02-14-2012, 06:51 AM
Surprisingly, perhaps, given the frequency of battles in the ancient world, very few actual sites are known, and even those (Kalkriese, or Harzhorn in Germany, or Maiden Castle in Britain, for example) are often controversial in their identification and dating.
The unhelpfully-named 'battle of Watling street' continues to excite speculation due to the unusually detailed campaign narrative that surrounds it - Mons Graupius in Scotland, also narrated by Tacitus, has received similar interest over the years. There are doubtless a great many other battle sites in Britain alone (the Medway crossing and Colchester during the invasion of AD43, plus a host of others in Wales and the north) not to mention the rest of the empire, but without even the vague coordinates supplied by literature they might only be located by accident...
Even those battles whose sites are known with some degree of certainty (first and second Bedriacum, or Cremona, in AD69, for instance) have seldom, I believe, turned up anything that would enable the battle itself to be accurately reconstructed, beyond the details already given in written sources.
The unhelpfully-named 'battle of Watling street' continues to excite speculation due to the unusually detailed campaign narrative that surrounds it - Mons Graupius in Scotland, also narrated by Tacitus, has received similar interest over the years. There are doubtless a great many other battle sites in Britain alone (the Medway crossing and Colchester during the invasion of AD43, plus a host of others in Wales and the north) not to mention the rest of the empire, but without even the vague coordinates supplied by literature they might only be located by accident...
Even those battles whose sites are known with some degree of certainty (first and second Bedriacum, or Cremona, in AD69, for instance) have seldom, I believe, turned up anything that would enable the battle itself to be accurately reconstructed, beyond the details already given in written sources.
Nathan Ross
