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76th Anniversary, WWII Potsdam Meeting. - Prof R. Hingley - Ep 2
96 Plays3 years ago
This episode turned out to be rather the diverse discussion, inspired by the 76th Anniversary of the WWII Potsdam Meeting, where the fate of Germany was decided by the Allied Powers and a whole country was physically divided. This includes everything from trying to define the differences between a border, boundary or frontier, to modern vs archaeological comparison, is Trump's Wall in anyway comparable to Hadrien's Wall... or is it just the disappointing cousin at the metaphorical dinner party? All of this is discussed with Prof R. Hingley, whose name has become quite synonymous with any and all research into the most famous frontier of all time, Hadrien's Wall.
Music
Intro/Outro Music - Creative Commons - "Fantasia Fantasia" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Transcript
Introduction to Flipside Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Flipside. This is, as ever, the podcast that brings to you important discussions about the past, prompted by specific historical events.
Featuring Professor Richard Hingley
00:00:32
Speaker
This month I'm joined by Professor Richard Hingley, who is a professor currently at the University of Durham in the UK.
00:00:42
Speaker
Professor Hingley is a specialist in the archaeology of Rome and Iron Age Britain and Spain, and also has a succeeding interest in heritage theory and historiographies. Professor Hingley has written a great many really outstanding books and is one of the premier authors on Hadrian's Wall. Two of his most recent publications are Hadrian's Wall and Life,
00:01:09
Speaker
which can be found in Oxford University Press and also Londonium, a biography, Roman London from its origins to the fifth century. Professor Hingley is also involved in numerous projects which vary in nature from tourism studies at Hadrian's Wall to more reception-based studies of Romans and Roman culture in the public reception.
00:01:38
Speaker
I truly cannot thank Professor Hingley enough for agreeing to appear on this month's episode of Flipside.
Potsdam Conference's Influence
00:01:47
Speaker
This month's talk is inspired by events which occurred on the 16th of July in 1945, when Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin met at Pottersdam in Germany to decide the future of a defeated Germany.
00:02:04
Speaker
Unfortunately, part of these talks inspired a great many divisions, both physically and philosophically, and did influence the coming Cold War with the planned construction of the Berlin Wall.
Boundaries, Borders, and Frontiers
00:02:21
Speaker
Thus, this month's episode will focus on boundaries, borders and frontiers. And perhaps an excellent place to start is the potential differences between these. And there is actually some argument in terms of definition, but there is also some agreement. So from what I've read,
00:02:43
Speaker
Boundaries are often what we consider to be more physical representations of division. They're often what archaeologists use to refer to walls or other structures which have divided a site or indeed a landscape.
00:03:01
Speaker
Borders have a more geopolitical meaning in that they're often associated with a ruling state and don't have the caveat of having to be physically marked. Frontiers, on the other hand, have held a lot of contention in terms of their definition. Some have described them as places of cultural exchange or difference, a way to divide a landscape perhaps
00:03:30
Speaker
between two differing cultures and the key word there would be exchange. Admittedly, that's a more anthropological definition. In terms of environment studies and landscape theory, a frontier is a marginal environment which exists between two different environments.
00:03:53
Speaker
For example, dune lands are often considered to be frontier environments between the sea or ocean and inland environments.
Roman Citizenship and Empire
00:04:05
Speaker
I would be really interested to know your opinion on this, Professor. Yeah, there are various different definitions in archaeology, I suppose.
00:04:16
Speaker
Historically, frontiers can be quite specific things, physical things like the Berlin Wall or Hadrian's Wall. But academically, people got rather concerned about the sort of monumentalizing attitude to a frontier decades ago. And the sort of contemporary view of frontiers as sort of zones of transformation, I think, is an academic reaction to that monumentalization or sort of tangible
00:04:43
Speaker
tangible heritage attitude, frontiers are sort of really substantial physical things. So from the 1980s or so, we had a new interpretation that stressed the idea of frontiers as more transformational, places that people come together and sort of interact. Now borders, I think I'd agree, tend to be things that are sort of more difficult to tie down.
00:05:11
Speaker
And in one of the experiences I had a few years ago, talking to somebody who works in border studies. So border studies is a sort of academic field of research, which is trance disciplinary.
00:05:23
Speaker
So archaeologists are always very involved in it, but it involves a lot of people in sort of cultural studies and art and anthropology. So this bloke I was speaking to, who's a border studies specialist, he's a geographer actually, was saying that, you know, these boundaries can actually be basically as much digital or
00:05:48
Speaker
you know, they can be things that are maintained through surveillance, they don't have to be geographic so much. So things like citizenship can actually, and that's a very current issue, you know, just at the moment, obviously, things like citizenship can actually maintain boundaries, but they're broader. So they depend on technology, digital technology or whatever. I got really interested in that, to be honest, because
00:06:13
Speaker
It struck me that the Roman Empire is like that because you have a Roman citizenship. So if you're a Roman citizen, you have elevated status in Roman society, you can be living anywhere within the Roman Empire or actually beyond the Roman Empire.
00:06:28
Speaker
and you have that elevated status. You could be beyond the Roman frontiers, but basically you still have the status and you can travel any way you want within the Roman Rome because you're an important privileged person. So I think the definition of these different terms is really, really complex.
00:06:48
Speaker
I tend to resist being over analytical. I tend to think you can use the concepts, but they're all representative of something that you need to get your mind around, something that isn't that well-defined and that needs thinking about some particular situations. So you can compare different boundaries or different frontiers from different periods and try and use your intellect to actually understand the way they operate.
00:07:14
Speaker
It's a really good point not to get too caught up in defining these things, especially as the lack of definition in a way enables us to analyse better the specific nuances of specific borders or boundaries or frontiers. In terms of modern scholarship, I'd agree that frontiers have seen more
00:07:37
Speaker
examination in terms of their definition and I think there's definitely a lean towards considering them areas of cultural hybridization or mixing. In terms of interesting examples to compare and fit into this sort of theory, I've
00:07:56
Speaker
often considered folklore and fables specifically to do with woodlands or rivers where they are considered physical boundaries within the landscape in early cultures in the UK and elsewhere actually. But the boundaries or borders themselves
00:08:16
Speaker
are also spiritual in aspect in terms of the folklore associated with them. And actually that tends to be what lasts is the stories which are associated with these physical forms rather than the physical boundary forms themselves. Rivers in particular were highly ritualized spaces and that's
00:08:41
Speaker
created a boundary between the physical and spiritual or theoretical, especially as rivers and bodies of water themselves are considered in many early cultures to be areas of transition, specifically associated with mortuary cult
Concept of Debatable Land
00:09:03
Speaker
often.
00:09:03
Speaker
I really like the concept of the debate of the land, which is a literary concept, which actually derives, as I understand it, from the English Scottish border. So it's used, it's not used very widely in literature, but it's used by some people who work within literature, and it's derived from the medieval borderlands between England and Scotland.
