One of the most persistent spurs to archaeological imagination in studies of Northern Britain in the period of the Roman interludes is the battle of Mons Graupius, fought in 79 or 83 AD, by Romans and Caledonians, somewhere in what is now Scotland.
The monumental evidence for the Romans in northern Scotland is slender but bewitchingly cumulative – there are physical remains such as the Antonine Wall, forts and marching camps, there are the plans of others, now lost, recorded when extant by General Roy in 1747-1755, and other features appear as cropmarks and in excavations and by chance discoveries.
Laid next to this archaeological evidence are the surviving records, of geographical information gathered by Ptolemy of Alexandria which lists the Caledonian tribes and Roman settlements, and principally, the account of Roman military activity in Tacitus’ Agricola, augmented by other sources such as Cassius Dio. These accounts describe two campaigns within what is now Scotland, one by Agricola and a later one by Septimus Severus. Tantalisingly, the marching camps stretching up to the north appear to be of varying sizes, with two different defensive features used at the gateways. Some of the camps overlap, showing that they are not contemporary. The two styles of camps lend themselves to the interpretation that each style represents a different campaign. However, the archaeology shows a more complicated picture.
The battle has excited much attention as there is a description of it happening before a mountain. The search for a site which has both a Roman camp and a sizeable hill as well as other geographical features has caused much ink to be spilled. Another battle, where Caratacus and the Ordovices were defeated in 50AD at Caer Caradoc, is also an unconfirmed site, but this doesn’t excite as much interest as Mons Graupius has.
Forder says he avoids referring to ‘the battle of Mons Graupius’ in his book, which is an odd thing to try and do given the subject matter. It crops up in the title and a chapter heading for a start. His contention is that Tacitus making up a battle on such a scale, even though he was painting the past in a better light than his present, would be improbable, therefore the battle happened. Instead of the suggested site at Bennachie, with the camp at Logie Durno in Aberdeenshire, he interprets the mountain to be Moncrieffe Hill and the camps around that site and that the fort at Strageath was Victoria in Ptolemy’s Geographia and that it was named after the victory at Mons Graupius. His analysis is very broad, taking in the surviving written account by Tacitus and the archaeological remains.
This has clearly been a labour of love, and Forder has visited many of the locations and pondered hard over these puzzles and produced a book to add to the discussion. He asks good questions about the material and makes interesting suggestions, however there are some surprising omissions and deficiencies.
For a start the mapping in the book, apart from the colour section, is appalling. The maps are unclear due to being physical geography maps of Scotland in greyscale, with small black markings on them. England appears as a void with sites marked (which makes them easier to see). A map with ‘sites mentioned in the text’ would have been helpful.
The main oddity of the book is that its references to other work on the subject is primarily internet based and the printed literature that is cited is curious for its omissions. The book leaves the feeling that much has been gleaned from websites such as Historic Environment Scotland’s Canmore. This is fine, but there are two caveats. Firstly, that Canmore usually has excerpts or précis of archaeological work on its entries and should be used in conjunction with non-digital resources. Secondly, that some websites may not be updated and are in danger of disappearing even beyond the reach of the Wayback Machine. The latter is the case for the website of Stan Wolfson’s work. Forder notes that the website was deleted on page 276 and states, in footnote 98, pg 269 that Wolfson’s work not published. This is not true, as it was published in 2008 (Wolfson 2008).
The two biggest elephants in the room are, however, Hanson’s Agricola and the Conquest of the North (1987) and, strikingly, Maxwell’s A Battle Lost. Romans and Caledonians at Mons Graupius (1989) are not cited in the bibliography and their analyses of the Roman campaigns is not explicitly engaged with, which is a very curious omission.
Other critical works missing from the book’s bibliography are Cook and Dunbar (2008) on the excavations at the Roman marching camp at Kintore and Woolliscroft and Hoffmann (e.g. 2006) on the Gask Ridge fortifications. Familiarity with these archaeological works (and more) is shown in the text, but it is usually credited to presentations or websites. An exception is Rebecca Jones’ work on Roman camps where an update occurs in the footnotes giving page numbers for relevant sites from her monograph (Jones 2011).
For Ptolemy’s Geographia, Forder uses the 1893 edition of Scott and Rylands, but there has been much work done on this text and map which may have been helpful, see for example those works cited in Isaksen (2011).
As for Moncrieffe Hill, which he repeatedly notes that it sounds a ‘suspiciously similar name to Mons Graupius’ (page 144), Forder doesn’t engage with place-name studies, which note that there can be many ‘false friends’ which appear to be very similar, but are of very different origins and extreme caution should be used. As Cameron wrote “in many, if not the majority of cases, the modern form of the name gives no help at all in arriving at its earlier meaning” (Cameron 1977: 18). W.J. Watson’s analysis of the name (Watson 1926: 401) which is still cited in Hall (n.d. : 2) as the only consideration of the name, has the suggested meaning the “hill of the tree”.
Also, Forder does not mention the 2014-2016 community archaeology work on Moncrieffe Hill, facilitated by AOC Archaeology and Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust (Cook 2017, Strachan et al 2017) which discovered Iron Age evidence (which may have helped his case) and has now resulted in a booklet (AOC Archaeology Group 2020 - available at http://www.pkht.org.uk/resources/publications/).
Bibliography
- AOC Archaeology Group 2020 Hillforts of the Tay. Community Archaeology at Moncrieffe Hill and Castle Law, Abernethy, Perth and Kinross (Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust).
- Cameron, K. 1977 English Place-names (London, Batsford).
- Cook, M. 2017 “Moncrieffe Hillfort” Discovery and Excavation in Scotland n.s. 17: 143.
- Cook, M. and Dunbar, L. 2008 Rituals, Roundhouses and Romans. Excavations at Kintore, Aberdeenshire 2000-2006 (Edinburgh, Scottish Trust for Archaeological Research).
- Frere, S.S. 1991 “Reviews: A Battle Lost: Romans and Caledonians at Mons Graupius by G.S. Maxwell” Britannia 22: 340.
- Hall, M. n.d. “Towards an understanding of Perth’s origin: The Pictish & Gaelic background” (Paper prepared for 2002 conference but not given, available at www.tafac.org.uk/mhall.pdf (Accessed 21/5/2021).
- Hanson, W.S. 1987 Agricola and the Conquest of the North (London, Batsford).
- Isaksen, L. 2011 “Lines, damned lines and statistics: unearthing structure in Ptolemy’s Geographia” e-Perimetron 6(4): 254-260. http://www.e-perimetron.org/vol_6_4/isaksen.pdf (Accessed 21/5/2021).
- Jones, R. 2011 Roman Camps in Scotland (Edinburgh, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland).
- Maxwell, G.S. 1989 A Battle Lost. Romans and Caledonians at Mons Graupius (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press).
- Strachan, D., Cook, M., Nicol, S. and Roper, K. 2017 “Moredun Hillfort, Moncrieffe Hill” Discovery and Excavation in Scotland n.s. 17: 143.
- Watson, W.J. 1926 The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh, Blackwood and Sons).
- Wolfson, S. 2008 Tacitus, Thule and Caledonia: The achievements of Agricola’s navy in their true perspective (Oxford, BAR Brit Ser 459).
- Woolliscroft, D. and Hoffmann, B. 2006 Rome’s First Frontier. The Flavian Occupation of Northern Scotland (Stroud, Tempus).