A little light reading?

My #Welcome Wednesday slot is given over to introducing you to my latest light reading. Although I'm actually posting it when it's still Tuesday night since I'm off on a jaunt tomorrow to meet up with some authors I've only 'met' in a virtual sense! 

Though some of my reading is actually not so light after all!

For some years now I've been blogging about the archaeological dig that happened in Kintore, Aberdeenshire, between 2000 and 2006.

Those dates are a tiny bit confusing, though, since they actually refer to 3 separate investigations during 2000-2006 of the land around the site of what was known in the Victorian era to be a temporary Roman Marching Camp at Deer's Den, Kintore.

The earliest of the 'digs' was prior to the main trunk route between Aberdeen and Inverness, the A96, being bypassed at the village of Kintore. The findings of this investigation are mentioned in this volume by Murray Cook and Lyndsay Dunbar, along with surveys at 2 other named sites within the marching camp area.

I borrowed this 'Volume 1- Forest Road' from Aberdeen University Library via my Aberdeenshire Interlibrary loan service. This is a precious copy and had to be handled as carefully as the items it describes between the covers!

This was the first time I've pored through an archaeological evaluation of a thorough site survey and on my first scan of the document I have to confess a lot didn't quite make sense to me. A slow second reading gave me what I wanted. That was to be sure I knew exactly what was found on the land which was to the interior of the Roman marching camp, which is thought to be of Agricolan occupation (AD 84), probably Severan (AD 210) as well, and maybe even used by a third lot of Roman soldiers.

Why did I chose to read such a highly specialised document? In After Whorl: Donning Double Cloaks, Book 3 of my Celtic Fervour Series of historical adventures which concludes in AD 84, I refer to Agricolan soldiers making camp in the vicinity of Kintore. When I wrote that part of my series, I was happy to have read of the confirmation of Roman presence in other places than the document above. In The Taexali Game, my time travel adventure novel for Teens/ YA, I also included references to legions of the Emperor Severus and his son Caracalla making camp at Kintore and terrorising the local Taexali tribes.

My reason now for being more precise in my knowledge is in preparation for a presentation on Roman Scotland to Advanced Higher pupils at an Aberdeenshire Academy... and because I wasn't satisfied with conflicting information I'd read on various sites on the internet about the results of the 'dig'.

The warning to myself being  - don't believe all your read on the internet without checking at the very best source! 

My other non- fiction reading for the near future has also popped through the post- books also to satisfy my curiosity about aspects of Roman Scotland I've not yet read up on enough, yet. These should see me through the next few weeks. *wink, wink*

Am I obsessed- YES!

Slainthe!