From Ningishzida to Hermes: The Near Eastern Roots of the Kerykeion

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This is one of the finest surviving examples of a Greek kerykeion — the iconic staff of Hermes, messenger of the Olympians and guide of souls between the worlds of the living and the dead that I photographed at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Bronze kerykeion (caduceus), Greek, early 5th century BCE. Dallas Museum of Art. In Greek art, this staff identifies Hermes—herald, traveler's patron, and guide of souls. But its central motif—two serpents twisting around a rod—appears on Mesopotamian cylinder seals and ritual objects more than a millennium earlier, carried by the Sumerian snake-god Ningishzida. Is this visual inheritance or independent invention? The question remains open, but the parallel is impossible to ignore. Photograph by the Author.

Beneath the head of each serpent, the bronze-smith has rendered a distinct wattle or beard—a stylized, fleshy protrusion. This is not a naturalistic detail. No snake native to Greece (not the adder, the rat snake, nor the Aesculapian snake venerated in the healing cults of Asclepius) possesses a beard. Greek artists were perfectly capable of naturalistic rendering when they chose to be. The presence of this artificial feature therefore signals something else: the artist was following an iconographic convention, not observing nature.

That convention—marking a serpent as divine, powerful, or chthonic by giving it a beard or human-like head—originated not in Greece but in Mesopotamia, where the underworld god Ningishzida was depicted as a human-headed serpent or as the horned, bearded Bašmu dragon. The beard on this Hermes staff is a fossil of that forgotten hybrid form, a small but telling clue that the kerykeion's visual language traveled westward across centuries and cultures before a Greek bronze-caster shaped this staff in the early 5th century BCE.

The kerykeion (its Latin equivalent being caduceus) appears in Greek art from the Early Archaic period, carried most often by Hermes, though it is occasionally held by Iris — the messenger of Hera — and by Nike in her role as herald of victory. Its origins remain debated; the staff's source may ultimately lie in the ancient Near East.

The cylinder seal evidence

The most concrete argument comes from material culture. William Hayes Ward (1910) discovered that symbols closely resembling the classical caduceus appear on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, and suggested the symbol originated somewhere in the 3rd millennium BCE, proposing it as a plausible source for the Greek form. These seals predate the earliest Greek representations by millennia, which gives the diffusionist argument its chronological backbone.

Ningishzida and the divine prototype

The more ambitious theoretical claim involves the Sumerian underworld deity Ningishzida. Ningishzida was a messenger god who dwelled in the Underworld for part of the year, and the symbol for this underworld messenger was two entwined serpents on a staff — the same configuration as the kerykeion. Some scholars have proposed that the Greeks adopted this symbol from the Near Eastern context for their own messenger god Hermes, who shares the same chthonic, psychopomp functions.

Ningishzida makes his first appearance in the Fara god list from the Early Dynastic III period, dated to approximately 2600–2350 BCE. This is our earliest documented evidence of the deity by name, though of course the absence of earlier written records doesn't mean the cult didn't predate that.

His origins as a tree god

Although Ningishzida was a power of the netherworld, he appears to have originally been a tree god — his name apparently meaning "Lord Productive Tree," and he was probably the god of winding tree roots, since he was originally represented in serpent form. The snake-and-staff iconography thus likely grew organically out of this root-as-serpent conceptualization of an arboreal deity, rather than being a purely abstract symbol from the outset.

His nature and cult spread

His primary cult center was Gishbanda, a settlement situated between Lagash and Ur in southern Mesopotamia. Ningishzida, like his father Ninazu, is a chthonic deity associated with vegetation, growth and decay, snakes and demons. Associated with his role in agriculture, he was said to travel to the underworld at the time of the death of vegetation — in Mesopotamia, mid-summer to mid-winter.

The Gudea connection and the key visual evidence

A.L. Frothingham extended Ward's argument in 1916, proposing that the Greek god Hermes himself derived from an "Oriental deity of Babylonian extraction"—specifically, the snake god Ningishzida, whose earliest form was as a "messenger" deity.

Ningishzida as "a messenger god" is a slight oversimplification. His primary roles were as a chthonic vegetation deity and "chair-bearer of the underworld." The messenger-god parallel to Hermes is an inference drawn from his appearance as a doorkeeper in the Adapa myth, not a core title.

The long tail of the cult

Ningishzida's worship persisted all the way into the reign of the Persian king Darius I at Uruk, indicating that his cult endured through multiple historical periods.

Walter Burkert, one of the 20th century's leading scholars of Greek religion, characterized the entwined copulating serpents as not just a borrowed symbol but reference to a specific visual concept — paired serpents in a sexual or entwined posture. Burkert privileges cuneiform literature as a source of literary transmission in light of the continuous routes of contact between Mesopotamia and Greek speakers, with these contacts reaching an apogee in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. He tracks the migrant craftsmen who brought the Greeks new techniques and designs, the wandering seers and healers teaching magic and medicine, and the important Greek borrowings from Near Eastern poetry.

