Archaeological Journal

ISSN: 0066-5983 (Print) 2373-2288 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raij20

Garrison Life at Vindolanda: A Band of Brothers.

By Anthony Birley

Nick Hodgson

To cite this article: Nick Hodgson (2002) Garrison Life at Vindolanda: A Band of Brothers. By
Anthony Birley, Archaeological Journal, 159:1, 324-325, DOI: 10.1080/00665983.2002.11020537

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00665983.2002.11020537

Published online: 20 Dec 2014.

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324 REVIEWS

numbers, but the scarcity of finds means that they are difficult to date, and none has produced much
environmental evidence. To counter this, evidence from later periods and from other areas is used to
put forward hypotheses about the social and economic organization of the countryside. The result is
a stimulating book, although it is very difficult to use on its own because of the inclusion of only one
map on which the single place marked is Carlisle. Equally serious is the omission of a plan of Carlisle.
However, the reader who makes good these deficiencies by using maps and plans from other
publications will be well rewarded.
What emerges most clearly is the poverty of the rural settlements, even when they are close to
Roman forts. The extent to which this was a result of Roman intervention is not explored in detail,
but McCarthy cites documents from Vindolanda mentioning a centuria regionarius at Carlisle and
Haterius Nepos, who carried out a census of the Anavionenses, probably the people of Annandale. In
all likelihood the census levied men of military age who were sent to serve in Germany and elsewhere.
The final chapter deals with the post-Roman period and the kingdom ofRheged. McCarthy argues
for the continuing occupation of Carlisle, and indeed much remained for St Cuthbert to be shown
on his visit in 68 5. It is now thought that the walls of the 'city' which he saw were those of the fort, a
survival which symbolized the Roman military origins of Carlisle.
PAUL BIDWELL

GARRISON LIFE AT VINDOLANDA: A BAND OF BROTHERS. By ANTHONY BIRLEY.

Pp. 192, Illus. 30 (colour), 121 (monochrome). Tempus Publishing, 2002. Price: £15.99. ISBN
0 7524 1950 I.
Vindolanda was a military base established on the northern frontier of Roman Britain in about A.D.
85. A succession of forts was occupied until the end of the Roman period, and their extensive visible
remains are deservedly amongst the most visited in the Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site.
Unexpectedly, in 1973 Vindolanda began to yield up a treasure: from waterlogged levels
predominantly dating to the period c.90-c. 120, the most extensive collection of documents from the
north-western Roman empire, mostly ink-written on wooden tablets. Presently numbering over a
thousand, these have been recovered at intervals ever since. The exemplary publication of the texts
(by A. K. Bowman and J. D. Thomas) has almost kept up with the pace of recovery of the tablets.
Anthony Birley provides an accessible introduction to the documents and the eerily detailed vista
which they open on the day-to-day life of the inhabitants ofVindolanda. It is an interim statement-
much is based on provisional readings of over five hundred texts which have yet to be published by
Bowman and Thomas. Naturally, in such a popular format, not much Latin can be given, so there is
little chance for the reader to test the translations or to match printed text with the cursive
handwriting shown in the copious and very clear photographs. On the other hand, there is a bonus in
the form of an apparatus of notes and references indispensable to anyone with a serious interest in the
tablets. Birley's book updates, but does not supersede Bowman's short and somewhat more cautious
treatment of the tablets issued in 1994, although it has a different emphasis. Where Bowman
examined the general significance of the tablets for our understanding of documentation and literacy
in the army and empire as a whole, Birley prefers to pursue historical specifics, using a voluminous
prosopographical and literary knowledge to locate the personalities of Vindolanda in their milieu.
There are important points on which Birley diverges from the judgements of Bowman and Thomas,
notably his insistence that the place-names sometimes given in the locative case on the back of the
tablets represent not a direction for delivery but rather the writer's address.
Treatment of the archaeological context of the tablets is brief, and the reader will have to tum to
other sources for a full account of the archaeology of the site. Birley takes a straightforward view that
in successive periods the tablets were deposited near where they had been stored or used. Inevitably,
an attempt to make sense of such a complex sequence in what was a relatively small (if very deep)
excavated area involves conjecture, and certain suggestions, such as the identification of a Period 5
(Hadrianic) building as a palace for the Emperor or the Governor do not always seem wholly justified
either by the tablets or the structural evidence.
 REVIEWS 325
But the book is really about the tablets and their extraordinary contents, and to these Birley is an
excellent guide throughout. It would be a dull dog who failed to be enchanted by their insight into
the hopes and enterprises of Roman frontiersmen - and women. For all their interest, the texts
provide no instant solution to conventional questions about the historical development of the Roman
frontier. There is no explicit mention of frontier affairs, hardly a hint about hostilities. The soldiers
and their appended civilian community in this highly Latinized imperial enclave seem most concerned
with their supplies, material possessions, and job prospects, and it has to be said that at first sight the
local population does not get a look-in: there is no sign of interaction or assimilation between Roman
and native communities. The Romans of Vindolanda clearly regarded themselves as superior to the
contemptuously termed Brittunculi. We get a clear view of the network of patronage and friendships
which made the command structure of the Roman army work. Officers address each other as 'Lord
and Brother', and to the ordinary soldiers too, their contubernales were brothers; hence the subtitle of
the book. That title has a double meaning, for it evokes the Birleys themselves - the author of the
present volume, and his brother R. E. Birley, whose perseverance and determination at Vindolanda
have allowed them to preside over the greatest single archaeological discovery on Hadrian's Wall in
any of our lifetimes - perhaps of all time. Both should be congratulated for what is offered in this
fascinating book.
NICK HODGSON

