Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

we suddenly have the door open to camps and ramparts.....

Ha ha - no.

Like John, I have lost track of a fair proportion of the last 100 pages. Other than the testaments of Tacitus and
Cassius Dio, and the burning of 3 towns, (possibly 4  including Silchester) what other evidence do we have?

None, really.

I still think Tacitus's mention of St Albans is significant - we know from archaeology that the damage there was not great, and it was a relatively insignificant town of Romanised Britons, probably unknown to most people in Rome itself (i.e. T's readership). So why does he mention it?

My guess would be that it appeared in the sources T was using, perhaps because Paulinus withdrew there after evacuating London, and used it as a rendezvous point for his reinforcements from the Welsh frontier, and it was close to the final battle site.

As a recap (because several years have now passed!), here are my two suggested sites, with slightly improved maps:

First Dunstable (Manshead):

   

Second, Tring (Newground) - I've removed the railway and canal, as before, and marked what appear to be the sites of the military finds, helmet, and the rumoured detector finds of slingshot etc:

   

However, while I was looking around for old maps of the Tring area, I came across this one, from 1766, showing the valley around Newground prior to the construction of the canal and railway. As you can see, the Bulbourne rises rather higher and a little to the north-east. The red line follows the approximate course of Akeman Street. But there's a very interesting-looking 'defile' feature just east of Wigginton, and if the area just to the north was wooded this would 'close' it off quite neatly from the rear:

   

What do you reckon to those?