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Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
On balance I would favour the replacement of the “distance from London” attribute. We know something unsavoury happened at London, but we don’t know if it was the full horde that later assembled for the “last stand”.

“1) the borders are not really known (largely based on single coins and hoards of same)”
My view is that the southward penetration of the Wash implies the land unit most associated with the revolt was an isolated East Anglia. There is lots of wiggle room about where the southern boundary might be but the southern pinch point (Great Chesterford/Thames) makes for a good physical definition. I think this makes the definition of a Western boundary less messy than you suggest.

“2) we don't know much about the population densities within the tribal areas - so, to where would the tribes people return? Would there have been many different routes 'home' for the Iceni?”
As with 1 I think there are many routes for small bands but I think for a horde the Great Chesterford area would make a pretty good common bottle neck for most.

“3) and what about the Trinovantes?”
I’m assuming the Great Chesterford – Thames line is as good a southern boundary for them as any. The sack of Colchester implies they weren’t standing in the way of the Iceni, so I would assume both tribes were acting together to some extent. With a geography defined by the Wash penetration, maybe there were strong political/kinship links between the Iceni and Trinovanti. The isolation provided by the Wash does give a different spin to the geography of political relationships and the campaign.

“We know the horde followed him”. Well we might have to differ here, we know he was harried, this need not have been a horde as this would have been too slow harry effectively and we don’t know the threat was from the South, it may have been from the East. (unleash the Cavalry dash argument)

“However, the 'distance from tribal borders ...' attribute might have merit. But, that merit depends on the starting conditions and how + what sort of units are crossing that border. Put another way: are you advocating, 1) a general flow of tribes people across the border, or 2) two or more hordes of tribes people moving across the border, and 3) that we place too much reliance on Tacitus saying Colchester and London were destroyed, and that we falsely assign a large horde to this undertaking?”

I was thinking a general flow of hordes from an area that would have been compelled to move across the Great Chesterford/Thames neck. My fantasy is that the revolt originated in an unplanned angry strike at Colchester, a period of celebration and reflection followed, then a re-massing of a horde to a bigger goal whilst the “Inter City Firm” destroyed London and St Albans from the East.

“As you can see, I'm unsure of your reasoning for having the attribute 'distance from tribal borders ..'.”

My reasoning is that the closer to the geographic area we know the protagonists to be, the more likely the site, significantly more. We know the Iceni were in Iceniland. We know the Romans were on Watling Street so the further we go from that potential overlap the less likely the site.

Some of the Iceni may have been in London and St Albans, but we can’t say the horde was, we can say the horde originated somewhere Northeast of the Great Chesterford line. We don’t know a cavalry dash took place, but we know the Romans approached the conflict zone along Watling Street from the North West. These are the only 2 campaign geographies we really “know”.

I personally speculate the horde went west/north from Great Chesterford, but this is only a speculation I happen to like, I cannot write off the southern or direct west routes, but they seem significantly less likely to me.

I would anticipate a weighting to significantly favour any site close to the known positions of the protagonists. So the sites around Ilchester, Chichester and Gloucester would seem so far away from the forces “common ground” that the likelihood of there candidacy being correct should be an "outside chance" rather than "more likely" than the eastern sites. So significantly downrating the sites more than 75km from known locations would seem to be reasonable and take out a number of the top 48 candidates. I'd also downgrade sites simply for being South of the Thames, bridging/fording/ferrying that just seems a step too far.

I hope that’s clear, I am making it up as I go, I’m happy to do this on email or phone if you prefer, and thanks for getting the grey cells going on this again,
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Messages In This Thread
Re: Calling all armchair generals! - by Ensifer - 03-11-2010, 03:13 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-18-2012, 06:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 12:02 AM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 02:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 05:40 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 11:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 05:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 09:42 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 10:10 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:25 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 08:36 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-26-2012, 02:57 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-27-2012, 01:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 08-05-2012, 02:24 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-07-2014, 02:18 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-08-2014, 01:50 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-11-2014, 02:03 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-18-2014, 07:54 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-20-2014, 02:37 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-25-2014, 08:29 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by John1 - 03-05-2015, 09:51 AM

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