03-20-2011, 09:52 PM
Quote:What? - lose my valued paper-weight......?
So long as you don't wear it in lectures.
Quote:Despite what some historians and archaeologists have said in recent years, it is clear from the primary reports that none of the finds with the Ninths stamp on were recovered from sealed contexts, they are all residual / unstratified. In other words they cannot be tied to a phase of fort occupation or fort building, even though the excavator postulated that, as the tiles overlay the fort, they could indicate reoccupation of the site after the transfer away of its previous occupants, the Tenth Legion - No they don’t. They are unstratified pieces of archaeologically durable building tile. They indicate the Ninth (or part of them) were at Nijmegen, but critically not when. Given that we know, from contemporary accounts, that elements of the Ninth were taken out of Britain by Domitian to fight the Chatti, why can’t the pieces date to the mid AD 80s?
I don't really understand what you're saying here. I'm no archaeologist, but surely if the tiles overlaid the fort, it would indicate they were deposited later than the fort? Are you implying that the excavator was mistaken, and they don't overlie it? Or that they were possibly reused in later construction?
Evidence of the ninth operating on the continent actually comes from the inscription of Roscius Celer (CIL 14, 03612 - trib(uno) mil(itum) leg(ionis) IX Hispan(ae) vexillarior(um) eiusdem / in expeditione Germanica), and this is usually dated to the Chattian war of c.82. But this is not a certain date either. Surely the Nijmegen excavator (or subsequent scholarship) would be aware of this, and would have considered it, Occam's razor-like, as the obvious source for the tiles? That they haven't suggests evidence to contradict the the earlier dating - like the tiles overlaying the fort.
Could you clarify what you mean?
- Nathan
Nathan Ross
