Professor Rob Collins

Well, the first question becomes, are those military buildings, are they just given up entirely?

in that they become empty shells and they kind of slowly become ruinous?

Or would other people move in and think, well, there's a convenient empty building.

I can take that.

I've always fancied having my own baths.

I might make use of that.

So that's the first question.

And the archaeological evidence shows that many of the buildings in the forts along Hadrian's Wall that we've excavated, we can see some form of occupation and activity there.

It might look a bit different, not what we'd call traditionally Roman or expect in terms of Roman architecture, but it's there, and it's often a reworking of that Roman space.

And just because it doesn't look like it did maybe 100 years before doesn't mean it's not Roman, because we can also look at the villas further south in Roman Britain.

and see similar sort of things happening.

We can look at Roman towns in the 5th century and see similar sort of things happening.

So we have to also be careful when we look at the 5th century that just because it doesn't look like something might

In AD 300 or AD 200, that doesn't mean it's not Roman.

It's just maybe a different sort of Roman.

I think that is the most likely case.

I think on the balance of evidence and probability that that is far more likely than they're just kind of being abandoned and entirely new people in new communities coming in.

That does remain a possibility, however.

And we absolutely can point to well-documented Roman examples in other frontiers where

they are inviting in the kind of the local barbarians who they've often known for many generations.