Roman Soldiers and the Roman Army

Roman Soldiers and the Roman Army Synopsis

This study combines archaeological material from Romano-British forts located in northern Britain with concepts and methods from the New and Processual schools of archaeological theory in order to learn more about the lives of the inhabitants of those forts. The primary goal of the study was the discovery of activity areas within the forts. Secondary goals included the discovery of possible artifact toolkits used in and around the forts and the utilization of information from older excavation reports; it was hoped that computerizing this data would make it more accessible and useful to modern scholars.

History and chronology, much of which is based solely upon archaeology, is discussed in Chapter 2 to remind readers of the background information necessary to understand the results of this study. Chapter 3 contains a brief chronological overview of the development of archaeological method and theory concerning northern Roman Britain and corresponding schools of archaeological theory in Britain and the United States. The limitations of the excavation reports used in this study are explained more fully in Chapter 4 and the solutions which were used to circumvent at least partially these limitations are found in Chapters 5 and 6.

Chapter 7 shows some aspects of the utility of the database developed for this study by examining the possibility of women living within the forts and the status of those using the various buildings of the forts. Chapter 8 presents the author's conclusions.