BURNSWARK
Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
On
the E side of Annandale, 4.8 km N of Birrens, an outpost fort of Hadrian's Wall. The defenses of the largest
native hill fort in SW Scotland enclose 6.8 ha of this
prominent hilltop and are beset on N and S by two
Roman camps of 5.2 and 3.2 ha respectively. The Roman road up Annandale skirts the foot of the hill on the
W. The Roman camps have been seen as siegeworks,
possibly related to an extension of troubles in Brigantia,
A.D. 155-158, and the whole complex compared with the
well-known and historically attested situation at Masada.
Recent excavations have shown that the hill fort was
a center from as early as the 6th c. B.C. On the other
hand, the latest defenses would not appear to have been
standing when Roman missiles were being fired, and the
so-called work of circumvallation, linking the two Roman camps in Masada fashion, is a more recent feature.
All told, the Roman camps are best understood at the
moment as forming part of an area devoted to military
exercises, in a realistic setting which allowed the employment of supporting slingers, archers, and artillery, as well
as assault troops. The S camp, with three gun platforms
placed as traverses in front of the three N entrances,
must be later than A.D. 140, since in the NE its defenses
lie over the silted and turf-grown ditch of an Antonine
fortlet.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Proc. Soc. Ant. Scotland 33 (1898-99);
Royal Commission on Hist. Mon., Dumfriesshire
(1920); S. N. Miller, ed.,
The Roman Occupation of
South-Western Scotland (1952);
Discovery and Excavation in Scotland (1968-69).
G. JOBEY