00:09:24
Speaker
which was an area which was not really within the jurisdiction of either kingdom and I played around a bit with the idea of Hadrian's Wall and that frontier region as it comes down through time as debatable land but of course thinking about what you're talking about you know if you think about folklore and ritual we have debatable lands conceptually all over the place don't we not just in these zones that tend to be defined as frontier regions
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, debatable land is a really interesting concept and I think it would be brilliant if more was done about it, particularly in archaeology because these concepts of border and boundary can often be quite big concepts and that neglects the fact that
00:10:10
Speaker
Borders and boundaries existed on a communal level between communities. In various guises, whether that was two communities which held two different religions, or two communities which believed different things about a tract of land,
00:10:31
Speaker
But of course that leads back to what you were talking about earlier in terms of monumentalising these concepts of border and boundary. When we talk about definitions, this then would seem like the more practical aspect to that argument.
00:10:49
Speaker
We've been having a sort of debate just around where I live. I live in a really nice rural area. I'm very close to Durham but there are a couple of very popular footpaths that go past and we've got a bit of a sort of slight problem that a lot of people have across the UK and probably Europe at the moment because a lot of new people are coming down the footpaths. We don't really understand necessarily fully how
00:11:12
Speaker
the landscape is managed. So basically they let their dogs run through the woodland where we've had ground noticing birds nesting for the last, well, the last millennium, I suspect. And if you talk to them, they sometimes are quite sympathetic and sometimes aren't so sympathetic. But it's a sort of debatable land because I feel some ownership over it because I live here, although I don't own it. It's actually owned by the cathedral. Other people obviously are coming in and they like it.
00:11:41
Speaker
but they don't necessarily understand. I think that's how I'd see it. So, you know, this concept of baseball lamps, I think, is really interesting because I have a take on the debatable lamps I sort of live within, and I know a lot of people in this neighborhood agree with me. If you take something like a major frontier work,
00:12:00
Speaker
getting us back to the sort of concepts of things that are really substantial and tangible. I mean, if, you know, what I think Frontier works is something like Trump's Wall or the Berlin Wall or Hadrian's Wall. These are often seen in very simple ways by quite a lot of people. So people have a conception of a frontier as something very divisive.
00:12:22
Speaker
and intended to be divisive, you can take that positively or negatively so you can be concerned about it. This is a major issue in America and has been under Donald Trump. People seem to divide into those who are very opposed to what is happening with that frontier work.
00:12:40
Speaker
And people are very supportive of it. And that debatable issue almost goes out the window, doesn't it? Because people are so certain of their attitudes, very simplistic, and basically doesn't really go anywhere. In that respect then, if people's own surety can impact on whether something is debatable, land or not,
00:13:04
Speaker
Then what role does intentionality have in the function of a border? Does a border or a boundary only become so when the right intention is behind it? And in what ways can intentionality develop over time so that the function or the belief associated with these concepts develops?
00:13:32
Speaker
I think that's a complex issue. If we go back to Hadrian's Wall, I probably know more about Hadrian's Wall, so I read very, very widely in sort of cultural studies and border studies, and I read about modern frontiers, but my emphasis is always on
Significance of Hadrian's Wall
00:13:48
Speaker
going back and trying to understand the Roman frontier, I suppose, if that makes sense.
00:13:52
Speaker
And I got sort of sidetracked onto developing. I'm really interested in art projects and artworks, sort of being inspired by Trump's wall, for instance. And I've got a wonderful, two wonderful books, which look at those and I sort of get into reading those and they expand my memory and my mind. But I think,
00:14:12
Speaker
If I turn back to Hadrian's fall, there's a major issue I think as to how effective it was and who planned it. Now, I think I'm very driven to the idea, and I'll explain why, that actually the Emperor Hadrian had a major input into dictating that this wall should be built
00:14:31
Speaker
and he probably had a lot of power over the way it was actually constructed. Now he came to Britain for a short period in AD 122, but he didn't say in Britain very long, but, you know, emperors were very, very powerful people.
00:14:46
Speaker
and he had a lot of people who worked with him effectively, and the archaeological interpretation has tended to be increasing over the last 50 years. The emperor doesn't have that much input, you know, in the distant frontier province like Britain, but I've been writing a book on the conquest of Roman Britain, which has just gone to the printer this week, and I've been looking at the inspiration of emperors and senior provincial officials like governors now
00:15:11
Speaker
This has become very unpopular in archaeology. Ancient historians still look at these senior, sort of, powerful men, but archaeologists have sort of got onto other things. But I think we have to look at the role of powerful people because, I mean, Trump, you know, he's out of power now. He did have
00:15:27
Speaker
quite, I mean, it's debatable how much of the world in America, between America and Mexico, you managed to actually get constructed, you might get back into power again, people are partly the result of their times. And I think that really suggests to me that we can't ignore the role of sort of, you know, these men who dominate or try to dominate the world. And I think Hadrian, you know, he's seen very positively by most ancient historians and archaeologists, but I think he had a major role.
00:15:55
Speaker
Now if you follow that logic...
00:15:58
Speaker
The intentionality of constructing this major frontier work, you know, it's inspired by an all-powerful emperor who's got a lot of support within Rome and within the province, and he's got things working against him too. But that suggests that, you know, you have this substantial Roman frontier, which saves and use for almost three centuries, which is an immense period of time. You know, thinking about frontiers in the modern world, the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain didn't survive for anything like that length of time.
00:16:27
Speaker
And he constructs this work, which seems to have such a powerful role. But then we need to think about what that role is because how effective was it? Now, if you go back 10 or 15 years, people tended to feel that it was actually highly permeable.
00:16:45
Speaker
that you could cross it quite easily. I mean, you'd have to have the support of the Roman military station along the wall, but it's got gateways at very regular intervals across it. At times, people have suggested it's not really operating to control movement very much at all.
00:17:00
Speaker
It's more constructed to monitor movements and perhaps to control and tax people. However, maybe it's the effects of what's happening in the world now or the proliferation of sort of frontier works. I think the generation of people working on the wall now are going back to an older interpretation again that the wall is actually probably quite an effective boundary, which is really intended to stop people or certain people moving across its line.
00:17:29
Speaker
So if you aren't a military officer, you're not somebody that Romans want to encourage to do whatever you're doing north of the wall, you're not going to be allowed to cross it. And I think the way a lot of people who work on Hadrian's Wall are now looking at the physical structure of those frontier works.
00:17:46
Speaker
which in themselves form a landscape because there's a depth of them. They're not just a single wall. It's now tending to be seen much more as a fairly effective police line, which probably prevents a lot of people from keeping contact.
