The Roman Occupations of Scotland: The Evidence of Samian Ware

Abstract

Of the problems facing historians of Roman Britain few are so pressing, or so difficult to solve, as those associated with the Roman occupations of Scotland. The difficulties stem from the sparsity of contemporary or near-contemporary literary accounts, but they are exacerbated by the apparent lack of dated building inscriptions firmly assignable to the second Antonine period. Nevertheless, any assessment of Antonine Scotland must clearly start from the ancient historians, take into account all the available inscriptions and add the evidence provided by coins. The structural evidence for the forts has to be reviewed against this background. However, in recent years we have come to realise more and more that all these categories of evidence taken together are not enough to allow precise conclusions on some vital points. All this applies primarily to the Antonine period: the Flavian occupation indeed has its problems, but on the whole they are relatively minor ones, and do not involve widely different chronological interpretations.