7.10.2 Research Agenda

While there are a range of research questions there are some wider opportunities that any future work should exploit as well as issues that ought to be addressed that cut across different themes.  

Overarching

• Key aspects of the sequence at some sites are highly contentious and require resolution, perhaps most notably the late Antonine/Severan occupation at Cramond but also at other sites with evidence for later Roman occupation.
• A systematic programme of targeted investigation of features in camps such as ovens, which can be located through geophysics, would be extremely valuable.
• Focus on the dates of the desertion of the Antonine Wall and forts in south east Scotland would help in the understanding of the timing and tempo of abandonment.
• Every opportunity to examine potentially contemporary Iron Age settlement sites should also be taken.
• Multiple radiocarbon samples from these are required so that the chronology of contemporary Iron Age sites can be statistically modelled and the detailed development of indigenous society studied, as well as linked to the presence of any Roman artefacts. OSL profiling and dating has particular potential for dating ditches and ramparts.
• The study of the Roman presence in south east Scotland should contribute to and learn from approaches in other areas of the Empire, especially in relation to the study of borderlands and frontiers.
• Targeted excavation of sites would retrieve information such as environmental and dating samples not recovered by previous work.
  • This should be placed in the context of survey and remote sensing to optimise sample locations on problematic sites and areas outwith fortified areas should also receive attention. While targeted, small-scale excavation can address specific questions, and will often be appropriate, there remains a need to excavate large areas to understand the layout and evolution of specific sites.
• The backlog of publication of prior work needs to be addressed, including the publication of artefacts and ecofacts stored in museums and further scientific analysis done on that material where it may help answer specific research questions.   
  • Grey literature (especially material not accessible through ADS) should be systematically catalogued and made accessible. Museum collections and Treasure Trove artefacts also need to be fully documented and photographed. Public friendly interfaces should be further developed. Developments in imaging such as 3D scanning and photogrammetry should be used where appropriate to enrich the digital record.

Environment

• We need to understand issues of preservation in unexcavated sites with potential waterlogged deposits through active research and monitoring.
  • This should be linked to a better understanding of the erosion and preservation of cultivated sites, and well as a broader need to understand sub-surface site formation and taphonomy, particularly in the context of climate change altering environments that may preserve materials.
• We need to better understand the geographic features of the landscape, especially the routes of rivers and potential crossing points. How was the landscape different during this period? There is potential for environmental studies that assess climate change/erosion, geology and isostatic change in relation to river levels.
  • South east Scotland is very poorly understood through palynology, with the few extant pollen records upwards of 30 years old and many were general vegetation histories over long time periods. Even where they do focus on later prehistory and the Roman Iron Age for example Dumayne (1992) and Ramsay (1995), sampling intervals are often of the order of several human generations. The data-set must be improved and the recommendations can be quite specific.
    (a) we need pollen records that are directed to resolving problems and testing hypotheses generated by existing data, being much more explicit in defining how site selection will resolve these.
    (b) we need pollen records that are sensitive to changes in the farming landscape (Davies and Tipping 2004; Tipping 2010), with restricted pollen source areas.
    (c) age-modelling must be fundamental, sufficiently precise in this period to define change at human generations (with 25 year precision).