So from roughly 2600 BCE to at least the late 6th century BCE, this deity with his entwined-serpent iconography was continuously present in Mesopotamian religious life — a timeframe that comfortably predates and overlaps with the period of intensifying Greek contact with the Near East in the Archaic period.

The upshot for the kerykeion question: the deity and his snake-staff symbolism were circulating in Mesopotamia for well over a millennium before the Greek kerykeion crystallizes in the Archaic period, which is why the iconographic parallel carries real weight.

The pre-anthropomorphic argument

There is also a more structural argument about how divine symbolism evolves. It has been argued that the staff or wand entwined by two snakes was itself representing a god in the pre-anthropomorphic era — meaning the staff was Hermes, before the Greeks developed a fully human-figured deity. Like the herm or Priapus, it would thus be a precursor to the anthropomorphic Hermes of the classical period.

The dissenting view

It's worth noting this isn't a closed question. Lewis Richard Farnell (1909) argued that the two snakes simply developed out of ribbon ornaments on a herald's shepherd's crook, with no need for Near Eastern derivation at all. This purely Hellenic-origin view has fallen out of favor, but it reminds us that the Near Eastern connection, while widely accepted, rests largely on iconographic analogy and functional parallel rather than a documented transmission route.

The case rests on the very early Mesopotamian parallels, the striking similarities to Ningishzida's symbolism and role, the serpent's deep roots in Near Eastern religious iconography more broadly, and the prestige of Burkert's endorsement — but it remains an inference rather than a proven chain of transmission.

The development of this object reflects close trading relationships between Greece and the ancient Near East.

The Orientalizing Period

The critical window is what art historians call the Orientalizing Period, roughly 750–580 BCE. This is the period when art of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East heavily influenced nearby Mediterranean cultures, most notably Archaic Greece. The main sources of influence were Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, and Assyria. The DMA kerykeion, dated to the early 5th century BCE, sits at the tail end of this intensive exchange period, which gives the transmission hypothesis real chronological plausibility.

Al Mina as a key conduit

One of the most important physical nodes in this network was the trading settlement of Al Mina on the Syrian coast. Modern research has shown that Al Mina was a significant eastern trading settlement with strong Greek connections dating back to around 825 BCE, and later work has considered it key to understanding the role of early Greeks in the east at the outset of the Orientalizing period. This gave Greeks direct, sustained access to a Levantine milieu that was itself deeply embedded in Mesopotamian cultural traditions.

The Phoenician intermediary problem

One important nuance is that the transmission was rarely direct. The Phoenicians were the great middlemen of the ancient Mediterranean, and much of what the Greeks received as "Near Eastern" came filtered through Phoenician commercial and cultural networks. This means the kerykeion iconography need not have traveled directly from a Sumerian temple context to a Greek bronze-caster — it could have passed through several layers of transmission, accumulating new associations along the way, which also makes it harder to prove a clean line of descent.

The mercenary connection

There's also a less discussed but significant human channel: during this period, the Assyrians advanced along the Mediterranean coast accompanied by Greek and Carian mercenaries, who were also active in the armies of Psamtik I in Egypt. Greek soldiers serving in Near Eastern armies would have had direct exposure to Mesopotamian religious iconography in ways that pure trade alone couldn't replicate.

So, the development of the kerykeion fits neatly within a much broader pattern of sustained, multi-channel contact between the Greek world and Mesopotamia across the 9th through 6th centuries BCE. The staff was made right at the moment when that exchange was at its most intensive.

However, amicable trade relations did not prevent political conflict. Prior to the 5th century, Greek elites spent money imitating eastern / Lydian dress and buying Persian art and goods. That commercial relationship didn't dissolve — it coexisted with, and was eventually overshadowed by, political confrontation driven by entirely different forces.

The structural trigger: Cyrus and the Ionian Greeks

The animosity didn't arise from trade grievances. It arose from imperial expansion colliding with Greek political autonomy. When Cyrus overthrew the Lydian kingdom of Croesus in 546 BCE, the Greek cities of Asia Minor found themselves under the rule of the Great King — a monarch absolute in religion, politics, and war, and the antithesis of city-state liberalism. This is the key structural fault line: Persian imperial governance was fundamentally incompatible with the Greek polis model of civic self-rule.

After the resulting Ionian Revolt and Persian Wars, Greek writers like Aeschylus and Herodotus actively forged a civilizational contrast between Greek freedom and Persian despotism that served Athenian political purposes. Unfortunately, this schism between East and West has continued into modern times.

