Ok I must admit to never having solved this one for myself so I am seeing what others think.

The Stanegate is a term that is boldly bandied by Roman scholars and yet no one really makes a definition for it......ok thats wrong there are many definitions.


So.

Is it the "Stone Road" (deriv anglo-Scand stane gata.) to Carlisle that just happened to have forts along its course as it crossed East west across the North of England.

was it just a collection of forts that had a road constructed to join them...?

was it a frontier and staging point marking the position of Agricola before embarking into Scotland ?

was it a frontier marking the limit of the Trajanic abandonment of Scotland...?

was it ever a frontier ? - if so what about the A 66 forts ??


ideas ??

I think a lot of it hinges on whether there was any kind of defensive ditch or rampart on the north side of the Stanegate. My (limited!) understanding is that there wasn't. If that's right, it's hard to see it as any kind of formal frontier or border. Much easier to see it as a staging point--a convenient place to collect food & supplies for the front-line troops pushing into Scotland.

I guess it brings up two more questions:

-- Were the forts linked to northern outpost forts via multiple roads, etc.? If the only road north at the time was Dere Street way to the east at Corbridge, it's hard to picture Vindolanda and the forts west of it as being much use for staging. They'd make more sense as a frontier.

-- What about signal towers along the Stanegate? Any sign of a formal communication link between the forts? If so, that seems to support the idea of a frontier. But if not, that seems to make it less likely.

It's amazing what we still don't know!

- Harry

hey there

agreed.....but for roads there is also the Maiden way - from whitley castle, and Cade's road to Durham, chester le Street and beyond to the area of the pons aelius - modern Newcastle.

any military staging would need excellent logistics...perhaps a role fulfilled by the river Tyne itself. Perhaps the Stanegate is a route distributing commodoties from a quay at Corbridge (or area)


as to watch towers : from what ive read so far there are conjectured watchtowers at Pike Hill, Walltown Crags, Mains Rigg, Barcombe & Birdoswald....all very theoretical.

As is, may I add, the conjectuture that the Stanegate runs to the fort (marching camps anyway) at Washing well at Whickham....if however this is so, perhaps we should be looking in the Prudhoe area for a missing fort.

or indeed that it connects down country to Ebchester on Dere St.

Chris

I think that the Stanegate area should be viewed more as a consolidation zone crezted by the Roman military as it continued to expand the northern border of its British province. The Stanegate may have more in common with areas where the military stopped and threw up a network of forts, fortlets, towers, etc. further south in Britain than with the Hadrianic and post-Hadrianic views of military expansion. So, I propose that the Stanegate was originally a consolidation zone that was to then be used a the staging area for a push north expanding the provincial border ever northward. Due to politics in Rome that expansion never occured and the Stanegate area then turned into a frontier zone.
Matt

Referring back to the Agricola of Tacitus we can learn a bit more about what was happening just prior to the traditional dates given to the founding of the Stanegate.

In AD 79 we find that :
xx.2 "when summer came he gathered his army and was present everywhere on the march, commending discipline, curbing stragglers: he chose himself the camping-ground: he was the first himself to explore estuaries and forests: meanwhile he gave the enemy no peace from the devastation of sudden raids: conversely by his clemency, after he had overawed them sufficiently, he paraded before them the attractions of peace.

xx.3 By these means many states which up to that time had been independant were induced to give hostages and abandon their hostility: they were then so skilfully surrounded with Roman garrisons and forts that no newly acquired district ever before passed over to Rome without interference from the neighbours.

AD 80 we find Agricola overwintering in the NE.
xxi.1 The winter which followed was spent in the prosecution of sound measures. In order that a population scattered and uncivilised, and proportionately ready for war, might be habituated by comfort to peace and quiet, he would exhort individuals, assist communities, to erect temples, market-places, houses: he praised the energetic, rebuked the indolent, and the rivalry for his compliments took the place of coercion.
xxi.2 Moreover he began to train the sons of the chieftains in a liberal education, and to give a preference to the native talents of the Briton as against the trained abilities of the Gaul. As a result, the nation which used to reject the Latin language began to aspire to rhetoric: further, the wearing of our dress became a distinction, and the toga came into fashion, and little by little the Britons went astray into alluring vices: to the promenade, the bath, the well-appointed dinner table. The simple natives gave the name of "culture" to this factor of their slavery.

By 81 the push Northwards had advanced to the TAy.

It certainly appears that this advance of the Romans in the conquest of the North,was conducted in two columns : one through the North east to Corbridge and the other in the Northwest to Carlisle, where a new fortress was built. As the thrust into lowland Scoland, it is suggested that the Carlisle column crosses the country to join up with the first.....where they meet is open to discission like so much of this period ....however by garrisoning forts behind him, Agricola could keep a tight hold over the native population at his back.

perhaps the Stanegate is Agricolas indirect legacy to the North East, He established a policed zone where the natives (at least the elite) were encouraged to adopt a Romanised lifestyle, an area which ultimately became the northern frontier of Roman Britain.

By 85 AD Mons Graupius had been fought, Agricola was recalled to Rome by an envious Domitian, and upland Scotland abandoned. And shortly after Vindolanda has been constructed with a Garrison of Coh. I Tungrorum

just some musings