The Roman Army in Britain: life on the northern frontier

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Locate and use appropriate textual, visual and material sources in the library and online.
• Research historical questions and communicate your findings in written form.
• Develop your time-management skills.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Key primary sources from the northern frontier and Vindolanda in particular: writing tablets, inscriptions.
• The nature of the community inside and outside the fort walls.
• Life on the Roman frontier in Britain from the late first century to the third century AD.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Engage with and evaluate the secondary literature on the Roman army and Roman frontiers.
• Structure your ideas and research findings into well-ordered commentaries and essays.
• Analyse and critically a variety of textual, visual and material culture sources.

Using the Vindolanda tablets, supplemented by other textual evidence from the frontier and further afield, we will explore specific themes related to the military. This is a social history of the region: we will be examining the community who lived on the frontier: who they were, where they were from, who they interacted with, the gods they worshipped. Introductory lectures will introduce you to the history of the region, and the history of the study of the Roman army. In subsequent weeks, the lectures will introduce you to the wider themes and key works of historiography, whilst the seminars will focus on the primary evidence from Vindolanda and what it adds to our understanding of the frontier and Rome’s auxiliary troops. All textual sources from Vindolanda are available in translation.

Weekly themes may include:

• The development of the frontier zone
• Language and literacy
• Documenting the Roman army
• The officers of the Roman army: getting to the top
• How Roman was the Roman army of the frontier?
• Women and children inside and outside the forts
• The daily routines of military life
• Supplying the troops
• Military religion 1: Roman state religion?
• Military religion 2: the gods of the frontier
• Creating a military community

Teaching methods include:

• lectures
• seminars

Learning activities include:

• preparatory reading, individual research and study prior to each class
• studying primary sources, including textual, visual and material evidence

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.