Recontextualizing Military Structures along the Stanegate and Hadrian’s Wall Utilizing Aerial Photography and GIS Mapping

This dissertation examines the region along the Stanegate frontier, just below Hadrian’s Wall, on both a macroscopic and microscopic level, to analyze how landscape affected placement of forts, camps, and other military structures. It aims to explore known archaeological structures as well as expose new areas of interest, not yet discovered through traditional survey methods. It asks the question of whether temporary structures helped lead to the development of permanent structures, as part of the overall limes defensive strategy. While a lack of archaeological dating on many of these structures often provides the greatest challenge, the aim is to determine what additional information can be deduced about how landscape affected this region and to set an agenda of future survey work, designed to improve our understanding of it. In addition, this approach aims to improve understanding of the function of these installations and their relationship to the Wall and each other. Aerial photography and the construction of a geographic information system (GIS) can prove a valuable tool in surveying the region, to extract data from forts, camps, and recently discovered land depressions. Measurements can be taken to determine if there is a similar building pattern which might reflect contemporaneous construction periods. Distances between structures can be taken to determine the significance of their spacing and arrangement. In addition, data sets containing information on bedrock, ancient woodlands, ecology, and hydrology can provide valuable insight on the topography of each site. This work is meant to serve as a foundational piece for future scholars to build upon to continue to expand our understanding of the region, as computational methods become more sophisticated and data access becomes more readily available across the globe