Corbridge (Part IV)

The Corbridge Hoard

The Hoard publication

In 1964, the Durham/Newcastle University training excavation at Corbridge revealed one of the most important finds to come from Northern Britain (no hyperbole here, of course… well, not much): a large wooden chest containing a variety of objects. In many respects, despite its final publication in 1988, it remains a forgotten treasure. Certainly, one of its components – some sets of articulated Roman plate armour – went on to become very famous and provide the basis for countless reconstructions of the type of defence known as ‘lorica segmentata‘ (the name is a 16th-century invention coined to describe this type of armour where it was depicted on Trajan’s Column in Rome). However the other finds have tended to get overlooked, possibly because there was no precious metal, so let’s try and redress the balance a little with this Brief Guide to the Corbridge Hoard.

M for mineralisation

Mineralised textile in which the armour was wrapped

The natural sands and gravels of the river terrace at Corbridge are not very conducive to organic survival, under normal circumstances, but the huge amount of ferrous material in the Corbridge Hoard allowed something akin to fossilisation to take place, affecting the box and all its contents. This is mineralisation, whereby the cell structure of the organic components was replaced by minerals leached from the corroding iron and steel. Thus things that do not normally survive in the archaeological record without anaerobic conditions (wood, leather, feathers and so on) were found in the Hoard.

The chest

Analysis showed that the box containing the Hoard had been made of alder wood, a species that normally grows in damp areas and typically the sort of timber cleared for a riverside site like Corbridge. Thus it is possible this was constructed when this (or conceivably another) fort was first built (the first fort at Carlisle was partly built from alder). The planks of the chest were carefully dovetailed at the corners and it had clearly been more than just a crate in its heyday: it was covered in leather, hinting at a degree of luxury. It was 0.88m long and 0.58m wide and up to 0.41m high. The chest was hinged, had a lock plate, and had iron reinforcements on each corner.

The armour

Armour from the Corbridge Hoard

The armour was painstakingly pieced together by Charles Daniels and its interpretation aided by collaboration with Henry Russell Robinson of the Tower of London Armouries. Every re-enactor wearing ‘lorica segmentata‘ today owes them a great debt of gratitude. Consisting of six non-matching top units in three pairs and three equally disparate lower pairs, it is a curious mix (more for what it implies about the missing halves than what is actually there). Frequently repaired in the past it was in the process of being cannibalised again. Quite apart from allowing us to understand the structure of this type of armour, it is an exquisitely frank document of combat, vicious, brutal, and prolonged.

The weapons

The chest contained several bundles of spearheads, tied together with cord, fragments of their wooden shafts still in the sockets. Again, these were weapons that had been broken in combat and were in need of re-shafting.

The tools

A saw, a pickaxe, a chisel, a crow-bar, shears, and a knife were included in the Hoard, along with a variety of nails and carpentry fittings. These are all the sort of things that would be found in a workshop.

The writing tablets and papyrus

Everybody knows of the wooden ink writing tablets from Vindolanda, but there were re-usable wax tablets from there too and the Corbridge Hoard also contained some of the latter. Of even more interest were the tiny fragments of papyrus, hinting at long-vanished bureaucracy on a foreign medium.

The feathers

The feathers were a curious addition. Do they represent cushions or perhaps plumes from helmets? We have no way of knowing and can only note the rich variety of material stowed within this chest.

The other stuff

A large tankard, a scapula (possibly modified as a scoop), a pulley, an uneven number of gaming counters, and a crusie (a wrought iron lamp holder, virtually identical to 19th-century examples) were amongst the numerous odds and end that seem to have been thrown into the box.

The dating

Examination of the stratigraphy of the find showed that it had been buried at the end of occupation of either the second or third phase of occupation (AD 122–38) and thus belonged within the Hadrianic period. In this respect, the signs of combat amongst the material within the Hoard are intriguing and later matched by finds of the same period from Carlisle, as we shall see.

The purpose

What was it for? Our best guess is that it was a selection of stuff (junk would be too harsh a word, although probably quite near the mark) hanging around in a workshop awaiting repair or re-use. Then, when the time came to abandon the fort, it was simply buried to save having to take it away and keep the raw materials from falling into the hands of an enemy.

***

It will soon be the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Hoard and English Heritage have just mounted a new display of the items from the chest in July 2012, including film footage shot by Charlie Anderson during the excavation.

Corbridge Hoard display

To find out more about Roman Corbridge and enjoy your personalised (and not-too-unfriendly) tour of the site, see the sections of the blog dealing with the buildings north of the Stanegate, the eastern legionary compound, and the western legionary compound.

So what did soldiers wear on Hadrian’s Wall?