Settlement

• There is a need for landscape investigation to obtain a better understanding of the Roman occupation in terms of the structures, such as forts and roads, that became part of that landscape.
  • Fieldwalking within this area may identify other focal points of activity that are not visible topographically and zones of agricultural activity may also be visible.
• Systematic geophysics on and in close proximity to known Roman sites. Fieldwalking, combined with the controlled use of metal detecting to take a landscape approach to entire settlements, including activities in annexes/vici as well as forts and/or camps.
  • Focus of investigations targeted at Roman fort annexes/vici may provide information regarding the Roman/native or Roman/civilian interfaces? Integrated analysis of finds from co-ordinated and well recorded field-walking and metal detecting may provide an indication of activity zones and the interplay between military and civilian communities.
• The investigation of the spatial distribution of finds to identify different areas and buildings, both within forts and in adjoining extramural annexes.
  • Although this is limited by the age of many investigations, more recent excavations such as those at Elginhaugh, Cramond, Inveresk and Newstead, where excavation was spatially controlled, have potential for more detailed, systematic and quantitative comparison (see for example, Clifford 2023). Future work to extend the comparisons to northern England and material from other frontier zones around the Empire would be valuable.
• There is a need to systematically explore the use of building materials for past and future investigations, including by geology (for stone) and micromorphology (for turf; Romankiewicz et al 2020, 2022, with the potential for the study of wood from waterlogged deposits at some sites.
  • The consideration of the whole suite of building materials, including ceramic building materials, lead, stone and wood will give a richer understanding of resource acquisition, building technologies and the infrastructure required to support them. Experimental reconstruction may provide important insights into construction methods.
• Research needs to integrate the story of the Roman presence/influence into our understanding of Iron Age communities in south east Scotland from immediately before it began as well as into the narrative of the longer-term consequences of Roman interaction.

• Systematic examination of aerial photography, national LiDAR coverage, use of high-resolution satellite imagery (particularly multi-spectral imagery acquired at short intervals to reveal crop mark development), targeted drone photography (including multi-spectral and LiDAR imagery) would help to map Roman south east Scotland.
  • Areas less responsive to such techniques could be investigated by fieldwalking and geophysics, and these should be approaches to follow up remote sensing in all areas.

Material Culture

• There is a need to review artefacts and sites in light of modern methods and approaches.
• An analysis of the pattern of finds of Roman material including coins from non-Roman sites in south east Scotland (many from metal-detecting from non-scheduled sites) may be helpful. Reviews of the finds of conflict-related artefacts (e.g. sling bullets) may also be valuable.

Religion

• Geophysics survey of the environs of Roman forts will be helpful to identify possible religious monuments and temple sites, and the recent indications of a probable temple outside the fort at Birrens are an indication of the potential.

• Geophysics outside the boundaries of forts, particularly along likely routeways, have the potential to locate cemeteries.

Subsistence and Farming

• New excavation should use optimal retrieval and sampling strategies with particular attention paid to those contexts with waterlogging or good bone preservation.
  • These should be closely integrated with the environmental studies.
• There needs to be systematic retrieval and analysis of plant remains, with attention to contexts of deposition.
• Isotopic analysis should be employed on archived charred plant remains to confirm Van der Veen’s interpretations from weed assemblages of manuring practice.
• Recently developed techniques such as ZooMS (Buckley 2016) and environmental DNA have potential to provide information on the exploitation of animals where bones preservation is poor  and to reassess assemblages (e.g. Elginhaugh) where species identification of the bones was limited.
• Targeted scientific techniques would be useful to tell us more about food and diet, for example the analysis of food residues in pottery, whether of lipids (Evershed 2008) or proteins (Hendy et al. 2018b).
• Isotope analysis of human remains, where preserved, has considerable potential to inform on diet (e.g. Czére et al. 2022), as does the analysis of proteomic evidence from dental calculus (Hendy et al. 2018a).
• Direct evidence for cultivation, particularly field systems and cultivation terraces, needs to be excavated and dated. While this may often relate to Iron Age land management, where it is contemporary with Roman occupation of or interaction with south east Scotland, it has strong relevance to the subsistence practices on which the Roman presence impacts and may have depended on.
• Integrate discussion of the full range of materials to gain a wider picture of self-sufficiency and integration into wider supply networks. A consideration of skill, reuse and expedient repair may give insights into local responses to need. This can also integrate into both the exploitation of local raw materials, potentially supplied through contacts with Iron Age settlements, and distribution to Iron Age settlement themselves, as well as differentiating between differing occupants of forts and vici.
• Given the evidence for reuse of materials within Roman settlements in south east Scotland as well as the limited distribution of Roman material into Iron Age communities, approaches to artefacts including object biographies and object itineraries may be useful. These have barely been explored in the archaeology of south east Scotland. Wear analysis may usefully form part of this approach.