This volume is an edited collection of papers which lie at the intersection of the fields of heritage management and Roman frontier studies. It originates from a session at the 2018 Limes Congress in Serbia, which was in turn inspired by the same editor's earlier work, Presenting the Romans (2013). The 2013 volume had highlighted challenges to the interpretation and presentation of Roman frontiers, such as the excessive use of academic language in museum displays, the similarities in the offer along each segment of the Roman Frontier, and the challenging issues of accessibility – both physical and intellectual – to invisible sites. The 2021 collection is a follow-up, revisiting some key themes and outlining, using case studies, the ways the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Property Interpretation Framework has been applied in the UK, Netherlands and Serbia.
The editor's introduction and opening contribution are followed by 13 papers from 19 authors. The book succeeds in offering an overview of Roman frontier interpretation, but individual contributions are only loosely thematically arranged and would have benefitted from better interactions and cross-referencing. For example, Hazenberg and Visser provide a useful summary of the adaptation of the Hadrian's Wall interpretation framework to the Dutch Limes. The authors highlight how ‘bottom-up, community engagement’ was a prerequisite for the framework to present the Dutch Limes not as ‘an exclusive archaeological story, but as an important contribution to an inclusive story about our Dutch history, our way of life, our environment and our landscape’. This paper could have been directly linked to contributions from Grafstaal, on how the Dutch interpretation framework informed work at Castellum Hoege Woerd museum in Utrecht, and Pieren, Hasselaar and Mills on the DOMunder underground museum and excavations. Instead, the introduction to the Dutch interpretation framework is followed by Roberts’ discussion of the 2018 redesign of the Birdoswald visitor facility on Hadrian's Wall.
Another example of disconnect between papers is the positioning of Weeks and Dobat's contribution, showcasing cooperation across the Limes while working on a mobile application. The authors outline how the Bavarian Limes interpretive mobile app framework was shared with Scotland, where ‘a completely new application for the Antonine Wall was created with enhanced capabilities and the new functionalities were transferred back to colleagues in Germany’. Instead of introducing Flugel's contribution, which outlines the tools available to bring to life the hidden sites of the Bavarian Limes, including the Limes Mobil app, Weeks and Dobat's paper is followed by that of Hingley, analysing present attitudes to ancient Roman identities, with the portrayal of diversity among Roman Britons on UK television as a case study. Hingley's contribution, while it suffers from its positioning, is one of the highlights of the volume: it makes some important theoretical points which are a familiar trademark of the author's wider work, but it also offers in its tables some key previously unpublished summary datasets, such as a list of all Roman monuments in the UK under the management of state archaeology organisations.
Visual representation of the past as a gateway to engaging and successful interpretation is a key theme in the volume. This emerges clearly in contributions dealing with various aspects of Hadrian's Wall Cavalry: a dispersed exhibition which took place in 2017 and featured a programme of associated events, including a large-scale re-enactment of cavalry manoeuvres and a contemporary art installation. Griffiths explores the genesis, delivery and legacy of the project. Booth and Nixon deal with the contemporary art aspect of Hadrian's Wall Cavalry project – a wind-powered installation at the fort of Chesters, reproducing the sound of a cavalry's charge. This would have benefitted from the artist's perspective to be more thoroughly woven into the article. An evaluation of audiences and visitors’ reaction to the art is also missing. The most effective article on Hadrian's Wall Cavalry is Bishop's, giving a complete account of the Turma! re-enactment event, detailing its successes (such as engaging the public in supporting factions of re-enactors using colourful flags) and limitations (such as equipment accuracy and funding concerns). Re-enactment, its merits as a tool for engagement, and its pitfalls, are also discussed by Burandt.
Finally, the importance of audience research and stakeholder consultation threads through the volume, with practical examples of methodologies and outcomes from Viminacium, in Serbia (Golubović) to the Dutch Limes (Hazenberg and Visser) to Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall (Roberts). Audience and stakeholder research also plays an important role in informing public archaeology projects on the Roman frontier. In particular, Collins and Shaw's paper discusses community engagement on Hadrian's Wall and includes a previously unseen synthesis of volunteering programmes which have taken place on the Wall over the last ten years.
In conclusion, the volume provides a valuable carousel of theoretically informed case studies, partially joined together by the light-touch editing approach. The target audiences are museum staff and those involved with managing and presenting archaeological heritage, as well as scholars of the subject, including postgraduate researchers. The subject matter is, however, of much wider interest. Open access distribution would have been a welcome addition and would have helped to overcome the barriers of knowledge which currently exist between heritage professionals and the visitors and audiences the volume discusses.
