Auxiliary Barracks in a New Light: Recent Discoveries on Hadrian's Wall

Abstract

This paper provides an interim report on sixteen complete barrack plans obtained in the last fifteen years in excavations at the British northern frontier forts of South Shields and Wallsend (complemented by a pair of barracks partially excavated at Vindolanda in 1980 which have already been published). Its purpose is to disseminate more generally the fact that this newly obtained information changes our understanding of several aspects of the construction, function, and historical evolution of auxiliary barracks. It also tells us something more than we knew before about changes in the army as the institution that used the barracks, and of the life of the military communities that inhabited them. In some cases the buildings described here have already been fully published, or publication is imminent; in others, interim plans have been made available in disparate publications but it is likely to be a number of years before complete detailed excavation reports are issued.