09-07-2012, 12:37 AM
Quote:A further obituary appeared in The Times on Wednesday, 5th September.Pulled this off the Newsbank server:
Quote:Brian Dobson was an ancient historian, epigraphist, archaeologist and an internationally renowned scholar of the Roman army. His death brings to an end one of the best-known and most admired writing partnerships of British archaeology: among his many collaborations with David Breeze was an accessible but scholarly monograph on Hadrian's Wall which remains the standard work on the subject after 36 years.
Dobson was a pupil of the inspirational Eric Birley, Professor of Romano-British History and Archaeology at Durham University. Dobson followed Birley in the study of the promotions and transfers of officers in the Roman army as recorded on stone inscriptions. His work on senior centurions was to bring the officers of the Roman army to life, revealing an institution quite unlike modern armies in its social structure.
The centurionate was not a class of brutal sergeant-major types but a means of social mobility which could lead to riches, equestrian rank and high office; conversely and surprisingly, Dobson showed how equestrian aristocrats sometimes actively sought to be centurions.
His view of the Roman army on the frontiers of the empire was unwavering: an army intended and perfected for conquest lost its way and dissipated its legendary energy in building and manning over-elaborate systems of obstacles, concerned not with defence but the control of movement across borders that had grown out of imperial policy inertia.
Although this view may seem to exclude any role for Rome's enemies in shaping the frontiers, it is still widely held, and Dobson was one of its most effective exponents.
As a populariser and teacher of the subjects of the Roman army and Hadrian's Wall Dobson was widely admired and loved. In 1968 he launched an annual residential Roman army course which continues to this day. This brought together professional historians and archaeologists and laymen from diverse backgrounds, many of whom went on to publish significant studies.
Brian Dobson was born in Hartlepool in 1931. He went to Durham University in 1949 to read modern history, taking the Roman Britain special subject under Eric Birley. After National Service he completed his doctorate and then studied at Freiburg under the distinguished German epigraphist Herbert Nesselhauf.
A research fellowship at Birmingham followed in 1957-59. Here he met and was influenced by Graham Webster, a foremost scholar of the Roman army and populariser of the subject through the medium of adult education. Dobson was appointed stafftutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at Durham University in 1960, and was to remain in post there for the rest of his career, being awarded a personal readership in archaeology in 1980. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1972. He retired from Durham in 1990.
Among many publications he produced monumental works of scholarship, most notably a revision in 1967 of Domaszewski's classic 1908 work on the officer rank-structure of the Roman army, and Die Primipilares (1978), based on his PhD thesis on the senior centurions. These works were published in German but summarised in a series of articles in English.
He met David Breeze at Corbridge in 1963 and went on to supervise his undergraduate dissertation. This was the beginning of what Dobson regarded as the most important non-family relationship of his life. They published their first joint articles in 1969 and after a series of these came the book Hadrian's Wall in 1976 (revised editions in 1978, 1987 and 2000). Breeze and Dobson bravely abandoned the scheme of "Wall-periods" propounded for nearly 50 years by their teacher Birley, but with characteristic courtesy did not attack or comment on the previous model and simply went back to the evidence to offer a new interpretation. In an important solo paper of 1986 Dobson reconsidered the function of Hadrian's Wall, integrating his view of the Roman army with the archaeological evidence.
Some of his oldest friends he met through the periodical International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies (started by Birley in 1949). Dobson valued the way these congresses promoted contacts between scholars working on different Roman frontiers, and edited the proceedings of the 1969 congress.
But he said that his greatest satisfaction and most enduring memories were bound up with the Roman army course and the Hadrianic Society, founded by the course members in 1972.
Privately he was a devout Christian, active in his local church. He combined a serious and declamatory speaking style with a Pickwickian appearance, and a stern demeanour, perturbing to those who did not know him, with a rapid and teasing wit. He will be remembered as a kindly friend as well as a pre-eminent scholar by the many professionals and amateurs in the Roman archaeological world whom he encouraged and inspired.
He was married in 1958 to Anne, who survives him; they had five children.
Brian Dobson, ancient historian, epigraphist and archaeologist, was born on September 13, 1931. He died on July 19, 2012, aged 80
