Exploring the Antonine Wall with Terrestrial Remote Sensing (Roman Frontier Studies)

Exploring the Antonine Wall with terrestrial remote sensing has three main aims. The first is to make more widely available the data from the numerous geophysical surveys that have been undertaken at sites on the Antonine Wall over the last 20 years. Most of these surveys are currently inaccessible to a wider audience in unpublished technical reports. Since much of the original work was undertaken by specialists in the acquisition of geophysical data, rather than in Roman military archaeology, the second aim is to re-analyse this data and provide more focused interpretations of the results for each site. These are based on the authors' collectively wide background knowledge of both the monument and the application of geophysical survey in archaeology. The third aim is to offer some wider archaeological and geophysical conclusions, drawing attention to a number of areas where our understanding of the Antonine Wall has been enhanced by the geophysics and considering how the long history of such survey applied to a single monument serves to highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology.

Until his retirement, W.S. (Bill) Hanson was Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, where he specialised in the study of Roman Scotland, Roman frontiers and airborne archaeological remote sensing. He is co-author of one of the standard textbooks on the Antonine Wall, and co-editor of the most recently published examination of its remains.

Dr Nick Hannon is Heritage Research Manager in the Heritage Directorate of Historic Environment Scotland, where he currently leads their geophysical survey programme. He has undertaken several geophysical surveys along the Antonine Wall and he analysed the LiDAR survey of the Wall for his PhD.