00:18:02
Speaker
So if you're from a community living in what is now Northern England to the south of Hadrian's Hall, and you want to go and see your kin, people you've been allied to and intermarrying with and friendly with for millennia or generations, and your communities have strong ties with, you're not necessarily going to be allowed to cross that line. And you're not necessarily even going to be allowed to sail around the coast to see them because the Roman Navy controlled the sea.
00:18:31
Speaker
So I tend to see Hadron's Wall and I'm not the only person who works on the wall as something which is really quite effective when it's built. Now how long that function is maintained we don't know because there are indications that may cease to be quite such a divisive boundary as time goes on.
00:18:52
Speaker
And the Romans are always messing around with people to the north. But I think if you look at it as a piece of imperial intentionality, if you look at it as a political and military statement, it probably is highly effective. And it's a limitation of imperial territory. So it's the ending of Roman ambition to conquer the north. You still want to control the north. But, you know, it is something that has a major impact
00:19:21
Speaker
and is sustained through time. And you can look at modern frontier works the same way, I suppose. I mean, I think the Mexican frontier is really interesting. I haven't been looking so much at it since we had the change of government in America. I know there are major problems in America with the new government trying to still obviously to control migration.
00:19:45
Speaker
which, if they want to be elected, presumably they really have to, but they're trying publicly at least to be more humane about it. But I think there's also quite a lot of information to indicate that Trump's wall isn't really necessarily very effective as a way of stopping people crossing the line.
Comparing Ancient and Modern Frontiers
00:20:00
Speaker
I think it
00:20:00
Speaker
I'm not an expert on it. I think it's still not continuous as I understand it. And there are communities that are completely divided by it, which I'm sure are determined to continue cooperating across the line. In other words, the Israeli separation fence or whatever that you want to call that one. Again, you know, there are lots of things that make the relations either side of that line much more complex. I know that, but I'm not an expert on that frontier either. I think all these things can be
00:20:29
Speaker
It's so complex, but the intention behind them can be quite powerful. I should probably clarify that to begin with, my understanding of Hadrian's Wall actually probably comes from the opposite end of things in terms of I study late prehistory within Scotland and primarily that has meant recently studying lowland Scotland in the Iron Age.
00:20:58
Speaker
specifically the site of Trappane Law, which definitely had significant influence with the Romans and benefited in some ways from their presence. In that sense, I can only consider intention on a developmental level because I don't think you can argue that when the wall was built, it had an intention of defense.
00:21:27
Speaker
and slash or an intention of monumentalising, intimidating. And the reason I don't think you can argue against that is because of the way the wall is situated within the landscape. Whilst by no means does the landscape always enhance the intention of the wall, in some areas you can clearly see that the
00:21:51
Speaker
route that the wall has taken intentionally makes use of natural boundaries within the landscape. Cliffs, steep slopes, areas of high ground, rivers, and actually also areas which are more inclined to marsh or bogland.
00:22:12
Speaker
In this way the wall enhances pre-existing defensive features within the landscape, whilst also in some areas being situated on higher ground making sure that the wall itself is seen and visible for miles.
00:22:30
Speaker
Whilst that may have been its earliest intention, it seems clear that later generations, when the wall had been abandoned by the Roman military, used the wall for other purposes, including but not limited to as a sort of quarry for reuse of materials. Perhaps later generations just were pragmatic about the fact that, well, the material's there, we might as well use it.
00:23:00
Speaker
Or perhaps the intention was by these communities that it was a reclaiming or retaking of their landscape by damaging this border which had perhaps separated some communities for centuries. In any case, this intention is clearly one which is developmental.
00:23:22
Speaker
Potential exists as well that over the centuries perhaps it became more of a cultural division where people defined themselves by which side of the wall they existed on. I think that that fits as well with modern examples like Trump's wall where currently people still have those links which bridge that physical boundary.
00:23:47
Speaker
but over time might begin to define themselves differently depending on which side of the wall they typically exist on. Of course with these things you can absolutely never argue in absolutes because it's extremely rare for someone to definitively say and then be able to maintain that a boundary border or frontier has a specific purpose.
00:24:17
Speaker
And because you don't have this absolute definition, and so many people are so often involved with these concepts and structures in various capacities, then everyone involved will have a different intention for that boundary or border or frontier. Because they will have a different and unique experience of it.
00:24:46
Speaker
And I know Professor Hingley wants to comment on this, so we'll have our short ad break and then we'll see you back in a moment.
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00:24:57
Speaker
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00:25:21
Speaker
And I think to an extent, one of the things that strikes me is if you look at the way archaeologists think, and I wouldn't suggest that people in other disciplines are different. I mean, if you look at history or borders studies, it's probably the same. A lot of it is either thinking very critically and negatively about where we are today. So you think about frontiers in the modern world and you think,
00:25:49
Speaker
You know, the Roman frontier is an example of why we should be so deeply worried. Or alternatively, it's being almost romantic in your attitude. So it's taking a modern situation and actually thinking the past was much better. And I think both of these approaches are probably wrong. However, I don't think you can avoid it.
00:26:12
Speaker
One thing that I think is relevant to that is a lot of the works that look at art and cultural frontiers. And if you want, this is one of the things that slightly concerns me about a lot of the work in Border Studies, which communicates frontiers as transformative cultural experiences for people.
00:26:32
Speaker
that I think that's very well-intentioned. So if you want to take a frontier, a divisive frontier, and think about it artistically and culturally, you can do that to try and make the whole idea of a frontier slightly less negative. And as I say, I'm really interested in some of the things that have been done to actually communicate that.
00:26:54
Speaker
with Trump's world, the Mexican frontier in the USA. However, that does lessen our concerns about frontiers. If we follow that logic, if we make a frontier an inclusive transformative experience for the people who live on it, does that then weaken our critique of how frontiers operate today?
00:27:16
Speaker
I think the practice of comparing and contrasting these features is really useful and interesting. And transformative interpretation, when it's applied to a boundary or a border or a frontier, I think has to be slightly tentative because you're talking about real individuals' experiences quite often.
00:27:40
Speaker
And often the experience associated with such features is negative. When talking about the transformative nature of something like this, I think you have to consider longevity. And to do that, I would really look at what is represented by these features archaeologically. And considering Trump's wall, I think that as a feature, it really has negligible archaeological impact.
00:28:10
Speaker
It's really something which will last in people's memories, possibly longer than it would as an archaeological residue or feature. Whereas the opposite is really true for Hadrian's War, which has lasted for centuries as a physical feature, but has been distorted and reconsidered in people's memories. So in this sense, both features are already on a really basic level transformative.
00:28:40
Speaker
one becoming something of really little physical impact and the other becoming something completely other potentially to what it was originally intended for in people's memory.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot there that really interests me. I think I'll start off by saying, for prime law, I work in the Iron Age as well as the Roman period. And I spent 10 years as an inspector of ancient monuments in Scotland. And at that time, my interests were mainly in the Iron Age. So I did quite a lot of work on Broch settlements in the Highlands of Scotland. I got fascinated by clearance period landscapes. The whole landscape's really well preserved.
