Pooh and Piglet find tracks of the heffalump and decide to follow them.
Last Friday, I finally gave my presentation to Liverpool University. Not on climate as you might expect, but on the famous battle of Mons Graupius between the Caledonians and Romans which as the evidence of 1st century dating of the line of camps in Northern Scotland tells us was in Moray (near Inverness).
Note, I’m not saying “may be” in Moray, but “was” in Moray**, because I’ve now rechecked all the available evidence for the line of marching camps heading north and far from being later (as is commonly suggested) the evidence only supports the campaign of Agricola (c83AD) and not the later campaign by Severus.
This means that the line of “dots” (red) for the Roman camps, can only have been from the Agricola campaign of which the Battle of Mons Graupius was the climax. And this battle is very likely to have taken place on the “flat” geology shown in black. This more or less validates the “turned” interpretation the Ptolemy map which gives the Northern Heartland of the Caledonians in the Moray Firth (the top left of the map).This means that given all the evidence from Tacitus’ description of being in sight of the sea, on a plain etc. (i.e. in black areas to left), the only place that fits is somewhere on the coast around Elgin or onward to Inverness with Quarrelwood Hill (now Quarrywood Hill) just east of Elgin being by far the most likely site.
Of course, it is all too easy to take some evidence such as apparent “tracks” and like Pooh bear above, to misconstrue them. However, now I have radio carbon dating from a camp at Kintore and 1st century type “Stracathro” gates on another site, unless we invent some fanciful reason why there should be a line of tracks of which some are securely dated to the 1st century AD, then we have a whole line which is securely dated to the Agricolan campaign: therefore we have the Agricolan campaign heading toward Mons Graupius – therefore this line locates the only possible area of the battle.
Unfortunately, this means that because there is still a lot of work needed, I will not be spending so much time on climate.
**I mean in the area of Moray to the east of Inverness (as opposed to the areas of flatter ground north of the Tay)
