Yesterday I drove to the west coast, which is a little over an hour away, to the town of Maryport. Maryport is where a Roman fort was built around the time of Hadrian (120-130 AD) to guard against incursions of enemies from Scotland and Ireland. It is a part of the Cumbrian shore defense. The fort platform and a part of the vicus outside the north gate is now pasture land and is up on the cliff edge north of the main town. The Senhouse Roman Museum is in a mid-1800's shore defense building and takes about 45 minutes to walk through. Almost all of the museum is devoted to Roman altars found in the vicus fields north of the main fort. Some tombstones are also in the museum. It was fascinating to see the couple of dozen altars, especially with inscriptions, that gave information about the military group stationed there and the officer dedicating the altar. I couldn't take pictures inside the museum but I did get a couple of shots of the port and of the outside of the museum. The fort platform is just to the east of the museum and you can take stairs up a viewing tower to see the field. Nothing is on display like at Vindolanda and not much modern archaeology had been done. The Senhouse family has owned the land for centuries and has collected finds from the "Roman Camp" field and the vicus fields. That is what is on display in the museum.
This is a picture of one of the anchorages. I was there at low tide. The tides there are some 15-18 feet. Wow! Puts the tides of a couple of feet at home to shame.
This is a picture of Senhouse Museum showing the western side that faces the sea. The building was used to train Sea Cadets until 1960. The Sea Cadets would be similar to ROTC for the Navy in the States.
Lastly, I have to put up the picture of the beautiful intaglio that was found in Area B today. Normally Justin doesn't dig today, but he and his girlfriend Karen got in a day of digging. Karen found the intact intaglio carved with the head of Mars in profile. It is the best intaglio that I have seen yet.
3 comments:
As always, great info, good tour guide stuff. But...what is an intaglio. Looks remarkabley unscathed but I have no idea of its use.
M
Matt won't be back online until tomorrow, so I will try to help with a short explanation.
This intaglio may have been set into a ring or worn as a pendant. I found out that (according to wikipedia) the term intaglio refers to incised (negative) image-making, and is the opposite of cameo. Think of a king’s royal seal on a ring, which would leave a raised stamp mark when pressed into wax or clay. When I last talked to Matt online I asked him what this intaglio was made of and he was not sure yet. It could be carved out of a special gem-like stone, or formed out of glass using a mold. Either way it is phenomenal that it looks so perfect after coming out of the ground! Matt, send us an update if you find out anything more about it.
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