00:29:24
Speaker
18th and early 19th century settlement from people who had cleared off those lands and quite often ended up going to North America or South America or Australia or whatever. But I used to live about three or four miles from Prépreme Vaux so in a little town called Haddington it's quite a seat-sided whaleback hill with an Iron Age hill fort on top. So I'm still fascinated by Roman Iron Age interaction in the north and
00:29:53
Speaker
I agree with you. Hadrian Swall has this major impact on how people can operate at the time, but I go back a bit earlier because I think I'm looking at the wall through time, which you were talking about. I very much agree with that sort of approach. We can't imagine
00:30:08
Speaker
You know, it's established as one thing and stays that way for three centuries. Going back a bit early in the war, we have what we believe is an earlier frontier called the Stane Gate. Now, the Stane Gate to me is really interesting because it's not really necessarily a frontier initially because Roman concepts of frontiers are changing through time. Initially, it's constructed probably as a communication route with a few forts along it, including the world famous sort of Venderlander.
00:30:38
Speaker
which is established in the mid-80s. Now, the staying gate, I think, increasingly can be seen best as something that's actually cooperating with people locally. Because although they build forts along the western and central lengths of this system, as it becomes a frontier in the late first century, early second century, so before the Hadrian Swalls built, they don't go right to the east coast.
00:31:07
Speaker
So we have no forts east of Corbridge. And one of the arguments recently, and this is quite a contentious argument potentially because, you know, the information is quite limited, is that perhaps we have a friendly community, you know, a community that don't need controlling in the eastern part of that land. So particularly to the north of the River Tyne in what is now the Northumberland coastal plain. So the Romans are cooperating potentially with people
00:31:36
Speaker
Actually, in Davlanda, we have round buildings in the earliest phase of the civil settlement. So in the early second century, we have some round timber buildings, which could actually be local people coming and settling by a fort and cooperating with the garrison there. And I think if you follow this through, the most logical thing is, well, we have problems then around the time Hadrian, the Emperor Hadrian's comes to power.
00:32:01
Speaker
and this cooperative system which they're trying to build up, you know, that operates across the whole of the south of the province because they managed to persuade the local elites who actually established control over their own communities. It breaks down in this frontier region.
00:32:17
Speaker
Then the wall is a really divisive thing potentially. As you say, as time goes on in the later second century, you know, after the walls built, and into the third century, you get quite a community building up along the wall. And we know there are people from right over the Roman Empire, right across the Roman Empire, who come and live on Hadrian's Wall. And we know the identities of quite all these people. One of the most famous is Regina, who dies in this buried at South Shields.
00:32:44
Speaker
She, on her inscription, is described as a member of the catch of a Loni. So she's from a Kivatasva people in Eastern England, well to the south wall. And she was married to what we believe was a Syrian trader called Bharati's from Palmyra. So we have all these communities of people who are living in this frontier landscape. We don't know, however, how much they're cooperating with people locally. We don't find
00:33:09
Speaker
that local settlements develop in a way that is a tall Roman, so it's all known very well. We still have roundhouses being built and we don't have a lot of imports from the Roman Empire on these sites. The occasional coin, pieces of pottery. Now there's a sort of concept that people might be quite resistant.
00:33:27
Speaker
And I think you can imagine we've got this Roman frontier, occupying force, that Iron Age people and their descendants may be quite resistant to these people. After all, think of the impact they have on your landscape. I mean, there are thousands of soldiers stationed along this wall. So we don't know if these communities that build up along the south of all in the civil settlements and the two towns are actually including local people
00:33:57
Speaker
They may be because you may go and live in a civil settlement or a town and effectively live like you were a Roman, because we don't find roundhouses after the early second century in any of these settlements.
00:34:09
Speaker
And we can't really identify people, so we can't tell. But I still think it's quite likely until the late Roman period there is quite a lot of resistance occurring to Roman occupation of these lands. And then when you get into the late Roman period, the soldiers' thoughts affect that we can become like, because early on they're transferred from other parts of the empire to the frontier. But as time goes on, military personnel stop being recruited locally. So I think you'd imagine by the
00:34:38
Speaker
late third, early fourth century and throughout the fourth century that the military units stationed at the forts along the wall are actually effectively local communities doesn't mean necessarily that they're cooperating with the communities living around them though because they may be descended and have stories of their origins which go back to where they came from originally
00:35:00
Speaker
And the fact they're serving the Roman Empire and maintaining the frontier, and I suppose that sort of local opposition could continue in that sort of situation. Now, things fall apart, you know, when the Roman Empire ceases to control Britain in the early fifth century, things fall apart.
00:35:17
Speaker
We know from archaeological excavations that a lot of these communities, the forts will remain in place and perhaps they become war bands in the locality. And at this stage, possibly, if you're living in a settlement nearby to one of these forts, it might be in your interest to seek the support of a local war leader because they may well help defend you. So things may change very dramatically
00:35:41
Speaker
through time in the late Roman period. But I think one of the things I would say, I think it's really interesting to contrast these different frontier works to each other. When we look at modern frontier works, I think I see a major difference between Patreon's work and any of the modern frontiers I can think of. And when I say modern frontiers, I mean anything that's mid 20th century and later, because modern frontier works tend to be very short-lived. I mean, national boundaries maintain themselves
00:36:11
Speaker
Occasionally, wars lead to changes, not in Europe recently, luckily, but the Second World War, obviously, led to some changes in the boundaries of different nations. But frontier works do not survive very long, usually. You know, the Iron Curtain didn't survive for that long if you view it against Seydrin's Hall, and it's now completely gone.
00:36:32
Speaker
And there are traces of the wall in Berlin, which I spent a couple of trips to Berlin really enjoying exploring in terms of Roman frontiers. That frontier didn't last that long. And Trump's wall, you know, if it's a coherency at all, we don't know how long that will last. As a wall, I suspect it won't last 300 years.
00:36:51
Speaker
So is a modern world different from the ancient world or are the frontiers actually... This is going back to the point I was making about being very flexible methodologically because to me, can you really compare hedgerids? Well, I mean, obviously you can compare hedgerids or transform, but are they really at all the same thing? I mean, are they examples of completely different things and completely different contexts that just look very similar?
00:37:16
Speaker
I suspect there could be a lot of disagreement on this point, but personally I think that they can be compared in terms of intention behind their construction and they can be compared in the different ways that they develop. They have similarities in the sense that both are transformative features.
00:37:45
Speaker
but not transformative in the same sense or way. So you certainly can't say that Hadrian's Wall and Trump's Wall are comparable in the physical sense. I'm going to go back on an old archaeology standpoint here and say that the comparison is useful because it proves how different the features are.
