Roman Style Signalling at Segedunum

Evocatus - Victor the Veteran

As part of Segedunum's celebration of  Connecting Light Victor the Veteran demonstrated how the Roman passed messages along Hadrian's Wall - or at least that's what the publicity blurb at Segedunum stated!
The day was a little quiet, being the last weekend of the Summer Holidays, but we still had fun.
How we did it
There's a good book by David Wooliscroft (see below), which looks at signalling from an archaeologist's point of view and relates it to the remains on Hadrian's Wall.  However we needed something children could make work across the fort

The Flags are  dipped rather than raised

Using 2 sets of 3 flags, rather than the banks of 5 usually used in the reconstructions and by adapting a code Julius Arfricanus in the 3rd Century.  If all the flags are raised and the message sent by dipping a flag, it makes it easy to spot which flag is moving.

By changing the alphabet from the original Greek and dropping the 'J' and 'U' gives 24 letters.  All the receivers need to do is to count the number of time a flag dips and use the grid to note the letter.  With practice we could send a letter every few seconds.  The flags are just large enough to be obvious over 100m or so, but to be visible over longer distances, they would have to be much bigger and further apart.



Some of the 'Connecting Light' balloons were being stored in the bathhouse - that led to a couple of surreal encounters...

I am NOT a NUMBER!!!!!

I am Rufus Aelius Victor and I will have my revenge...

Enough said.....

if you're interested -
David H Wooliscroft, (2001)  Roman Military Signalling,
Adam Hart-Davis, Discovering Roman Technology

Connecting Light at Segedunum

Segedunum, 30 August 2012, just about Dusk

As it was just before dark today...

looks very surreal.  Tomorrow I'll be signalling using flags along the balloons - I hope.  If all goes to plan I'll be using a simplified code first described by Julius Africanus in the third century.

Some of my flags.

If the code and flags work, I'll write it up and let you know how we did it.

Bread, Beards and the Bronze Age

Gradually getting caught up with things.

23rd February and another new experience, making and baking flatbreads on on open fire. The event was Bread, Beaker, Beards and Britons at Segedunum. Part of the of the BBC Hands on History events, the Beakers were being made by potter Graham Taylor and I was making a simple dough without yeast that could be baked on a flat stone next to the fire. I took along a small saddle quern and examples of the kind of grain people would have grown and ground to make bread.

It more or less worked. We made about 60 'cakes', but had difficulty cooking them all. The dough was easy enough, but I really needed a bigger fire with more ash to keep the stone warm enough. Perhaps less of the hard wood logs and more of the twigs and brushwood gathered from the woodland. Still it was great fun and I'll definitely try this one again.

Campaign! Make an Impact - What's Next?

The funding for Campaign! Make an Impact is just about over and in the current climate it will be difficult to gain more, so I thought it time to mention some of the Outcomes and Impacts from the last year.

The Story
We started with 3 groups along Hadrian's Wall, 2 primary schools, from Newcastle and Carlisle and a group of home educated childrenfrom across the North East. They did such good work that Jan Mears, Study Support Officer from North Tyneside Council felt the project should get bigger. We attracted a further 9 schools from Tyneside. This work enable another 2 schools from Cumbria to join in. Discovery Museum began to run workshops based on the English Civil War and their 'Seige and Storm' exhibition.


The Outcomes

• Regional Network to continue to the work.
• 14 schools involved with 4 more working with Discovery. Discovery are intending to carry on offering Campaign-in-a-Day workshops.
• 9 museums or other heritage sites involved, Tullie House, Arbeia, South Shields Museum and Art Gallery, Segedunum Roman Fort, Blyth Battery, Stephenson Railway Museum, Newcastle University Special Collections, Woodhorn, and Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums Outreach Team.
• Regional Conference, 16th February at Discovery Museum attended by 45 educators and professionals from across the region. Around 100 children involve in the project came in the afternoon and listened to presentation from 6 school groups.
• 2 schools will travel to the British Museum as a reward for their hard work.
• Resources on the North Tyneside Learning Platform and planned resources for Hadrian's Wall and on REALM (Resources for Exploring Archive, Libraries and Museums in the North East).

The Impacts

We are only Year 3, but We can Make a Difference - Primary School
presentation.

I'll add some more quotes soon

Rounding up 2010 - The Eagles Have Landed

Hello,

A New Year and time to tidy up last year and begin anew.

September and October saw the TYNE TEAM working on 'The Eagles Have Landed' a schools and community event programme to complement the touring exhibition of the same name. http://www.culture24.org.uk/history+%26+heritage/time/roman/ART308897897 for more info and where the exhibition is now.

We ran a 2 day public event at Segedunum (4/5th September), and a more in depth schools project involving Burnside Business and Enterprise College in Wallsend, then we followed the exhibition over to the other side of the Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site at Maryport. We ran another 2 day public event at Senhouse Roman Museum and on the . We wanted to highlight the impact of the sudden appearance of the sophisticated and intimidating Roman Legions would have had on the locals.

Talk about Culture Shock!

Each of our characters took a view on this, from the soldiers extolling the virtues of the Army and recruiting with the promise of an easy life and wages, to the local craftspeople who may have seen new business opportunities and those who would have viewed all this with suspicion and fear. After all what did the Romans ever do for us?

The schools project involved working closely with all of Year 7 from Burnside College, we ran drama and storytelling workshops, explored the identity of those who may have lived near Segedunum and created a ceramic 'sculpture' which will follow the exhibition to Tullie House in the Spring. Watch out for the 'Teacher's Pack' based on our work.

Advanced Learning Centre - History. June/July 2010 at Segedunum

Based at Segedunum Roman Fort in Wallsend the Advanced Learning Centre is now in it's fourth year. For six weeks in June and July around 25 children each week ,gave up 6 of their Saturday mornings to find out more about History and Archaeology. We studied maps, aerial photographs, took part in a simulated 'dig', recorded finds and explored the ancient techniques of dying and weaving under the expert hands of 'Textiles through Time' - Ruth Hicken.
By using archaeology we developed new skills and hopefully inspired curiosity in the children, most of whom will start secondary school in September.
"Thanks very much - that was so much fun"

The Advanced Learning Centre is part of the North Tyneside Councils, Gifted and Talented provision.

the Wall to Wall project

This is the other big project I'm involved in at present. These two characters

may well appear in an exhibition I'm co-ordinating at Segedunum Roman Fort in Wallsend.

Over the past 10 years Burnside Business and Enterprise College and Segedunum have worked closely together, the culmination has been the Wall to Wall project. Part of 'People and Place', a British Museum project, the whole school has been involved. All of Year 7 spent a 'Cultural Day' off timetable, discovering about Roman times and exploring their own identity by looking at favourite objects that meant something to each of the 5 senses. A smaller group has been thinking about what objects can tell us about the past and what objects could tell future generations about us. Much of this work will be on the Wall to Wall website (http://www.wall-to-wall.org).

The school has been developing links with School Number 19 in Hebei Province, near were the Great Wall of China begins. Both ancient wall are World Heritage Sites, both valued for their 'outstanding universal value' and have helped Burnside become a UNESCO 'Associated school'. This link with China has inspired work by other students, including GCSE Art.

The theme running through the exhibition is 'exploring ourselves', looking at the questions,

Who Am I? - exploring contemporary identity

Who Are You? - looking at the cultural identity of their partner school in Hebei

Who Were They? - what can objects tell us of the people who lived at Segedunum in Roman Times

The exhibition will open on 27 March 2010, so come along and explore your identity.