The main recommendations of the panel report can be summarised under five key headings: Scotland in the Roman world: Research into Roman Scotland requires an appreciation of the wider frontier and Empire-wide perspectives, and Scottish projects must be integrated into these wider, international debates. The rich data set and chronological control that Scotland has to offer can be used to inform broader understandings of the impact of Rome. Changing worlds: Roman Scotland’s rich data set should be employed to contribute to wider theoretical perspectives on topics such as identity and ethnicity, and how these changed over time. What was the experience of daily life for the various peoples in Roman Scotland and how did interactions between incomers and local communities develop and change over the period in question, and, indeed, at and after its end? Frontier Life: Questions still remain regarding the disposition and chronology of forts and forces, as well as the logistics of sustaining and supplying an army of conquest and occupation. Sites must be viewed as part of a wider, interlocking set of landscapes, and the study of movement over land and by sea incorporated within this. The Antonine Wall provides a continuing focus of research which would benefit from more comparison with frontier structures and regimes in other areas. Multiple landscapes: Roman sites need to be seen in a broader landscape context, ‘looking beyond the fort’ and explored as nested and interlocking landscapes. This will allow exploration of frontier life and the changing worlds of the Roman period. To do justice to this resource requires two elements: o Development-control archaeology should look as standard at the hinterland of forts (up to c.1 km from the ‘core’), as sensitive areas and worthy of evaluation; examples such as Inveresk show the density of activity around such nodes. The interiors of camps should be extensively excavated as standard. o Integrated approaches to military landscapes are required, bringing in where appropriate topographical and aerial survey, LIDAR, geophysics, the use of stray and metal-detected finds, as well as fieldwalking and ultimately, excavation. The Legacy of Rome: How did the longer term influence of the Romans, and their legacy, influence the formation, nature and organisation of the Pictish and other emergent kingdoms?
Recent research projects, publications, and above all the results of developer-funded archaeology provide materials for a re-assessment of the impact of Hadrian's Wall on the indigenous peoples whose lands it transected. Previous analysis has been concerned with the greater or lesser degree of ‘Romanisation’ of an Iron Age society perceived as little changed under Roman rule, with the Wall seen as a bureaucratic border running through an homogeneous frontier zone, as described by C.R. Whittaker. Although the local settlement pattern survived the original Flavian conquest of the region intact, it is now apparent that the building of the Wall under Hadrian had profound and far from benign consequences for local people. To the north of the barrier the traditional settlement pattern was largely abandoned and new social authorities emerged, while to the south there is evidence for new economic structures imposed from outside and the settlement of immigrants. The paper considers the extent to which these developments were the outcome of conscious policies by the Roman authorities.
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