00:38:10
Speaker
Hadron's Hall is a really interesting example of that consciousness there, because it's one of the few monuments that we can actually track down through time. I wrote a book nine years ago, it's probably nine years ago, on the sort of afterlife of Hadron's Hall. And unlike almost all archaeological monuments, actually the wall is quite well known through time.
00:38:31
Speaker
We know that it's written about by two early medieval clerics, Eden Gildas. So they knew about this wall in this sixth and eighth century. And then we know it's pretty famous in the medieval period because it gets marked on maps of Britain. So you have these early maps of Britain, Matthew Parris' maps in the medieval period, which show some of the towns and the rivers and some of the geographical features of Britain
00:39:00
Speaker
But they also mark this wall, which is called the Pix wall. So it's the wall built against the Pix, according to that term. And obviously, in the Renaissance, it becomes very famous, and it's been researched and studied ever since the 16th century and the late 15th century.
00:39:18
Speaker
So unlike if you take Stonehenge, which is a monument that Hadrian's Hall is often compared to in importance, we really know nothing apart from what the archaeologists discovered digging in the landscape around there, what people thought about Stonehenge. I think until certainly the medieval period, you know, obviously the monument was still there. Both monuments survived in the landscape, but we do not know how people conceived it and interpreted Stonehenge.
00:39:48
Speaker
We have some information for Adrian's Wall. Unfortunately, we have very little Roman information because classical writers didn't really write about it. So we have much, much more really from Bede and Gildas than we do from any classical writers, which has had a major impact on how we interpret the wall.
00:40:05
Speaker
But I think I would say the afterlife of monuments is really interesting, isn't it? The Berlin Wall again, which I've traced to an extent, it gets sort of commemorated and monumentalized in the modern landscape of Berlin. But the initial phase, as I understand it, after it ceased to operate, it was being demolished and pulled apart and people were taking bits of it away as mementums. And they had to actually conserve it.
00:40:30
Speaker
because it was going to be totally removed. So I think you're right. Trump's wall, I mean, to me, some of the plans that Trump was getting developed for his wall were about monumentalizing. So he was looking, I think, in some of those plans to build something quite substantial monumental. But how do you build a really substantial monumental frontier along such a long border?
00:40:56
Speaker
frontier, especially if you can't get the support of all the politicians that you need to support you to do it. That borderline frontier line is far, far longer.
00:41:07
Speaker
than the line taken by Hadrian's Wall. But I think you're right. I think the modern world, some people suggest the modern world runs much faster. Things happen much more quickly as a result of changes in technology. I don't know. I don't know. I think things could happen very quickly in the Roman Empire. If things started falling apart, if you had an uprising, you can control it. Things could fall out of control very quickly. Perhaps all, as much as anything, as an attempt to construct an infrastructure,
00:41:36
Speaker
which will control disorder if you want. So perhaps the ancient world and the modern world can't be set apart as binaries of each other.
00:41:43
Speaker
And I think that that's an excellent and salient point to leave this discussion on temporarily whilst we go for another ad break. When we get back, we'll definitely be talking about reception of the wall and some of the artistic projects which have been developed recently there. Because for centuries, the wall itself has been an inspiration for both local people and people from further away.
00:42:11
Speaker
in terms of artistic productions. You may have heard my pitch from membership. It's a great idea and really helps out. However, you can also support us by picking up a fun t-shirt, sticker or something from a large selection of items from our tea public store. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash shop for a link. That's arcpodnet.com slash shop to pick up some fun swag and support the show.
00:42:37
Speaker
I agree, and the wall also means a lot more than the Roman military occupation of that landscape, partly because of all these stories and messages that the post-Roman ages give us about the wall. I was looking in this project over a decade ago at the afterlife of the wall.
00:42:55
Speaker
and we had a look, we had a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to run a project called Tales of the Frontier for three years. I was looking at a lot of the sort of issues that come to the fore along the walls, so things to do with the later landscape which ties the wall in some way.
00:43:13
Speaker
And those connections can be quite loose. So some things, we have a number of paintings of the wall. For instance, I mean, one of the most famous is Wellington Hall in Northumberland, which is a National Trust property just north of the wall. But we have poems and we have plays that have been produced about life on the wall. But we also have much more esoteric things like folk stories about the nature of the wall.
00:43:39
Speaker
We know that in the 19th century that there were lots of tales about spirits along the wall, giants and others on the line, or friendly spirits who lived along the wall. Unfortunately, most of those stories had been lost because they weren't recorded. We just have hints of stories through placements and the odd thing that's recorded. One of my favourites is that this comes from a 19th century travel book.
00:44:05
Speaker
that the wall was built in one night by a female giant. So all these things, and lots of them get entangled to me in the history of the wall, and they become part of the wall. And these stories, all these forms of knowledge that local communities have are part of that, if you can get to them. One of the ideas we have, which we never carried through as a result of this Tales of the Frontier project, was to set up an ethnographic project.
00:44:31
Speaker
which would actually interview people living along the line of the wall. And this is the wall to see how they interpreted the wall and what they felt was important about it. And one of the things that really interested me at that stage was whether any of these folk stories that I've managed to find fragments of
00:44:51
Speaker
from 19th century accounts actually survived in local memory. And that could be because people have talked about them for the last 150 years. It could be because somebody's been reading some of these sources that I looked at and found the stories and reinvented them. But it sort of wouldn't matter too much to me why they, how they were passed down. I'd be interested in the different forms of ideas people had about the monument. Because Hadrian's was such a famous monument.
00:45:17
Speaker
And praying laws are really important, something too. It's one of the best, best, most important iron age hill forts in Britain, I suppose, for various reasons. But it's not anything like as well known as Hadrian's Wall. So what is local knowledge about wall?
00:45:32
Speaker
What do people think about the wall? We have more knowledge of what visitors think about the wall because there have been some projects that have actually interviewed visitors to the wall, usually to look at what their requests and desires are for visitor services. So, you know, what is done well and what's not done well at the monuments along the wall.
00:45:50
Speaker
But I'd also be interested in how visitors interpret the wall, because we don't really know how visitors think about the wall as a historic and archaeological monument, because the interviews have concentrated on marketing and increasing the number of visitors for economic reasons. Now, we never carried through this ethnographic project. I think it would still be really fun to do. We did do another project, which was interviewing people at open-air museums.
00:46:17
Speaker
across Britain. So we interviewed people at a number of the Iron Age open-air museums, Vauxer Ancient Farm for instance, and we interviewed people at Vindaranda. So we went to eight heritage venues from Britain and interviewed largely people working in places, guides and staff. But the wall I think would be such a massive project.
