Digging for Britain series 5

[Imperial Dave]

what's going on? I missed the start of the new series of Digging for Britain...luckily its on i-player

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b084xym3/digging-for-britain-series-5-1-west

[Erpingham]

Last night we had the whistling slingshots, with audio of what they sound like. 

[Imperial Dave]

I started watching it and then got pulled away so will finish it up tonight

[Sharur]

The Roman-period siege evidence from southern Scotland in episode 2 was particularly interesting I thought - the whistling slingshots, etc., Anthony mentioned. Don't recall any dating evidence being mentioned for that, which might have been equally interesting. Odd too that the Romans had apparently left such large caches of lead slingshots unused; makes you start to wonder who might have "won" the siege, the Romans or a local relief force.

The dating could be intriguing, as there's been evidence from Northumberland excavations and investigations in the last few years (not all published as yet, though some of it was discussed in the just-out "Archaeology in Northumberland" vol. 22, produced by the County Council, which you can read online only on this webpage, some in "The Iron Age on the Northumberland Coastal Plain", by Nick Hodgson, Jonathan McKelvey and Warren Muncaster, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, 2012 - print version only) both for apparent land-clearance of existing farming settlements north of Hadrian's Wall, probably in the period around the Wall's building, and that most of the six milecastles on the Wall recently examined geophysically, showed no strong evidence for substantial roadways through them. This goes hand-in-hand with further findings from excavations by the Wall or its former line in Newcastle and Northumberland lately, for additional defences along the Wall's northern side, perhaps all suggesting the modern north of England and south of Scotland was never particularly "pacified" during parts of the Romans' stay.

[Erpingham]

The Roman-period siege evidence from southern Scotland in episode 2 was particularly interesting I thought - the whistling slingshots, etc., Anthony mentioned. Don't recall any dating evidence being mentioned for that, which might have been equally interesting. Odd too that the Romans had apparently left such large caches of lead slingshots unused; makes you start to wonder who might have "won" the siege, the Romans or a local relief force.

There were bits missing from the story.  Presumably, they targetted their trenches on large metallic anomalies shown by geophysics, for example.  They clearly had done some kind of mapping survey to plot the fall of shot.

I did think at the time that it was odd they left so much lead in a Scottish field.  It was worth money, so why wasn't it collected at the end of the siege?  If they were practice camps, you can imagine it being left for the next exercise which never happened.  But if it was for real?