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  • Rome’s First Frontier. The Flavian Occupation of Northern Scotland
  • Rose Mary Sheldon
Rome’s First Frontier. The Flavian Occupation of Northern Scotland. By D. J. Woolliscroft and B. Hoffmann, Stroud, U.K.: Tempus, 2006. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 254. £19.99.

There are two ways an historian can make a contribution—find new evidence or create a new paradigm. Drs. Woolliscroft and Hoffmann have done both. Through the use of new archaeological excavation, the reassessment of older archaeological work, a new reading of the literary sources, and a large dose of aerial photography, they have altered our picture of the Roman occupation of Scotland and Rome's creation of its first frontier system. For over a decade these scholars have been chipping away at the standard interpretation that all Roman historians of this generation grew up with concerning the invasion, occupation, and abandonment of Scotland by the Romans. That traditional edifice has finally fallen.

Their project began humbly enough a decade ago when the University of Liverpool began a project to excavate Roman military installations on the Gask Ridge in Perthshire. Though the Gask frontier and its components have been known for centuries, since the Second World War many new sites have been found, mainly through aerial photography. This frontier system, when combined with the Roman forts in the mouths of the highland glens, and the forts further north in Strathmore, give us a frontier system that shows that the Romans had a remarkably thorough understanding of Scotland's geography.

Why is this material important? The Romans took on considerable trouble and expense in invading Scotland. Yet, just as the system got up and running, the Romans did something unprecedented in their history—they just left. They were not forced out by a military debacle like the Varian disaster in Germany; the pullout was unilateral and entirely voluntary. It was not even a phased withdrawal as was once thought, but a retreat of up to eighty miles to the area where Hadrian's Wall would evolve in the 120s. The authors explain the structure of this frontier, its significance, and the reason for the Roman withdrawal. The Gask Ridge was always thought to be dated to the Flavian period, slightly later than the Wetterau limes in Germany. Now, as it turns out, the German limes is dated later and the Gask system becomes the earliest defended frontier in Britain, making it the protoype of all Roman frontier systems, and a successful pattern that was repeated throughout the empire. [End Page 210]

Through careful excavation of sites along the Gask frontier, a painstaking systemization of material from previous digs, and annual jaunts into the air in a Cessna 152, a single-engined, high winged, 2 seater (shooting out an open window!) for new photography, the authors have added new sites to the configuration, clarified the chronology, and have generally refined our understanding of how the Romans used their offensive and defensive installations. The first third of the book is filled with maps, charts, and color photos representing the latest information on the Gask Ridge sites, the second third surveys and illustrates the sites and the new findings, the last third summarizes their new interpretation of the evidence. The authors challenge Tacitus's Agricola as a work of quasi-fiction; they discard the battle of Mons Graupius as the hitching post of the history of Roman Scotland, and they explode stereotypes about Roman/native relations in the border areas. One of those stereotypes is the idea that the Roman army could not support itself in Scotland without massive additional expenditure. There is even evidence that Roman/native relations in occupied Scotland were much more peaceable than previously expected.

All of this excitement is packed into a small, beautifully produced and illustrated, cheaply priced paperback. This is the book that should be on the shelf of all military historians in place of the popular works (like Anthony Kamm's The Last Frontier or James E. Fraser's Roman Conquest of Scotland) that follow the old paradigm and do not take into consideration the newest archaeological evidence. It makes a fine companion piece to David Woolliscroft's previous book on Roman Military...

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