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Recent Discoveries in Roman Britain from the Air and in the Field1a
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
It is now some twenty years since an audience at St. John's College, Oxford, heard Mr. O. G. S. Crawford describe, with illustrations, some of the pioneer results in the application of air-photography to archaeology. The impression made was that he had not only cleared the air but conquered it; and for a brief hour we looked upon our old world through new spectacles of undreamt power. An entirely new point of view had been gained, and it was evident that we were upon the brink of a revolution in method and attitude in field-research. As time has passed, however, the limitations of the new instrument have become more apparent. Even at first the most striking results were obtained in southern England, and upon prehistoric material. But it is still true that results elsewhere, while often striking, are comparatively meagre. There are, in fact, specific conditions attached to successful archaeological photography from the air; and for everyone, airmen included, the question is first best studied from the ground, since the strongest limitations are imposed by factors on the ground itself.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright ©I. A. Richmond 1943. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Footnotes
1a
The substance of this paper was given to the Joint Meeting of the Hellenic and Roman Societies at Oxford on 3rd September, 1943.
References
1 For example, O. G. S. Crawford, Air-Survey and Archaeology 1024, pls. x, xi, xii, and xiii.
2 Archaeological Journal lxxxix, 69, pl. xviii: or Yorkshire Arch. Journ. xxviii, 425, figs. 6, 7.
3a Cf. for example, Stukeley, Itin. Curiosum (1724), 110, pl. 95 (Verulamium), 170, pl. 61 (Silchester); more recently Haverfield, F., Proc. Soc. Antiqs. xviii, 10Google Scholar ff. (Thames valley villages).
3 Cumberland and Westmorland Antiq. & Arch. Soc. Trans. ser. 2 ( = CW2) xxxiv, 1934, 58ff.
4 Ibid. 50 ff.
5 Proc. Soc. Antiqs. Scot. ( = PSA Scot.) lxx, 402.
6 JRS ix, 135–6.
7 Op. cit.113–15.
8 Antiquity xiii, 1939, 287 f.Google Scholar, 291.
9 The Statistical Account of Scotland (1794) xiii, 534Google Scholar, under the parish of Cargill, describes the medieval Castle Hill as Roman: it does not refer to the present work.
10 It will be recalled that it was Gourdie Hill from which the stone used in the ramparts of Inchtuthil was said to be derived, see PSA Scot. xxxvi, 195. For the name Steed Stalls cf. Antiquity, xvii, 63 and i, 150–152.
11 PSA Scot. lxxiv, 45–8.
12 See Antiquity xiii, 282 ff.; JRS xxx, 160 ff.; full account by Dr. St. Joseph about to be published by the Glasgow Archaeological Society.
13 Northumberland County History xv, 76: Arch. Ael. 4 ser. 4, xiv, 129 ff.
14 If the road had made for Cramond, the alternative port on the Forth, it would have taken the north side of the Pentlands.
15 For this site, see Macdonald, PSA Scot. lii, 221; Anc. Mons. Comm. Inventory of Midlothian 140 ff., no. 177.
16 Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain pl. xxiv.
17 PSA Scot. lxxii, 290, 321 f., 344 f.
18 JRS xxix, 201.
19 JRS xxx, 162, pl. viii; Trans. Dumfries and Galloway Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Soc. xxii, 156–163.
20 JRS xxix, 201.
21 Ibid. xxx, 160; see Roy, op. cit. p. 105.
22 Ibid. 160, 162. Dr. St. Joseph points out to me that the site of Galloberry is a hummock of hard glacial sand. This gives very good results, as in chalk, and is quite different from soft and shifting sand.
23 Anc. Mon. Comm. Inventory of Dumfriesshire 68, no. 172. It is not generally appreciated that this site looks east and west rather than north and south. In connection with it the road from Borthwick Water by Craik Cross deserves examination: see R. P. Hardie, The Roads of Medieval Lauderdale, 47–8.
24 See p. 50 above, note 15.
25 One might instance the areas of Ilkley and Bainbridge as particularly promising : cf. Raistrick, Yorkshire Arch Journ xxxi. 214 ff.
26 For Thornborough Farm see JRS xxx, 166, where the obtuse angle in the wall of the site suggests either a late-Roman fort or a town-wall. For Bainesse Farm ibid. and vol. xix, 190; and Elgee The Archaeology of Roman Yorkshire (1933), 148, 245, s.v. ‘Catterick’.
27 Hist. of Richmondshire and Lonsdale (1822), 166. The Gate was a turnpike-gate on Leeming Lane, where the bye-road to Gatenby turned off, south of Londonderry.
28 Cf. Bradford Antiquary iii, 353 ff.; Antiqs. Journ. iii, 63 (Gargrave); Arch, Journ. xxxii, 135 ff.; and Yorks. Arch. Journ. xxvii, 212 (Castle Dykes); Kitson-Clark, Gazetteer of Roman Remains in E. Yorks. 16, and Richmond, Antiquity xi, 381.
29 JRS xxvi, 248–250; Crawford, O. G. S. in Luftbild und Vorgeschichte (Luftbild und Luftbildmessung no. 16, 1938, Berlin 18, 58Google Scholar.
30 W. T. Watkin, Roman Lancashire 72 ff., 205 ff.; cf. Num. Chron. ser. 5, xvi, 1936, 316Google Scholar; also JRS xviii, 198.
31 For the Fenny hoard or hoards between Rossall Point and Fleetwood see Watkin, o.c. 238 and W. Harrison, An Archaeological Survey of Lancashire (1896), II s.v. ‘Fleetwood’; Arch. Journ. xc, 298 f.
32 Kitson-Clark, Gazetteer of R. East Yorkshire 69, and, for roads, ibid. 43 f.
33 Cosm. Rav. 431, 3, Bresnetenaci veteranorum; cf. Scenae veteranorum in Egypt.
34 See Anc. Mon. Comm. Inventory, Montgomeryshire 83, no. 419, fig. 26a.
35 JRS ii, 201 ff.; Arch. Journ. lxxxix, 20 3 ff.; for pottery and coins, see Hull and Craster, ibid. 220–243; Hist, of Scarborough, ed. by A. Rowntree (1931), 40 ff.; Fünfundzvianzig Jahre Röm.-Germ. Kommission 1930 112 f
36 CW 2 xxix, 138–165; for supplementary evidence, see JRS xxviii, 177.
37 Bushe-Fox, JRS xxii, 71 f. For Barrock Fell, see CW 2 xxxi, III ff., and Antiquity iv, 472 ff.
38 Antiquity xv, 121 ff., hence JRS xxxi, 134 ff., and above p. 46, note 3a.
39 Antiquity iii, 183 ff.; Norfolk Archaeology 1931, 93 ff.; O.G. S.Crawford in Luftbild und Vorgeschichte 48 f.
40 O. G. S. Crawford in Luftbild und Vorgeschichte 53 ( = Collingwood, Roman Britain 193, fig. 29); cf. Viet. Co. Hist. Somerset i, 309 ff.
41 Antiquity ix, 47a ff.; Oxoniensia i, 24 ff. See also JRS xxvi, 256 ff.