James E. Fraser

I started to read this book from a standpoint of blissful ignorance, having been taught (outside the UK) that Roman Britannia ended at Hadrian's Wall. Living now in Scotland in the neighbourhood of a Roman Castellum, I had to realize that there was something to learn here, and I got a hold of this book for my illumination.
Turns out that the biggest event in the classic history is the battle of Mons Graupius, in which the first and only ever combined native force received a whooping by Gaius Agricola, a Roman proconsul legate, whose son-in-law, the famous Roman historic writer (historian would be a term by far too scientific) has immortalized this battle in his "Agricola".
There now sits the battle on the shelf of Scottish national consciousness alongside other famous battles like Culloden Moor or Bannockburn Bridge. With the added mystery that the location of the battle is not settled among historians and archaeologists.
This is where this book comes in. Good news is that its volume is very limited, compared to other historic tomes. It provides a critical narrative of the battle and its leader's chronicler's political implications and context, and that part is fine.
It then proceeds to make a case to locate the battle near a Roman waypoint Castellum near Perth, based mostly on textual evidence and Scottish/Pictish/Caledonian context. And that is where I was quite disappointed. The issue is the incredibly thin base of archaeological evidence. There is a whole chain of castelli known along the Eastern coast of Scotland, but very little is known about what happened there, when they were occupied, by whom and for what purpose. The book also casually mentions that the Roman legions were depending on supplies from accompanying Roman naval forces. But none of the infrastructure is established.
It is not the author's fault, but the overall very unsatisfying volume of knowledge surrounding the Roman presence in Scotland should require a huge Work-in-Progress banner across all works published on the subject. Makes at least me wish that my job was somewhere in that discipline, as it would probably see me safely through to my retirement.

A footnote: If you are interested in this book, a visit of the website http://www.romanscotland.org.uk (with which I am only affiliated as an impressed reader) should be worth your while as well… (mehr)

The chronologically first episode in the New Edinburgh History of Scotland is an impressive exposition of early Medieval northern Britain that paints a picture of the key players and power groups. The work reasserts the position of the Picts in early Scottish history and establishes the rivalries and pressures facing that ethnic group as well as the Gaels and Northumbrians.

The ebb and flow of power between various factions is painstakingly put together over the centuries with the role of key individuals such as Adomnan or Onuist being laid out extensively. This work is an excellent source for collated information on the Picts in particular who have traditionally been on the short end of historical analysis. The implications of who the Picts are and were to become are there for the reader to take on board if never truly espoused because it requires a logical step that strict historical analysis might not allow.

For a fair amount of the work I was under the impression that Fraser's narrative would suffer from the restrictions that most analysis of history falls under - that the sources available just do not document enough of the life and times of a culture to leave anything more than Kinglists. I found it quite difficult to follow the various familial trees as generations passed by in a flash and new kinglists emerged. Still, Fraser came through with a decent chapter near the end in discussing the warrior society and the requirements for ordinary folk to follow a leader into battle.

I did though have a quibble with the work and that is that there is some context missing around the role of religion in society. Fraser assumes an understanding of the importance of the Church in medieval society when discussing various power struggles between religious authorities. It is understandable that religious people are over-represented as the original sources were typically written by men of the cloth but it was difficult to get a feel for why it mattered when one centre of religious fervour was favoured over another.

Overall though as the first step in the New Edinburgh series it is a terrific scene setter that establishes some of the peoples around at the time of the Romans and populating the northern reaches of the British isles prior to the arrival of the Vikings.… (mehr)