Professor Lawrence Keppie 11 September 2000
28 members and guest of Lanark and District Archaeological Society meet to hear a lecture from the Society's Honourary President Professor Lawrence Keppie. Lawrence has lectured to the Society on several previous occasions, in fact he recounted that his first experience of lecturing to an amateur society was in Lanark at the Clydesdale Hotel. On that visit he was somewhat surprised to find that the members were sitting around round table and drinking pints of beer during the lecture. On this occasion the audience were sitting in rows at Lanark Library and there was not beer to be had.
Professor Keppie gave a very entertaining lecture on "Early travellers and excavators on the Antonine Wall". Prior to 1900 most investigations on the wall happened by accident rather than by design. Indeed until about 300 years ago the exact location of the wall was not known. The earliest mention of "Graham's Dike" was by the Reverend George Buchanan in the 1580s. The wall is also clearly shown on Pont's map of the area, drawn some tens years later. In the 1630s William Brereton reported that the wall run from Leith to Dumbarton and had both forts and fortlets along its length. This was an assertion that was not reconfirmed until excavations in the 1950s.
The end of the 17th Century saw a great outburst of activity in the Roman period. The exact location of the wall was determined by the discovery of an inscribed stone by Robert Woodrow in the late seventeenth century. Woodrow was the Librarian at Glasgow University and was able to ensure that he was informed of any further finds by offering the workmen the sum of one Crown for each marked stone they found. Lawrence had to explain tot the younger members of the audience that this was the princely sum of five shillings. However, at this time much of the wall was robbed for local buildings, Woodrow reported, "all the walls round about were built of the Roman Wall"
In 1720 William Stukeley published the first detailed map of "Grahams Dike". Alexander Gordon described the discovery in Shervey of a large number of tombstones including a sepulchre. This is now believe to be a Iron Age souterrain formed from the Roman stones after the Roman occupation. However, Professor Robert Simson of Glasgow University quickly acquired Gordon's finds. The University's collection was further enhanced by Professor John Anderson who was active in looking for new discoveries at the time of the building of the Forth and Clyde Canal in the 1760s. Anderson's expenses claim of the time was displayed. It came to the substantial sum for 1771 of £10 1 11 (correctly summed) which included the hire of horses and drink money tot the workmen. Professor Keppie doubted that such a claim would be processed these days.
The 1890's saw the first properly recorded dig on the wall. This was performed by Glasgow Archaeological Society, but involved no professional archaeologists. In 1902 Alexander Park performed a further dif at Barhill where they discovered a bathhouse and timber framed barracks. This was the fist dig to use photography of the excavations and finds. Lawrence concluded his talk with a brief description of the re-excavation of the site in the 1980s.