Agricola\'s Northern Campaigns

[D B Campbell]

link from old RAT
Whatever you make of their conclusions - or their methodology, it's an interesting bit of work and a fairly compelling theory.

I'm afraid their methodology is the problem. (I'm reminded of our friend Jona's recent thread on Pseudo-History.) It should be an interesting piece of work -- it could be an interesting piece of work, if it were done properly -- , but their use of statistics is, at best, naive, and at worst, mendacious.

Let's look at the basis of their "analysis".

(1) It revolves primarily around a "study" of Roman temporary camps, of which (as you are no doubt aware) there is a bewildering array in Scotland. Over the years, different scholars have attempted to bring some order to this archaeological chaos by assigning camps to different notional series. These are entirely a modern construct, intended to help to explain the archaeology, and have no prima facie claim to authenticity.

(Thus, the fact of a camp series being Agricolan cannot be used as a basis for further theory, because it is itself a theory.)

(2) Their analysis also depends on a series of arbitrary criteria, devised by the website owners, ostensibly to identify the "best match" for an Agricolan battle scenario; but, again, with no ancient authority or scientific basis, these criteria have no prima facie claim to relevance.

(Thus, the fact that a particular camp could have held the number of men that the website owners think that Agricola might have fielded at Mons Graupius, based on the website owners' opinion of the number of men that a temporary camp was usually designed to hold, and the website owners' opinion of the date of said camp, doesn't even come close to inspiring confidence in their methodology.)

Once you realise that the whole exercise is a sham with no particular claim to either authenticity or relevance, it becomes pointless even to discuss their "league table" of locations. This kind of material, irresponsibly disseminated on the internet, gives archaeological research a bad name.

(And I managed to avoid saying either "sloppy" or "ignorant". )