| Abstract: |
The author has undertaken a study of the construction of the Saxon Shore Forts, the series of late Roman coastal installations built on the south and east coasts of Britain during the third century AD. The study follows the generating process involved in the creation of these monuments, from design, through the extraction and transport of the raw materials, to the actual building of the fort defences. The interior buildings are not considered. Geoarchaeology plays a major part in the study. A petrological examination of the stone in the defences shows that most was obtained from locations within 20 km of the building site; however at two sites on the East Anglian coast there is evidence for material having been transported over much greater distances. Coastal quarrying, including the collection of loose rock, appears to have been an extremely important activity, accounting for roughly three-quarters of all the raw materials used in the building of the forts. A quantitative analysis of the Shore Fort defences enabled the scale of the building programme to be assessed, in terms of the demand for raw materials, transport and manpower. The forts emerge as a relatively modest undertaking, and it is argued that sufficient resources existed to build the eight later installations within the space of a single season. The author explains that the eleven forts considered were a small part of a much larger phenomenon of building in Britain and the Continent during the late Roman period, both of a military and civilian nature, and are likely to have drawn on the same sources of labour. Includes |
