between the soldiers and their wives,” she says. Another tablet is written by what is thought to be a Spanish standard-bearer’s common-law wife, ordering military equipment for her partner.

“The Vindolanda collection is showing that there weren’t just camp followers and prostitutes; women were part of everyday life, and contributing to the military community in many ways,” says Birley.

Abdy says that Hadrian’s Wall is interesting because the resident women span “all classes of society,” from Regina – the dead freedwoman, who would have been “bottom of the heap” – to the trader Paterna and the noblewoman Lepidina.

And of course, there’s the wall itself.

“In the Netherlands and Germany the finds are often stunning and better preserved – you go to museums and are bowled over. But in terms of structural remains, Hadrian’s Wall must be among the best,” says McIntosh, modestly, of her site.

Abdy agrees: “I can’t think of many symbols so redolent of imperial will than that wall.”

By Julia Buckley.