THE ROMAN SHORE FORTS: COASTAL DEFENCES OF SOUTHERN BRITAIN. By

ANDREW PEARSON. Pp. I92, Illus. 25 (colour), 78 (monochrome). Tempus Publishing, 2002.
Price: £I7-99· ISBN 0 7524 1949 8.
Pearson's starting point for the study of these sites is the archaeological evidence, followed by a brief
historical summary of what is recorded by historians as happening in the third century as a backdrop
to the historical development of the Roman coastal system. The meat of the book is two substantial
chapters on the building of the Shore Forts and on their landscape setting. The first is a review of the
design, the source and supply of building materials, transport and manpower implications; the second
an account of their relationship with the Roman coastlines. The book concludes with a brisk chapter
on the strategy of the forts, addressing the core question of their function, a review of the
archaeological record of their occupation, and a short chapter on their post-Roman uses.
Evidence for the Shore Forts is fragmentary, much of it collected before archaeological techniques
had improved in the latter part of the twentieth century, and even when collected under more
modem conditions, has either proved disappointingly inconclusive (Portchester) or is still awaiting
publication (Reculver). In a book of this scale, the presentation of enough material on which to base
conclusions and assertions is always a problem, which the rather brief treatment of the evidence by
Pearson does not really resolve. Cunliffe's excavations at Portchester, for example, are described in
two brief sections.
The two chapters on the building of the forts and on their relationship with the coastline are the
most satisfactory. The collection of statistics on the quantities and source of building materials and on
the methods of supply and manpower required to build the walls - Pearson does not include the
internal structures - lead to considerations about a military source for the construction and how far
this might have occupied the military or civilian manpower available in the late-third century. As
Pearson points out, by comparison with other, more massive, wall-building going on in the rest of
the Roman world at about the same time (including in some other parts of Britain?), the logistical
problems for the Shore Forts should not have been insuperable.
The forts' relationship with what is known of the Roman coastline is helpfully assembled, but the
implications of this are not pushed fully to a conclusion. There is discussion about the types of
shipping that might have operated in the coastal waters and whether the forts were placed at deep
water or beached harbours. This re-emphasis on the relationship with the sea, or with estuaries in
most cases, only serves to reopen the question 'what did these enclosures contain?' Were they supply
bases or garrisons? Defended harbours or towns? Discussion of the evidence from inside them does
not provide an answer, but merely points to activity/inactivity demonstrated by greater or lesser coin