Dr. Francis McIntosh

I know Northumbria University have been doing work on looking at aqueducts and pipes and because they're amazing mathematicians, the angles of sort of movement of things there.

So no.

But, you know, they're north of the wall, which shows it's not just barbaricum, is it?

It's not, as in George RR Martin, it's not, you know, the White Walkers north of there.

The line of the wall was just the narrowest point and it's where they've set it.

You know, it's not as stark as we, you know, jokingly often say to people.

Oh, not at all.

So there's outpost forts.

So although the Antonine Wars only occupied, you know, 20 years, 140s, about 20 years, there's outpost forts that are occupied right through.

So High Rochester, for example.

And there's huge amounts of trade that must, that we know is going on, you know, north of the war.

Traprain Law, I'm sure you'll have done an episode on Traprain Law with Fraser from NMS.

And, you know, they've got huge amounts of Roman stuff there that,

where the Romans are paying, you know, the peoples north of the border to keep on side.

When it doesn't work, that's when September 7th comes up.

But, yeah, it's not this wild, untamed landscape.

I'm sure people were going hunting and... Hunting, of course.

Would have been, you know, north of the wall.

And equally...

On a much smaller scale, fairly recent excavations, say at Benwell and at Bird Oswald, have found that the civilian settlement that we talked about being around the outside of the fall, you know, in the murder houses, some of that activity is actually north of the wall.