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New Discoveries Relating to the Planning of the Antonine Wall in Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2018

John Poulter
John Poulter*
Affiliation:
Wing, [email protected]
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Abstract

The importance of long-distance alignments in Roman surveying is increasingly being recognised. It has now been discovered that they were used in setting out the central sectors of the Antonine Wall, but — in contrast to Hadrian's Wall — it appears that they were employed to determine the locations of the military installations along the Wall rather than the line of its rampart and ditch. It also appears that the enigmatic enclosures and expansions which are attached to the rear of the rampart of the Wall only seem to occur in connection with these alignments. A careful analysis of possible explanations indicates that the Romans may initially have sought to set up a two-level alarm system across the central sectors of the Antonine Wall, the possible impacts of which upon the planning and design of the Wall are examined. The Supplementary Material available online (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X18000284) contains a table of inter-visabilities between known military installations, and OS grid references for the installations.

Keywords

Antonine WallRoman armyRoman surveyinglong-distance alignmentsenclosures and expansionsbeaconsinter-visibilitiesalarm system
Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 49 , November 2018 , pp. 113 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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References

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Supplementary material: PDF

Poulter supplementary material

Table S2

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Supplementary material: File

Poulter supplementary material

Table S1

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