00:46:36
Speaker
to do because it's such a lengthy monument and there are millions of people living within its sort of curtilage. I was partly inspired to think about this and perhaps I should still do this project by some work I came across where some anthropologists had interviewed several generations of people who lived along the line of the iron curtain.
00:46:56
Speaker
So they interviewed people from both sides of the Iron Curtain, and they interviewed young people who'd grown up after the Iron Curtain had been demolished. They interviewed middle-aged people who'd lived there while it was operating, and they interviewed all people who were there when it was built. And I found it really fascinating, I had a presentation of this and I had a couple of articles, how much these different generations' views of the Iron Curtain differed.
00:47:21
Speaker
And I also found it quite challenging because having grown up with parents who told me the Iron Curtain was a really evil thing, and I still tend to think it probably was. Some of the respondents they interviewed actually felt that the old system easily, the Iron Curtain, gave them a better life than the new system. And I'm not making a political point there. I'm being pretty reasonable. I know anyone's been saying that.
00:47:43
Speaker
I think that challenges me a bit in my attitudes to the nature of this frontier and the nature of the regimes operated east of the frontier. There are plenty of people who condemn those regimes too, I should say, from both sides of the wall from my study. If we could go back to the Roman past and interview people
00:48:00
Speaker
And then I'd say for Hadrian Swell, if we could build a sign machine and find some way of understanding the concepts of people who lived 2,000 years ago, which I think would be tremendously difficult as a process, what would we find? I mean, I don't think infusing people in the modern landscape would in any way replace the idea of being able to do something like that, which is directly impossible. But it would still tell us a lot more about the monument.
00:48:27
Speaker
I suppose I'm lucky, as you are working with an university system, that I don't have to think about economic factors. So if I'm trying to interview people, I don't need to think about whether my interviewing will help economically to market the wall. I am very keen to help market the wall. I should say I have a role. I've had a role in helping to do that for a very decade.
00:48:49
Speaker
with a management plan partnership that looks after the wall. But it's not what I'm employed to do, so I can be much more interested in how people think about monuments. And I share your interest in that. I think we've had very little work that's actually looked at the attitudes of communities to their monuments. We have had some, but we've had very little. So could you go out and actually formally introduce some of the people who are under pre-normal?
00:49:13
Speaker
So I have actually been fortunate enough to engage with people living around the Trapane Law landscape now, and it's got some really interesting factors actually. Landscape studies is something that I'm often engaged with, and I don't think that it should really be acceptable.
00:49:32
Speaker
to study a landscape without engaging with modern communities. And actually what I've tended to come across is a clear disparity between how interaction with the landscape and with the monument occurs. Many of the individuals within these landscapes now do not associate directly with past historical
00:49:54
Speaker
I would more say ancient communities which were resident within the landscape, and in that way that distances them from feeling particular ownership over monuments like Drapane Law, but they feel a direct sense of ownership of the landscape itself, and in that sense they feel ownership of the monument within its setting in the landscape. There is a consciousness at least amongst those I interviewed with
00:50:23
Speaker
the site itself and the landscape, but it's a case of where, not who or how. It's linked to a profound sense of ownership of the landscape itself. Now if we were talking about historical communities say within the last two, three hundred years, I think there'd be more of a connection with who.
00:50:45
Speaker
and how those people and communities interacted with the landscape. But certainly considering the Iron Age site of Trapane lore, that is definitely more a connection of where, because that site itself is now intrinsically a part of the landscape.
00:51:06
Speaker
I think truly you can say something similar of Hadrian's Wall because the connection is that it's situated within its landscape. Because now people don't think of that landscape without thinking about Hadrian's Wall.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah, I find that really interesting. We have a bit of work by artists or interviewing of artists or commissioning of artists to create artworks along the wall. One of the ones that really strikes me, I'm afraid I can't remember the details of the books on my bookcase behind me, but there's a project called Writing the Wall over a decade ago and they actually invited quite a number of artists to the wall landscape to reflect on the wall.
00:51:47
Speaker
And they had, I think, an artist from somewhere in the Far East who very much related to the Tigris boatmen who were stationed at one point on the east end of Hadrian's Wall, so they were probably actually, you know,
00:52:03
Speaker
maintaining boats and maintaining water communication there. And he sailed at the time with an archaeologist I know very well. He created a poem about this landscape and he was talking about slaves under the same sky. Now I found that really interesting because he was reflecting on a Roman auxiliary unit.
00:52:22
Speaker
And Roman auxiliary units weren't slaves in Roman terms. I mean, as an auxiliary soldier, you'd be recruited in your community and you were sent abroad. So these people had been sent to the east end of Hadrian Swartz Sur, but they weren't technically slaves. It's a reflection on British imperialism and the enslavement of people within the British Empire, rather than
00:52:45
Speaker
the literal reflection on Hadrian's fall, but that's a sort of archaeological response to the poem. I actually liked the poem a lot and I thought it was a really interesting issue. It made me start thinking of it and I think this is how art can be really useful, especially when it's created by people with a very different background to you, either regionally or religiously or in terms of age.
00:53:07
Speaker
Well, gender, because it made me start thinking a bit more about auxiliary soldiers, because what happened to you if you were an auxiliary soldier, you had to be a man and you had to be free, but did you actually have very much power? I mean, basically you would have somebody very much an authority over you, so you'd have somebody ruling your community, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if
00:53:29
Speaker
young men all across the empire were told that they were going to go and join the Roman auxiliaries and sent off rather than, you know, the image that I think reenact is how quite often is you volunteered. You like the idea of having a military career and you love the idea of going somewhere different. Perhaps, I don't know, the modern army might be a bit more like Latin Britain at the moment. We're not at war. It certainly wasn't. At times the country was in trouble. You didn't have very much choice.
00:53:57
Speaker
If you did have a choice, you got, I mean, I haven't experienced this in my lifetime, but my parents' generation did. You were very much treated extremely badly by society if you wouldn't join in. So were Roman auxiliary soldiers always volunteers who went willingly, or were a lot of them false to actually do it? Now, I think reflecting through Roman archaeology on the injustices of British imperialism,
00:54:22
Speaker
is a deeply important thing to do because one of the things it does is helps bring those issues back to our own nation, if you want, and hopefully helps encourage people who might be a bit resistant about thinking about imperialism in negative terms to think a bit more openly. That's probably an optimistic assumption on my planet, I think,
00:54:47
Speaker
We have two groups of people in the country. This is a simplification. I think we do have two groups of people. We have people who are very willing to think critically about imperialism. And we have other people who want to climate rise it for some reason that they really don't understand and issues to do with slavery.
00:55:04
Speaker
are very deeply caught up in that. I think it's one of the really potentially important aspects of Hadrian's Wall and the Roman archaeology of Britain that it really does help communicate a lot of these issues that are fundamentally important in our society today and which we need really to encourage people towards greater tolerance. Even people who are fully tolerant I think could be more tolerant and people who aren't tolerant I'd like to encourage insofar as I have any power which I really don't.
