GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Much of what we're told about the Wall is this kind of speculation. There is remarkably little written by Roman historians that's survived, just one line from the biography of Hadrian to say why he built the wall: 'Barbarus Romanus qui divideret - to force apart the Romans and the Barbarians'.

What has survived is a marvellous collection of stone inscriptions, some of which are gathered together in this museum at Chesters Fort, where Lindsay Allason-Jones is the curator.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
So where did all these stones come from Lindsay?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Curator
All along Hadrian's Wall.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What recently?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
No, in the 19th century there was a gentleman called John Clayton who was the town clerk of Newcastle, and a great landowner. He collected most of these stones or excavated them.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What even this one with the phallus on it?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Yes, that's a good luck symbol, and you find quite a few of those on stones on Hadrian's Wall.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Now what sort of information can we get from these carved stones about actually who built Hadrian's Wall?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
A great deal. These stones here for example are called Centurial Stones. Each century of men, that's eighty men in a unit in the Roman army, built a section of Hadrian's Wall, and they put their names on stones when they'd finished their stretch.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Now is that a matter of quality control? Or is it a way of allowing the units to compete with one another as to who'd built which bit first?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Probably both. I suspect that there was that feeling that you've achieved something as a group, but also there is a feeling of quality control. The commanding officer would come along, and if he saw a piece of wall which was rather tatty and not very well built he knew who to blame. And if he found a piece which was beautifully built of course he could then give Brownie points to the right unit.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Now that makes it all sound like an exclusively male military environment but was that actually the case?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Not at all, no. There were a lot of women and children on Hadrian's Wall. Up there you can see that circular stone, which is a tombstone. It's actually been cut down to be used as a hearthstone at some stage, but it's the tombstone of a man called Dagvalda, who came from the 1st Cohort of Prononians. That means he was a Hungarian, and it was set up by his wife Prucina.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
So if he was a Hungarian, where were all these soldiers coming from? I thought they were Romans.

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Oh no. There'd be a lot of people from all over the Roman world, many of them from the Low Countries - Germany, Holland, Belgium, that sort of area - but also we have Africans, we have Syrians, just about everywhere. and they're bringing their families with them.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
So not only wives - children too?

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
And mothers and sisters too. If a soldier was the eldest son in his family, and his father died, he became responsible for all the unmarried women in his family.

(At the fort at Vindolanda)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
These domestic details all paint a very different picture of life on the Wall to the one we might have gleaned from history books. They tend to concentrate on warfare, campaigning, equipment and armour. And at the nearby fort of Vindolanda there's more compelling evidence about the everyday lives of the soldiers and their families. The lower levels here take us right back to around the year 100, twenty years before the wall was built.

Robin Birley has been excavating here for almost thirty years. It's an archaeologist's paradise, thanks to the environmental conditions which have preserved even organic materials like wood and leather.

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