Marching camp construction

[MonsGraupius]

One thing that I want to know is if they constructed fortified camps for detatchments of soldiers.
Say a small detatchment of a cohort or century is sent out and they need to stop just for a night, is it even worth setting up fortifications for such a small group. I thought being so small and mobile, they would not need to do this. Perhaps if they were in a somewhat civilised area still on the borders of the empire they could stop in a town?
Can anyone explain this?

A very good question.

We get camps of all sizes from less than an acre to over 100. But we have no idea if this is the rule, or the exception. It could be that every unit of soldiers, no matter the size and no matter the state of the local tribes, if they could not lodge in permanent defences, built their own. Or, it may be that such camps were very very rare and only built when the unit was directly threatened by enemy troops.

One of the big problems of interpretation is that larger camps are a lot easier to find. I know this because I can trace out lines of large camps, I have sometimes found smaller camps that appear to be part of one line (but usually many are missing) and I have occasionally found pairs of small camps that might be part of one troop movement.

At a very rough guess, we may have found 80-90%of the very largest camps, but only say 1? to 10% of the smaller ones (and perhaps none of the very smallest if they existed). Worse, we have absolutely no historical records to match to the smaller camps. And because its impossible to date camps to the nearest day, because we have no texts saying how they were being used, we have no way of working out the time between occupying sites. And I know of no evidence saying they were built every night by small units.

So, lets fall back on my own experience. We used to go on touring camping holidays with a car. So there was little physical exertion moving camp. However, it was very tiring trying to move camp each day. Things get broken, food needs securing, plans need making.

It may be theoretically possible to move every day, but the reality even with modern equipment and transport is that you can't keep it up. if you then add building defences, mending clothes, repairing shoes, wagon wheels, shoeing horses, building ovens, drying clothing etc., to what needs to be done at each camp it really is impractical to move every day. If you also have to scout ahead for signs of the enemy and to find a route , then it becomes impossible in my view. But troops don't go places for absolutely no reason. So they probably also had some kind of mission (searching for metal ores?)

It is safe to say, that wherever possible, you would try to cut down the work. Using already built forts or other accommodation would then allow time for repairs perhaps avoiding a day's stop. If as well you don't need to carry grain and then grind it, but can buy bread and pay for new clothes or others to do repairs, then it may well be possible to keep moving every day. And there would be a judgement call as to how much defence was needed. And we must remember, that if the unit is small enough, they can effectively hide in the landscape in a way that a larger unit cannot.