00:55:33
Speaker
but I'd like to encourage them to watch greater tolerance. One of the funny things about, I mean you might have a very different perspective of this from me, I realise that one of the nice things about teaching in university is I do find the vast majority of people I teach seem to believe those, to believe that argument and it's very rare for me to come across any students who object
00:55:56
Speaker
to being taught about decolonizing the agenda, for instance, which is something we're very much promoting, along with most universes in Britain. But I think it's a deeply important thing, and I think Roman archaeology has a major role in that.
00:56:10
Speaker
Yes, the decolonisation strategy is a really quite brilliant uptake in universities across the country right now, and I hope that it continues to develop because it's not perfect at the minute. The only issue that I've recurringly come across
00:56:29
Speaker
is that it's difficult to apply decolonisation when it is so linked to imperialistic attitudes, specifically the British Empire, to earlier periods that we study like prehistory. Not because there's a lack of empire, obviously the Roman Empire is one of the most famous empires there ever was,
00:56:55
Speaker
No, I find that the issue is more one of tribal identity. Speaking from an Iron Age perspective, there's been a lot of reductionism over a lot of years to curate a unified tribal culture. And this is in part the fault of those that embraced Celtic revivalism and
00:57:19
Speaker
This is romanticised, the idea of the Celt to such an extent that quite often in more broad literature, even where the known individual tribal names are neglected for the overarching term Celt. And this is relevant because it's very difficult to recover a culture whose identity has been completely lost.
00:57:46
Speaker
Your point about imperialism and Hadrian's Wall being a good example of structural imperialism is really quite brilliant. I'd really like to go further and highlight that, in a way, I believe the Iron Age people were early decolonizers. Now, if I'm remembering correctly, in decolonization, a short history
00:58:11
Speaker
There are approximately five stages of decolonisation which are described and the first of these is rediscovery or recovery and that's where the previously colonised actively rediscover their own cultural roots.
00:58:28
Speaker
Upon Roman retreat from Hadrian's Wall, this is exactly what some Iron Age people seem to have done. And as an archaeologist, it is the physical remains of this which I can relate to. The Iron Age people are perhaps characterised archaeologically by their round houses.
00:58:48
Speaker
Whilst under Roman occupation, some individuals do seem to have still rebelliously built their houses round, or perhaps simply the Romans didn't care. But when the Romans left, only were a lot of the major structures which Romans built completely abandoned. And despite the examples of buildings which were more structurally sound perhaps,
00:59:15
Speaker
certainly more permanent, which the Romans had provided. Iron Age people largely returned to building their round houses. Faced with either assuming the place the Romans had left or going back and recovering what they had before, it seems that Iron Age people chose to look behind and essentially decolonize themselves.
00:59:42
Speaker
Now the truth is likely not black and white on this, but it certainly seems like that first stage of decolonisation described in a short history. Now the introduction of decolonisation into this discussion is really interesting, but I would be really interested to know where you see.
01:00:05
Speaker
Another aspect of heritage studies going in this respect in terms of public communication
01:00:15
Speaker
In terms of boundaries, borders, and frontiers, how do we communicate the newer research to do with these to the general public? Or more specifically, how do we do this for heritage sites such as Hadrian's Wall? Personally, I really see the value of current events being used to inspire theoretical and more artistic approaches to boundaries, borders, and frontiers in the past.
01:00:45
Speaker
places like Cadrian's Wall. Yeah, it's typical really. We have this frontiers gallery in Tully House Museum in Carlisle, and that is partly quite a traditional display of objects derived from the excavations in Carlisle, which was there was a Roman fort, actually two Roman forts in Carlisle, but also it developed into a town during the second to fourth centuries. But the main part of the frontiers gallery is an attempt to get people to think about frontiers through time,
01:01:15
Speaker
So there's a wall in the Frontiers Gallery which has a sort of panel that is the shape of the World Heritage Site running along Hadrian's Wall. And they project onto this in some way I don't really understand from behind, I'm sure. Lots of scenes of conflict and trouble on frontiers in the modern world. And they're trying to get people to think about frontiers. I mean, what they're trying to do is get people to think tolerably about issues of migration and issues of
01:01:44
Speaker
the responsibility of nations in this world that is so fractious and this has been in place for over a decade now I think and I think that's a very good attempt to get people to think about frontiers in a slightly different way and more critical way and to inspire them to try and understand some of the
01:02:02
Speaker
ethical responsibilities that people living in wealthy countries have towards people who are in very, very desperate situations in other countries. But it slightly concerns me that they have a board in which people can pin little messages in this gallery, which is a common thing that news interviews. And I saw a message once when I was visiting, which I think was written by a child because it was a sort of childish style writing.
01:02:30
Speaker
saying, I wish I lived in the past. And I think this was possibly inspired by the rather glamorous images of Roman living in the gallery and in the museum, a rather critical reflection on frontiers in the same gallery. And it made me a bit sad because, you know, I'd rather live in the present, to be honest. I know things may be problematic, but if we'd had a
01:02:55
Speaker
pandemic in the Roman period, we wouldn't have had lots of wonderful scientists and medical practitioners helping us to live through it. There are lots of things about one world which are preferable. I think that's a tension in how we interpret the world because I think as an academic and somebody who's concerned about one world,
01:03:12
Speaker
I would very much like to encourage people to think critically about where we are today and behave ethically or, you know, understand the world in a way which is a bit more inclusive and less problematic. At the same time, if we do that, we potentially undermine the people who might come to the wall and try and understand it in the first place because someone might be put off. I suppose if you're saying, I wish I'd lived in the past, that might be an indication you're going to be fascinated by the Roman past and the future, which would be good for me.
01:03:40
Speaker
potentially for universities and for archaeology in general. But I do think it's hard to know. I think one of the major things about the world being more positive is it's a major economic generator.
01:03:54
Speaker
in this area of the country, which isn't that well-off. Parts of the world's course are actually quite deprived landscapes, other than Tyneside, and some of the landscapes, some around Carlisle. It brings lots of people in. And this inclusive, positive agenda, which is really dominant on hatred, I think is a good way of encouraging people to come and enjoy their visits. And perhaps we can be subtle in the way we communicate the problematic messages.
01:04:23
Speaker
when we communicate. And then I think the Frontiers Gallery does a very good job. And perhaps being more positive about that gallery in the museum in general, the sort of water enabling stuff about Roman period, or the prehistoric period, or the medieval period, balances out the rather more critical display of modern frontiers, which tries to draw the Roman frontier into that equation. So it's not trying to tell people that life was better than the Roman past. I feel I could understand how a child might pick up those messages, and I'm sure other people do too.