In 1976, an independent Newcastle publisher pulled off an archaeological coup. He combined the work of the leading contemporary expert on Roman arms and armour with that of his favoured reconstruction artist to produce one of the most oddly titled booklets in years: What the Soldiers Wore on Hadrian’s Wall. It was written by Henry Russell Robinson of the Tower of London Armouries (known to his friends as Russell) and illustrated by Ronald Embleton, one of the great comic artists (he had worked on Look & Learn and Eagle). Frank Graham, a former history teacher turned local publisher, had increasingly been using the latter to bring colour to his series of booklets on the Roman Wall which were otherwise mainly illustrated with royalty-free woodcuts culled from the various editions of Collingwood Bruce’s Handbook to the Roman Wall, MacLauchlan’s Memoir, and Gordon’s Itinerarium Septentrionale.

Whilst the earlier booklets were largely derivative, using out-of-copyright woodcuts alongside text penned by Graham himself, WtSWoHW was very definitely an original. Robinson used the available archaeological and representational evidence to show how the arms and armour used on the Wall had changed with time, incorporating material from the whole Empire. Many of Embleton’s reconstructions had (almost certainly unwittingly) incorporated errors – famous amongst Wall scholars are the wounded soldier being tended by a medic equipped with gynaecological implements or the latrines at Housesteads that lack the vital front slot in their apertures – but the reconstructions for the new booklet were produced in consultation with Robinson and were evidently successful enough in the opinion of the latter for them to work on a further volume, The Armour of the Roman Legions, published by Graham after Robinson’s untimely death. As a tribute to their collaboration, some of the key paintings from WtSWoHW were donated to the site museum at Chesters and are on display there.

All of which begs the question so confidently answered in the title of that little book: what were troops on Hadrian’s Wall wearing and how do we know? To attempt to answer this, we must go back to basics and look at our sources of information. These are archaeological finds, artistic representations (such as sculpture or painting), and literary (books) and sub-literary (documents like writing tablets). Beyond archaeological finds, comparatively little evidence survives from Hadrian’s Wall itself but it is possible to piece together a picture from near-contemporary sources, even using nearby material like the Vindolanda writing tablets.

At the time of the construction of the Wall in AD 122, two major sculptural monuments had been completed within the last fifteen years. These were Trajan’s Column in Rome and the Tropaeum Traiani (‘Trophy of Trajan’) at Adamclisi in modern Romania. The first featured a helical frieze running from the bottom to the top depicting a narrative of the two Dacian Wars of AD 101/2 and 105/6. The second incorporated scenes from the same wars as a series of scenes or metopes around its base. What makes the two monuments so intriguing is the degree to which they differ. Nevertheless they give us a reasonable idea of what soldiers looked like at the time the Wall was built and the archaeological evidence chimes in some respects.

Excavations in the fort at Carlisle, from levels immediately pre-dating the construction of the Wall, produced examples of armour similar to those shown on the Column and the Tropaeum, especially laminated armguards (originally thought to have been a defence against the wicked scythe-like Dacian falx). However, to understand how the appearance of Roman soldiers on the northern frontier changed over the subsequent years, we have to compare the finds from the Wall with artefacts from the rest of the Empire, since the local representational record is so impoverished. We actually find an astounding degree of homogenisation, caused partly perhaps by the movement of troops around the empire (largely as reinforcements to fight in major wars), right up to the 4th century. Soldiers from Britain were sent abroad, then came back, having met other units from elsewhere, and the British garrison was itself occasionally strengthened with drafts from overseas, so it would be a mistake to think of the Hadrian’s Wall garrison as isolated from the rest of the Roman world.

Regardless of the period we are considering, soldiers on the Wall needed clothing, hobnailed boots, helmets, body armour, shields, swords, and spears, and the sundry items of personal kit that allowed a man to personalise his appearance. There was no uniform as such (the concept was alien to ancient armies) but, in their equipment, soldiers from one area probably resembled each other more than they did those from another, and overall trends changed with time.

Most of what Robinson wrote in WtSWoHW is still true now, but subsequent research has enabled greater depth and breadth to be introduced to our understanding of the subject. For example, whilst it was once thought the auxiliary soldiers of the Wall garrison just used mail and scale body armour, recent research has revealed pieces of lorica segmentata, traditionally associated with legionary troops, from sites like Great Chesters and Housesteads. This is unsurprising, given the fact that there were legionaries at both Corbridge and Carlisle throughout most of the Roman period. Nevertheless, his basic message, that equipment changed subtly with time, is as true now as it was then.

The book can still occasionally be found secondhand and visitors to the Roman fort at Chesters can enjoy the chance to see some of Embleton’s original paintings.