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After the Eagles Left: The Last Romans at the Edge of Empire

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

I was listening to The Ancients podcast on Amazon Music and Dr. Rob Collins, Newcastle University, stated that not all the Roman armies left with Constantine III in 405-407 CE as evidence by a lack of coinage with his image beyond southern England. The traditional narrative holds that Constantine III took all of the mobile troops from Britain when he crossed to Gaul to confront Germanic invaders who had crossed the Rhine. However, I learned this is increasingly seen as an oversimplification.

A late Roman frontier officer in scale armor at a northern British fort, c. 5th century CE. The ridge helmet, mail armor, and absence of stirrups reflect equipment of the late Imperial period. AI-generated illustration created with Adobe Firefly. I had to change the helmet type, the armor type then remove stirrups, the horse's breast band and change the soldier's caligae to the enclosed boots more prevalent among frontier troops during that period to improve historical accuracy.

The distribution of Constantine III's coins is indeed geographically telling. The majority of late Roman silver siliquae are found in southern Britain, in the lowland zone to the south and east of the Fosse Way, with finds in Devon and Cornwall, Wales, the west Midlands, and the north-west and north-east being rare. Notable examples of later issues of Constantine III come specifically from Richborough and the Patching hoard in West Sussex. This southern concentration suggests that his monetary authority — and by extension his military presence — was felt primarily in the south, consistent with the theory that troops further north were not his to take.

Archaeological evidence supports the idea that not all Roman military presence ended in 407. The British-based units of the Field Army eventually left and are evidenced on the Continent, effectively "hollowing out" the province — but the northern frontier units were left largely untouched, as were tribal militia and foederati. The northern garrisons remained in place with their units and Roman commanders, eventually becoming the core of warbands in the 5th century.

This is further supported by earlier precedent: coins dated later than 383 have been excavated along Hadrian's Wall, suggesting that troops were not stripped from it during Magnus Maximus's earlier usurpation, or if they were, they were quickly returned.

The crucial nuance that Dr. Cottrell appears to be drawing on is the difference between the comitatenses — the mobile field army — and the limitanei, the static frontier garrison troops. What Constantine took was the Field Army led by the Comes Britanniarum, while the Saxon Shore was stripped to a skeleton staff and the northern frontier units were left largely in place. These latter troops, cut off from imperial pay after 409/410, didn't simply vanish — they evolved into the post-Roman military structures of sub-Roman Britain, which some scholars connect to the legendary traditions surrounding figures like Arthur.

So Dr. Cottrell's coinage argument is part of a broader and well-supported revisionist picture: the end of Roman Britain was not a single dramatic event in 407 but a gradual, geographically uneven process of disintegration.

The Physical Evidence: Birdoswald and the Transformation of the Forts

The most compelling archaeological case study is Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall. At Birdoswald, the only change in the early 5th century appears to have been that the troops of the fort were no longer paid or supplied by central authority — the unit was still there. The old system of official coercion may have been replaced by a symbiosis, whereby the territory from which supplies had been drawn as part of the Roman tax system continued to sustain the fort in return for the assurance of protection in troubled times. The kind of commander-patronus attested by the large commanders' houses in the late forts may have continued to be an important figure as the 5th century went on — men who became imperceptibly more like chieftains in control of warbands than Roman commanders.

This interpretation is supported by excavation. Recent excavations at Birdoswald, led by director Tony Wilmott, suggest that a warband descended from the later Roman garrison may have continued to occupy the fort, supported by the discovery of a large timber hall which may have served as a gathering place for the post-Roman community. The timber hall is significant — it is a classic marker of early medieval chieftainly power, suggesting a direct architectural evolution from Roman fort headquarters to early medieval great hall.

Unlike the elite mobile field army, many of the static frontier troops — the limitanei — with their local loyalties didn't leave after direct Roman rule ended, and there is evidence that several forts were occupied for centuries after.

The transformation from Roman garrison commander to post-Roman warband leader was apparently gradual and organic rather than a sudden rupture. There is no evidence of any kind that the infantry of British leaders could be classed as "regular" after the middle or third quarter of the 5th century at the very latest. In other words, within a generation or two of 407, the disciplined Roman military structure had given way to something more characteristic of early medieval warfare — smaller, more personal warbands loyal to an individual leader rather than to an imperial institution.

The most tantalizing figure in this transition is Coel Hen — "Coel the Old" — who appears to straddle the Roman and post-Roman worlds. The senior military commander in the northern part of Roman Britain in the late Empire was the Dux Britanniarum and Prefect of the Sixth Legion, probably based at York, who commanded the garrisons of the forts on Hadrian's Wall. Some scholars have proposed that Coel Hen held, or inherited, precisely this role.

