"The impact of the Roman army on the environment was gigantic, at least by the standards of the ancient world. The construction of forts and fortifications was only the start. Peacetime activities also included participation in significant mining and engineering projects, often involving soldiers in supervision and management.
The arrival of the Roman army in a frontier zone, especially a temperate area where trees were widely available, automatically resulted in colossal quantities being felled and prepared. Clearance must have been undertaken on a grand scale. Each turf and timber fort required vast amounts of wood for building and maintenance; felling and transporting it was a task so arduous that it helped provoke a mutiny in AD 14 amongst the forces in Germany. The army also required wood for day-to-day heating, cooking and metalworking. The military extraction of iron ore in the Weald of south-east Britain, for example, meant there was a constant and huge demand for charcoal for the smelting furnaces.
When Agricola's legionary fortress at Inchtuthil in Scotland was abandoned and cleared away c. 87, around 900,000 iron nails of various sizes that had been prepared for the fort were buried in a pit 12 ft (3.66 m) deep to prevent the local tribes from reusing them for weapons. Pottery and glassware were smashed up and buried, but evidently melting down the nails and taking the iron away was thought too much trouble. They bear witness to the effort and logistics involved in mining, smelting and working the iron, as well as transporting it to the site either in pigs or as finished products. This kind of usage meant long-term management – the constant rotation of areas of woodland, making usable timber available within a reasonable distance rather than operating on a slash-and-burn basis, which was fine for conquest but hopeless for permanent garrisons. The legionary fortress of Caerleon may have required 370 acres (150 ha) of woodland to supply enough timber for the initial construction alone, and more for maintenance. A unique wooden writing tablet found at the fortress in a context dated to c. 75–85 seems to mention the collection of materia, ‘building timber'. A squared beam found in a Roman quay in London had a branded inscription of a cohort or ala of Thracians which had probably been responsible for felling it; the beam had perhaps been reused from a military building. An inscription from the Rhineland, dated to 214, records that a vexillation of Legio XXII Primigenia was involved in the gathering of timber. Although the Romans made some use of coal, they seem primarily to have relied on timber for furnaces. Estimates based on the small private bath-house at Welwyn suggest that a 58 acre (23 ha) area of managed woodland was needed to provide the fuel for just one small domestic facility. Based on floor area comparisons alone, that could mean that Caerleon's legionary baths needed over 13,800 acres (5,600 ha) of woodland to keep them running, unless coal was used instead – which in that case was a real possibility, because there were plentiful sources in the area. Either way, a legionary fortress must have depended on vast supplies of local fuel. However, estimates are based on so many imponderables and unknowns that it is impossible to do more than conclude that the requirements must have been enormous and time-consuming, and probably also had a serious impact on the local environment. This may explain why Caerleon's baths had fallen into disuse by c. 230, long before the rest of the fortress…"
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Amicalement
Armand
discovers a lost dinosaur.
