This year marks the 1900 anniversary of the start of the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, which took six years to complete and was built to guard the northern frontier of the Roman Empire in 122 AD. The wall ran for 118-km from the Solway Firth to Wallsend on the River Tyne and is now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The wall featured over 80 milecastles or forts, two observation towers and 17 larger forts. After the Romans left Britain in the early 5th century, some 300 years after the wall was constructed, large sections of the wall fell into decay and were recycled into local buildings and houses. As England lines up events to celebrate the anniversary, archaeologists realise the wall is facing a new threat-climate change!
The historic barrier
Nineteen hundred years after it was built to keep out “barbarian hordes”, archaeologists at Hadrian’s Wall in northern England are facing a new enemy – climate change, which threatens its vast treasure trove of Roman artefacts.
Thousands of soldiers and many of their families lived around the 118-km stone wall, which crosses England from west coast to east coast, marking the limit of the Roman Empire and forming Britain’s largest Roman archaeological feature.
The wall was begun in 122 AD during the reign of emperor Hadrian and marked the boundary between Roman Britannia and unconquered Caledonia, helping to keep barbarian raiders out of the empire.
Treasure trove
The Roman soldiers who lived there left behind not just wooden structures but the fascinating detritus of everyday life that allows archaeologists today to reconstruct how they lived in the windswept north of the empire.
They include the fort of Vindolanda, some 33 miles west of the modem day city of Newcastle upon Tyne, a Roman settlement at the original eastern end of the wall, then named Pons Aelius.
New threat
“A lot of the landscapes at Hadrian’s Wall are preserved under peat bog and marsh very wet, very moist ground, which has protected the archaeology for almost two millennia,” according to Andrew Birley, director of excavations and chief executive of the Vindolanda Trust.
“But as global warming takes place, climate change takes place,” he added.
The ground heats up more rapidly than the air temperature, caking the previously moist soil and letting oxygen in through the resulting cracks.
“When that oxygen gets in there, things that are really delicate, that are made of leather, textile, items of wood, crack, decay and are lost forever,” said Birley.
“All of this, all this masonry. all of the ground behind me was under the ground. It was under a farmer’s field 50 years ago,” said Birley. “Less than one percent of Hadrian’s Wall has been explored archaeologically and a lot of that landscape is protected in this wet peat land environment and that’s a landscape that’s really under threat.”
Glimpses of the past
Behind him, dozens of Roman shoes from all genders, ages and social strata are displayed, just a small sample of the around 5.500 leather items so far found at the site alone.
Thanks to the black, peaty soil, many of the artefacts have kept a fascinating level of detail
“They are fantastic because they’ve completely changed our perception of the Roman Empire the Roman army, they’ve changed it from being a male preserve to lots of women and children running around,” he said.
“And without these artefacts surviving, we wouldn’t have had that information and that’s the sort of stuff that’s under threat because of climate change.” AFP
1900 years on…
- The building of the wall began in 122 AD during the reign of emperor Hadrian.
- Over the years, the dramatic landscape around the wall has revealed stone and wooden structures, leather shoes and clothing, tools, weapons and even handwritten wooden tablets, feeding knowledge of what Roman life in Britain was like.
- Only around a quarter of the site at Vindolanda has been excavated, and the fort is just one of 14 along Hadrian’s Wall, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site since 1987 and one of Britain’s best-known ancient tourist attractions.
- Events are taking place this year to mark the 1.900 years since construction of the wall began.
Picture Credit : Google
