Soldiers on the Wall

Abstract

Historically, literature dealing with the Roman military occupation in Britannia over the first four centuries AD did not address the experiences of individuals or communities. This chapter joins a growing body of scholarship that has turned to theories of identity—incorporating notions of agency, structure, practice, materiality, and the use and transformation of space/landscape—which assert that identity is a very complex and realistic concept with which to understand human interaction as it changes over time. The authors trace the long recursive trajectory of the identities of the original “barbarian” auxiliary soldiers who were permanently stationed in Hadrian’s wall forts along the northern frontier of Britannia, as their practices and interactions with native Britons in the vici transformed and in turn helped to transform the army and wider landscape. No longer the lowest-class soldiers, they became privileged Roman citizens with new identities that drew on Roman, British, and other genealogies.