"I see SP building a camp that is large enough for his 10,000 troops plus the usual supports" dadla.
It's buried deep in the thread but you won't catch me agreeing with this, and I think it's core to the debate. A single camp for all SP's forces would be a huge marker for the battle site search and the key feature to search for, but a couple of issues make me assume this would not be the case and so is not a reliable indicator for the battlefield location.
1, If the topography was the, or one of the, most important aspect of the site then the top of slope would be the site for any camp and the scale of any camp/camps would be dictated by the ability of the terrain, possibly a ridge top, to accommodate this.
2, SP was not certain of the forces he might have to accommodate. He seems to have been expecting to accommodate a contingent of Legio II and may have got some of Cerealis' cavalry from the IX. Therefore he had no finite camp scale to work to. It seems possible that sub units would be responsible for more modest camps, maybe 5 camps of 2k each.
3, Pre-existing structures may have been utilised for some or all of SP's units. Certainly the Church Stowe (CS) theory is linked to a potential depot or jump off point for SP's forces before heading to Mona being based along the Nene line that Upex has suggested along the Nene. This raises the possibility of a pre-campaign logistic depot being a post Mona mustering point that may have both been known and supplied for SP's rallying point. The Weedon Bec depot is a Georgian corollary close to CS.
I'm of the view there may have been a single large camp but I am inclined to think the Roman force may have been accommodated in a number of more manageable scale camps on a ridge top, a ridge top that was already well know from earlier in the Mona campaign and with a longer post conquest history. A hill top camp or camp network is a challenge when Steve Kaye's water supply issues are factored in, however a perched water table would largely take care of that. So If there was a single large camp it rules out a lot of potential sites and makes demands of a large camp find that no site to date lays claim to other than a bit of a feeble "it might have been there but has subsequently been obliterated by development" (Tring or Dunstable I think) ....
Just a catch up on points previously made for the ease of new readers.
It's buried deep in the thread but you won't catch me agreeing with this, and I think it's core to the debate. A single camp for all SP's forces would be a huge marker for the battle site search and the key feature to search for, but a couple of issues make me assume this would not be the case and so is not a reliable indicator for the battlefield location.
1, If the topography was the, or one of the, most important aspect of the site then the top of slope would be the site for any camp and the scale of any camp/camps would be dictated by the ability of the terrain, possibly a ridge top, to accommodate this.
2, SP was not certain of the forces he might have to accommodate. He seems to have been expecting to accommodate a contingent of Legio II and may have got some of Cerealis' cavalry from the IX. Therefore he had no finite camp scale to work to. It seems possible that sub units would be responsible for more modest camps, maybe 5 camps of 2k each.
3, Pre-existing structures may have been utilised for some or all of SP's units. Certainly the Church Stowe (CS) theory is linked to a potential depot or jump off point for SP's forces before heading to Mona being based along the Nene line that Upex has suggested along the Nene. This raises the possibility of a pre-campaign logistic depot being a post Mona mustering point that may have both been known and supplied for SP's rallying point. The Weedon Bec depot is a Georgian corollary close to CS.
I'm of the view there may have been a single large camp but I am inclined to think the Roman force may have been accommodated in a number of more manageable scale camps on a ridge top, a ridge top that was already well know from earlier in the Mona campaign and with a longer post conquest history. A hill top camp or camp network is a challenge when Steve Kaye's water supply issues are factored in, however a perched water table would largely take care of that. So If there was a single large camp it rules out a lot of potential sites and makes demands of a large camp find that no site to date lays claim to other than a bit of a feeble "it might have been there but has subsequently been obliterated by development" (Tring or Dunstable I think) ....
Just a catch up on points previously made for the ease of new readers.
