Recent discoveries of artifactual assemblages based on blade-tool technology, occurring in post-Middle Palaeolithic and pre-Mesolithic contexts in different parts of India, are filling the gap in the Indian Stone Age sequence. These lithic industries, along with the bone tools obtained from the Kurnool caves, the faunal associations at some sites, and the available radiocarbon dates, are now seen beyond doubt to represent the Upper Palaeolithic period.

Recent Research on the Upper Palaeolithic Phase in India

This thesis offers a critique of currently dominant approaches to the history and archaeology of the Antonine Wall, and develops an expanded place-centred perspective in which this former Roman frontier is reinvested with wider significances that derive from both its Roman past as well as its post-Roman history and archaeology. Part 1 provides a general introduction to the Antonine Wall following the traditional perspective, and draws on interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological developments to outline how this traditional perspective will be challenged through reframing the Wall as a place rather than an artefact or monument. Part 2 offers a critical genealogy of Antonine Wall discourse from the earliest accounts until the present, tracing the development of current reductionist approaches and demonstrating that the Wall has been the focus of wider concerns in the past. Part 3 focuses on particular aspects of the Antonine Wall’s post-Roman archaeology and the Wall’s role in regional myths and legends to explore alternative themes for future research and wider significances that can be integrated into new understandings of the Antonine Wall’s meaning, significance, and value as a place of memory, meaning, and cultural heritage in the present.

More than a Roman monument : a place-centred approach to the long-term history and archaeology of the Antonine Wall

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Visibility analysis of the Roman communication network in southern Scotland

An altar to the Mother Goddesses is reported in the later 17th century at or near Castlecary, Stirlingshire, Scotland, on the line of the Antonine Wall between Forth and Clyde. The Rev. John Horsley, the last antiquary to view it, saw two fragments which he believed came from separate altars, an interpretation followed by subsequent commentators. This paper, drawing upon early written and visual records, puts the case for the fragments, now lost, as belonging to a single altar.

A lost inscription from Castlecary on the Antonine Wall

This paper discusses the significance of a recently-identified sheet of drawings by John Adair, 'Geographer' (1647-1718), of Arthur's O'on, the celebrated Roman building which formerly stood north of the Antonine Wall near the site occupied by the Canon Ironworks, 3 km north ofFalkirk. These drawings of c 1700, which were once in the collection of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676-1755), the noted antiquary, antedate any other known drawings or engraving of this remarkable structure, and add to our knowledge of Adair's career.

Arthur's O'on again: newly-discovered drawings by John Adair, and their context

In the year 1725 William Stukeley entered into correspondence with the eminent Scottish antiquary, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. 'It has been a frequent matter of wonder to me', wrote Stukeley in his first letter, 'that so many monuments of Antiquity as Scotland may justly boast of, should for ages past lye exposed to the sun, neglected and untouched, whilst every corner of Italy is ransacked and threadbare, we waste away immense sums of our treasure for some abject gleanings there, overlooking a rich and ripe harvest at our own doors.

‘Gothicism, ignorance and a bad taste’: the destruction of Arthur's O'on

Some 300 years ago, in 1676, the year of Sir John Clerk‘s birth, Roger North, the biographer, visited Hadrian’s Wall. He was disappointed with what he saw: ‘it appeared only as a range or bank of stones all overgrown with grass, not unlike the bank of the Devil’s Ditch at Newmarket, only without any hollow, and nothing near so big’ (Birley, 1961, 9). In 1754, the year before Clerk died, William Stukeley had an audience of the Princess Dowager of Wales at Kew House.

Iain G. Brown

Papers

‘Gothicism, ignorance and a bad taste’: the destruction of Arthur's O'on

Critick in Antiquity: Sir John Clerk of Penicuik