Is this the worst news report ever written?

[D B Campbell]

Factual inaccuracy, bad grammar, spelling mistakes, it's got 'em all.
Well, it is the Daily Mail, I suppose: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315871/.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Well I know something new; the Romans tried to hold a point further than the Antonine wall. Cool.

[Vindex]

Nice pictures of Hadrian's Wall though.

One assumes they were pushed for time or their spell checker wasn't working. AS for grammar, is it still taught by anyone other than Latin and Greek tutors???

[Caballo]

Sadly not ...

The moral is , avoid the Daily Mail!

[PhilusEstilius]

Apart from all else it is interesting how this frontier shuts off the highlands very much like the other frontier lower down that actually crosses Hadrian's Wall, known as the 255 line of the late Raymond Selkirk that closed off the Eden valley at nearly the same type of angle across the country.

[Renatus]

Factual inaccuracy, bad grammar, spelling mistakes, it's got 'em all.
Well, it is the Daily Mail, I suppose: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315871/.

So, the Grauniad has a rival!

[Dan Howard]

The Daily Mail isn't a newspaper. It's a gossip rag aimed at the semi-literate.

[Dan Howard]

Apart from all else it is interesting how this frontier shuts off the highlands very much like the other frontier lower down that actually crosses Hadrian's Wall, known as the 255 line of the late Raymond Selkirk that closed off the Eden valley at nearly the same type of angle across the country.

Every lecturer I ever had reckoned that the primary purpose of Hadrian's Wall and other similar limes was not defence - it was to control access so that the Romans could collect taxes and duties. Defence was a consideration but not the main one.

[Q Rutilius]

Is there anything new in that report? Didn't we already know that there was a chain of forts north of the Antonine Wall? Or this another case of the archaeologists juicing things up to get more research money?

[Dan D'Silva]

... late fist century AD defence system...

It couldn't have lasted long, though. The Western empire dissolved during the kicking-and-headbutting century.

[PhilusEstilius]

Dan.

I don't dispute that Hadrian's Wall may well have been to control local traffic through the Tyne Valley area but it was also of a defensive nature ie many regiments of soldiers stationed on it.
Then the other frontiers delt with here in this post were indeed of a defensive nature hence the reason why Hadrian had to come along later to build his stone wall and put a tremendous garrison on it instead of just having forts along a road system, and I don't think it takes a degree in archaeology for anyone to be able to determine that.

[Kegluneq]

The Daily Mail/Fail/Heil article just seems to be treating the Gask Ridge defensive line as being something new and revolutionary in archaeology, whereas in reality the presence of glen-blocking forts in Scotland has been known about for sometime. The last annual report from TRGP was from 2010 apparently, and I think the Mail article was taken pretty much directly from that? Overall I think the only major problem is directly comparing land and access denial to a monumental structure.

Woolliscroft and Hoffmann are pretty well known Wall scholars, so I doubt the fault for serious factual errors lies with them.

(Edit: Yay, I can post again!)

[PhilusEstilius]

I think that the statement in the link about the Gask Ridge frontier is a bit bold where it suggests that this frontier is the first land frontier anywhere, for it has been thought that Agricola may well have created the Stanegate that goes coast to coast across the country.

[C Crastinus]

Oh, to be so sheltered from the American media that one could think this the worst news report ever. It must be nice to trill one's R's in the Highlands, safe and secure from the vile putrescence, an ocean away, that dares call itself journalism. How I envy you.

[D B Campbell]

It must be nice to trill one's R's in the Highlands, ...

Shhhhh -- what we do with our Rs in the Highlands stays in the Highlands. :whistle: