Surveying Rome’s forgotten frontier

The Roman Gask Project will be undertaking an extensive survey of a fort on the Gask Ridge Frontier at Stracathro near Brechin in Angus. This fort for a short time in the late 80s AD represented the northernmost permanent outpost of the entire Roman empire.

Along with the frontier fort, the team will survey a Roman camp and look for evidence of a church which played a brief but important part in the shaping of Scottish history in the late 13th century.

A forgotten frontier

The Gask frontier is made up of a line of forts and watchtowers which stretch from Doune near Stirling to Stracathro in Angus (see map below). The Gask Ridge frontier is currently believed to have been constructed around 80 AD and completed 42 years before construction started on Hadrian’s Wall. The fortifications roughly follow the boundary between Scotland’s fertile Lowlands and the more mountainous Highlands.
Despite being discovered from the air almost 50 years ago, little is known about the structure of the fort to be investigated. The volunteers will use a range of non-invasive geophysical survey techniques in order to understand what lies beneath the ground, but no excavation will take place.
The Stracathro camp is famed for giving its name to an unusual gate structure, examples of which are only found in Scotland.
Dr Birgitta Hoffmann, co-director of The Roman Gask Project said, “We’re really pleased to be working in Angus this year, and we’re looking forward to uncovering more of the story of the Gask Frontier. So many people just aren’t aware that the world’s oldest Roman frontier passes through the area, and the role it played in Scotland’s early history.

This year we’ve opted to undertake a series of archaeological surveys rather than doing an excavation, primarily because modern survey equipment can give us a fairly detailed idea of what’s actually under the ground without the need to dig into the ground and potentially damage the evidence.”
As well as examining the fort, the Project will also survey the adjacent Roman marching camphttp://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/09/2012/surveying-romes-forgotten-frontier