Hadrian’s Wall forms a very permanent-looking statement of intent – a hard edge to Rome’s empire. Its dominance in the landscape today shapes people’s ideas of the Roman frontier in Britain, and overshadows Roman involvement with lands further north. The Wall was not meant to be where the Empire stopped. Three times Rome tried to conquer what is now Scotland, and three times they pulled back. A special exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh reveals the story of these northern campaigns with new discoveries, recent research, and multiple loans from across Britain and the Continent (see ‘Further information’ below). We will explore some of these themes here.
The exhibition is more than just a reminder of Scotland’s Roman past. It brings recent approaches in Roman frontier archaeology to a broader audience. The focus is not on the legionaries, Roman citizens from the Mediterranean, but on auxiliary troops recruited from all around the Empire who did the grunt work of holding down a difficult land. Yet the story of the frontier is about more than men with swords, and to understand it fully we must look beyond soldiers and consider the communities that travelled with them and built lives around them: people whose tales archaeology is uniquely well-placed to tell.
The Roman army did not simply march into an empty landscape. This land was already occupied by complex farming societies who had their own histories of connections and conflict with each other. In considering ‘Roman Scotland’, we must look at the impact of invasion on local societies, and how they reacted to these events. The multicultural Roman army was no UN peacekeeping force. It was bent on conquest and occupation, with troops willing to do whatever was needed to take this land for Rome.
