Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

Roman campaign season along with all its religious festivals set at specific times had a set month to start and ends in October

The traditional festivals of Tubilustrium and Armilustrium were developed when Roman warfare was still small scale and centred in Italy. Even then, there is surely a reason why they had a second Tubilustrium on May 23rd.

Unless we are to believe that practical Roman military considerations were everywhere and at all times subordinate to arcane religious rituals, we must take seriously the evidence of Roman literature (given above) that the campaign season in northern Europe and Britain did not begin until mid summer.

Paulinus no doubt intended to finish his campaign in Wales by late August or early September, and would have done so had he not been interrupted by those pesky Icenis...

Armilustrium was not until October 19th, however, so he had plenty of time (even given religious considerations!) to conduct a rapid punitive expedition against the rebels before sending his troops into winter quarters - which is exactly what he did, as soon as the operations were concluded.

Pliny tells us emmer wheat, the most likely cereal crop of the Iceni, has to have 4 months of fallow after harvest in autumn...

Interesting - do you have a reference for that? I'm guessing it's in Book 18, but all I can find is a note about crop rotation: "Another order of rotation is for ground where there has been a crop of emmer wheat to lie fallow during the four winter months and to be given spring beans; but it should not lie fallow before being sown with winter-beans." (NH 18.52)

The next wheat crop is spelt, and could be sown in spring for a summer crop, ie a deliberate change to its natural cycle to avoid pests,  and Buster farm project has show that spelt produces lower crop yields than emmer when sown in spring.

Yes, there is archaeological evidence for both emmer and spelt from Iron Age Britain, and both have been grown experimentally at Butser. As you say, spelt does a lot better when planted in the autumn, and as emmer was also planted in both autumn and spring then autumn planting was probably the source of the bulk cereal crop. There's still a lot of uncertainty about ancient agricultural patterns, but we could pore over this study from 1999 (pp.268-270) for some hard data on crop yields and planting seasons.

nor do I see an easy way to establish a timeline for a single campaign period.

The chronological coordinates we have are that the revolt broke out while Paulinus was away in North Wales, he had completed his campaign against Anglesey by the time he heard of the revolt, and there was time for reinforcements to arrive from the Rhine army before he put his troops into winter quarters. Also that the Iceni later suffered famine as they had gone away to war and so did not plant crops.

It is possible to fit these events into a single year - little more than a month for the main events (I'll share an updated chronology here when I've tidied it up a bit!). In fact, I think we must put the main events, up to the final battle, into a short space of time - the rest of Paulinus's army was still in North Wales, and if they and other troops had time to join him before the battle, he would have had more then 10,000 men with him. He did not, so they did not, so there was insufficient time for them to do so.

Romans used a 12 hour daylight and 12 hour nightime water clock... just using modern sunrise to sunset does not yield the same hours a Roman worked.

Just to be clear - the amount of time was the same, they just measured it differently... Just as changing from Roman miles to modern miles doesn't make a distance shorter, changing from the flexible Roman hour to the regular modern hour doesn't make a day shorter either.