01:04:53
Speaker
We glamorize the Roman past. We glamorize the Iron Age past, too. I'd rather rather live in the present. And when I see people at heritage sites who are worrying about the present, or I feel they may be worrying about the present, I try to communicate that message above everything else. I think we're still pretty lucky in a fairly wealthy country, but I would feel that, wouldn't I? I'm a professor in a very good archaeologist department in England.
01:05:21
Speaker
This is a problem, the glamourisation of the past. I think most historians, archaeologists or heritage professionals have at some point been haunted by that question of, if you could go back, would you? As an example, I once had that question asked to me in an interview for a university, which is going to remain unnamed.
01:05:46
Speaker
And I really don't think they liked my answer, which was no. Just no. But the issue is, surely, that if this question is being asked even in that sort of setting, then there is inherently a fictionalisation of what we do every day as archaeologists.
01:06:07
Speaker
And having worked in a few museum settings myself, I would say that this can particularly be a problem in a museum environment because the priority is always to communicate facts about the past whenever that past is to an audience which is really diverse.
01:06:27
Speaker
And often the best way to communicate these things to younger people is through story. It's been proven to be a really effective medium. But of course, the problem with story is that it has that aspect of fantasy.
01:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, so I think it's one of the problems we face that people actually believe what we're taught at school. And basically, teachers understand we have to really simplify the past and not necessarily to deal with all the issues. I think teachers try very hard to give a balanced account of how the past was. But I think one of the major problems that occurred in my field of research is the argument that occurred over the idea that we might have Africans living in Rome and Britain.
01:07:11
Speaker
which Mary Beard particularly got involved in a fractious argument with a few people who wouldn't tolerate the idea we had Africans living in Rome and Britain. Now we know, we know quite simply, I can say, I don't believe in evidence, but we can say without any doubt there were Africans living in Rome and Britain. But I wonder to what extent that's to do with communication in school, that the idea that Rome and Britain was a period which is very instrumental in our past,
01:07:40
Speaker
where the Romans civilised people in southern Britain, and they went away in the early fifth century. And the Africans don't occur in that story at all. Now there's been some educational material produced recently to try and communicate those stories, which has been very political.
01:07:57
Speaker
in trying to suggest that we're Africans in Rome and Britain, but we know they were. And, you know, when Mary Beard comes up against people, or Heller Eckhart comes up against people who deny the fact that we're Africans in Rome and Britain, to what extent is that? Because they're believing what they were taught at school, which we're contradicting. And therefore we must be political. The truth is, I mean, we are political, you know, we're trying to
01:08:23
Speaker
I think most of us are hoping for a more tolerant society, which is a political attitude. If we live in a country that's getting less tolerant, we'll become more and more of a political attitude. But it's one that I think a lot of people in academia deeply believe in, which we need to keep going, I think. And we need to encourage more. And ethnography could be a way of interacting with people to try and make some people a bit more
01:08:47
Speaker
open to those sort of ideas. A lot of people are, I should say. Most of the people we talk to in museums and heritage centres are very tolerant to those ideas. We need to get our messages through to other people, try and persuade them that we have
01:09:01
Speaker
reasons for arguing it rather than being politically biased. You're absolutely correct that there's this issue in terms of early years study and the theory and information which is provided in a school setting currently in the UK. Having had some input on resources provided and having to use these resources in my own teaching,
01:09:27
Speaker
I found that decolonisation and inclusivity are ideas which are more increasingly being communicated through the text passages of textbooks, which is a move in the right direction. The issue is, however, that the accompanying images within these textbooks often continue to proliferate old ideas. A lot of these images just don't
01:09:54
Speaker
include diverse communities. Apart from that, another example is the age-old issue of women being gatherers and men being represented as hunters within the hunter-gatherer discussion.
01:10:11
Speaker
This is even more of an issue because currently within the history exam structure, one of the first questions a student will come across is one which requires them to analyse a source of evidence. And sometimes these are the very same or similar images to those included in their textbooks.
01:10:31
Speaker
And so an insightful commentary would include the fact that hang on, this isn't showing a diverse community, or hang on, it's showing the balance of work and power between male and female as really, really divisive.
01:10:47
Speaker
But the student has already been desensitised to these images and often these more academic discussions aren't had within the classroom. This is in no way a criticism of teachers who do their absolute best with the resources and curriculum which they're given by government. I would argue that the issue is much more deep-seated. The system we have now encourages memorisation of facts.
01:11:17
Speaker
in humanity's subjects, and that in no way encourages or creates an intelligent, insightful researcher. And this leaders quite nicely into the tangent time, which is essentially where I talk about something which is related, but not entirely in keeping with our main topic.
01:11:40
Speaker
Because I'm an archaeologist, and that means I can't focus on one single thing for any amount of time. I'll blame it on that, but it could just be me. As we've already talked about in this episode, Hadrian's Wall, for example, has had a lot of art associated with it over the years. From medieval and 17th century depictions in watercolour or
01:12:07
Speaker
just in sketch form, to modern projects which have attempted to rediscover the wall in a different way. From that poem we talked about which uncovered a way of thinking about Roman slavery, which hadn't perhaps been immediately obvious,
01:12:27
Speaker
to more large scale representations such as the 2012 art installation called Connecting Light whereby a 73 mile stretch of Hadrian's Wall was illuminated in
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what the artist described as an inverse wall, an attempt to present Hadrian's wall not as a barrier but as a bridge. The thing that this highlights is just how art can help people to understand and interpret heritage sites differently. Art really can be really inspiring to the visitor, to the researcher and to the student.
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Borders, boundaries and frontiers can be really divisive and negative things. Sometimes through art we attempt to highlight this negativity. Sometimes we attempt to dispel it and to encourage reinterpretation.
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Sometimes art in and about these places is intended as a way for communities to heal from the divide which has sometimes been imposed on them. There's not a person alive who doesn't have some form of boundary, border or frontier of their own, whether that's some physical representation or whether it's more theoretical or philosophical.
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We've already established that these terms are difficult to define so and this is just a suggestion. Create something. Create something which represents to you a boundary, a border or a frontier which you are familiar with. We've mentioned
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several times in this podcast episode, the tolerance of society. Boundaries, borders, and frontiers are often physical representations of the level of that tolerance. Through the act of creating something, an individual might begin to understand what a boundary, a border, or a frontier means to them just a little more. And with understanding comes illumination and tolerance.
01:14:40
Speaker
Unfortunately, it looks like I might've set you a little bit of homework again, so we'll leave it there. And thanks for listening to this episode of Flipside. You'll find us on APN every month or any other major streaming platform. That means Apple, Spotify. You know, thanks ever so much to our guest this month, Professor Richard Hingley. Goodbye, and I'll see you next month on the Flipside.
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you
01:15:26
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, in the Archaeology Podcast Network. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
01:15:48
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to archpodnet.com slash members for more info.