Dr Merrony confirmed his suspicions of a Roman fort by looking for Roman tilingMark Merrony
Posted on 08/10/2024 6:34:58 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An academic who claims to have discovered a Roman fort while out on a bike ride says his discovery indicates a more militant history for west Wales than previously thought.
He believes the site, which is located underneath a farmer's field in the north of Pembrokeshire, suggests that Wales was fully integrated into Roman Britain.
Dr Mark Merrony, of Wolfson College, Oxford, said he was "absolutely thrilled"...
The site is believed to be two to three hectares in size and Dr Merrony said, in its prime, it would have been occupied by 500 soldiers.
He said his discovery suggested Wales was completely integrated into Roman Britain, whereas previously only two forts were known to exist in west Wales...In order to determine whether his suspicions were right, Dr Merrony said he looked for Roman material.
"I wanted to find a particular roofing slate type, which tends to be hexagonal, with a long point on," he said...
Dr Merrony previously discovered a Roman villa in west Wales in 2002, which inspired him to look for more sites.
He believes the fort dates back to between the first and third centuries, when the Celtic Demetae tribe inhabited south-west Wales...
He said he had received some criticism from local people in the area, who believed he was "giving the game away" as to the location of the site and encouraging "treasure hunters" to visit...
The fort now needs a series of surveys to prove its validity, including a geophysical survey and possible excavation.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Dr Merrony confirmed his suspicions of a Roman fort by looking for Roman tilingMark Merrony
Thar she blows!
Sounds like a cohort fort. These were pretty common throughout the R.E.
[singing] Wale meat again, don’t know how, don’t know when...
What does Hillary have to do with it?
What does Harris have to do with this?
That said, at some point after the Roman legions left and after invitation of mercenary Saxons like Horst and Hengst, what was left of Roman and Christian Britain was crowed into Cornwall and Wales. At that point the original non-germanic Britons would probably be more inclined to consider themselves "Britons". See . Gildas the Wise, "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae". (Pretty sure he would have a few things to say about their current barbarian invasion and having become a "Lapsed" non-Christian country.)
The Romans had such forts all over the Empire. The Roman legions maintained the frontiers, and maintained public order when needed in Roman cities.
Contrary to the anachronistic and generally nationalistic modern claims, Britain was hardly any trouble for the Romans, which is why it was part of the Empire for such a long time. One of the splinter empires during the Crisis of the Third Century was based in Britain.
The most common claim (at least here on FR) is that the Romans were never able to conquer Scotland — which is true, but only because the Scots hadn’t entered Caledonia, and didn’t get there until the 6th c. Prior to that they lived in Ireland. The Romans realized early on that there was literally nothing of any value to them in Caledonia.
Hadrian’s Wall was constructed (for the most part) along the top of a natural feature. The Romans used it to keep the occasional band of brigands from raiding the settled province. It also served as a way to collect the modest taxes from cross-border trade.
The last large Roman expedition north of the wall was by Septimius Severus, and was in response to various problems the friendly neighbors north of the wall having been under attack by raiders. It’s not unlikely that the massive defeat of the Caledonians at that time led eventually to the early medieval Viking raids and settlements in the far north.
The Severan Dynasty and/or its collapse led to and/or contributed to the Crisis of the Third Century.
Severan Dynasty...grandson Elagabus, the decadant "New Age" emperor.
Septimius Severus was proud of his (claimed) Carthaginian roots, and his second wife was from Syria. Not criticizing, but having an emperor proud of being descended from Rome’s historical existential enemy who then married a wacko cultist is probably not best practice. :^)
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