Encounters and transformations beyond Roman borders: an-integrated paleoenvironmental, archaeological and historical approach which will explore the unconquered societies living beyond the northern most Roman frontier and their encounters with Rome

Abstract

• It is well known that the Roman Empire expanded as far north as the Highlands of Scotland between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD before retreating to a series of frontiers in modern day central Scotland and northern England. Major changes to the everyday activities of locals and to the landscape, may have come with these events. From fragmented historical and available archaeological records, evidence suggests the Romans yielded considerable influence over at least some of the unconquered native communities. Influence came in the form of subsidies to promote peace and occasionally through violent campaigns to quell native uprisings, but Roman influence would not have been consistent or uniform; it would have varied regionally, impacting local communities differently and over generations with some communities becoming more Romanised than others. However, most 1st millennium AD archaeological sites north of the Antonine Wall have never been extensively excavated. Historical texts tend to be fragmentary, particularly for eastern Scotland, whilst palaeoecological investigations tend to use better-preserved lake or peat bog archives, often located some distance from archaeological sites at low chronological resolution. This means that we still know very little about the daily lives of native communities living in northern Britain, their economy, environment, or the impacts of social/environmental change. This paper presents the results so far of a new Leverhulme funded project which integrates higher resolution palaeoecological analysis with archaeological and historical archives, aimed at exploring how Roman occupation in Britain impacted the unconquered native communities living beyond the northern most Roman frontier