Historian John Morris in The Age of Arthur suggested that Coel may have been the last of the Roman Duces Britanniarum who commanded the Roman army in northern Britain, and split his lands among his heirs after his death. It must be noted, however, that Morris's broader thesis has been widely criticized by scholars, and Coel Hen himself is a semi-legendary figure whose historicity cannot be fully verified.

What is less disputed is that Coel Hen appears in the Harleian genealogies and the later pedigrees known as the Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd (The Descent of the Men of the North) at the head of several post-Roman royal families of the Hen Ogledd. His line, the Coeling, included such noted figures as Urien, king of Rheged; Gwallog, perhaps king of Elmet; the brothers Gwrgi and Peredur; and Clydno Eiddin, king of Edinburgh.

These figures represent the political legacy of whatever military structures survived in the north after 407. The Hen Ogledd — the "Old North" — covered modern northern England and southern Scotland, encompassing the kingdoms of Rheged, Elmet, Bryneich, the Gododdin territory extending well into Scotland, and other kingdoms in the Pennines. Rheged, one of the most celebrated of these kingdoms, was a Brittonic-speaking realm of the post-Roman era whose capital was likely Carlisle — itself a major Roman administrative and military centre.

The post-Roman kingdoms of the north map almost precisely onto the Roman military and administrative geography of the region, strongly suggesting that their rulers were indeed the descendants — biological or institutional — of the Roman garrison commanders who simply never left.

It is worth noting that this entire world of post-Roman northern warbands forms one of the primary historical contexts proposed for the Arthurian legends. The warrior culture of the Hen Ogledd, with its Roman military heritage, its Brittonic language, and its desperate resistance to Anglo-Saxon encroachment, is precisely the milieu that produced poems like Y Gododdin — one of the earliest texts to mention Arthur by name — and the bardic celebration of warrior heroes that would eventually crystallize into the Arthurian tradition.

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Diana's Curse, Meleager's Glory: The Boar as Elite Symbol in Imperial Rome

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

Exploring more of my images from the Dallas Museum of Art icame across this exquisite little bronze spout in the form of a boar's head, a testament to the extraordinary artistry that Roman craftsmen brought even to functional domestic objects. The carefully rendered bristle crest, alert ears, open mouth, and prominent tusks speak to a workshop of considerable skill, and the quality of execution points firmly to an elite household.

A bronze spout in the forma of a boar, Roman, 1st century CE
 📍 Dallas Museum of Art | Loan from the David T. Owsley Collection | Accession no. 156.1994.45

My research revealed the boar was one of the most richly layered animals in the Graeco-Roman symbolic imagination. The great mythological touchstone was the Calydonian Boar Hunt: King Oeneus of Calydon had failed to honor Diana in his annual harvest sacrifices, and the goddess, refusing to overlook the insult, dispatched a monstrous boar to destroy crops and terrorize the land. Meleager then assembled a band of heroes to hunt it and eventually killed it himself, though a quarrel over the spoils led to war and ultimately to his own death. This myth, told memorably by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, was enormously popular in 1st-century Rome and appears across sarcophagi, mosaics, and the decorative arts.

Hunting wild boar was a privilege reserved for the nobility, and representations of heroic hunts from the mythic past served to validate and glorify aristocratic hunting culture in the eyes of contemporaries. The wild boar held a special place in Roman culture as a symbol of strength, courage, and martial virtue — an association that extended to the emperors themselves. The emperor Hadrian is depicted on horseback about to strike a boar with a spear in the famous Hadrianic tondi on the Arch of Constantine, and his passion for the hunt was so celebrated that he founded a town in ancient Mysia — Hadrianotherae, meaning "Hadrian's Hunt" — to commemorate a particularly successful expedition in the neighborhood. For a wealthy Roman household, a boar-headed spout was thus simultaneously a mythological allusion, a celebration of the hunt, and a quiet assertion of aristocratic identity.

The Hercules connection would have added further resonance for any educated Roman viewer. The capture of the Erymanthian Boar was one of the Twelve Labors, and the 1st-century writer Heraclitus the Grammarian interpreted the myth allegorically, arguing that the boar represents human lack of self-restraint — making its conquest a symbol of heroic virtue and rational self-mastery.

As a spout, this piece would most plausibly have served on a fountain fitting in a domestic garden or atrium — Romans were famously fond of elaborate water features — or on a bronze ewer or mixing vessel used in a triclinium (dining room), where the boar imagery would have resonated perfectly with the culture of aristocratic feasting and the hunt. Liquid emerging from the open mouth, especially red wine, would have made the mythological reference delightfully literal.

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Power, Prestige, and Bronze: Elite Horsemanship in Pre-Etruscan Italy

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This morning I was reviewing images I took at the Dallas Museum of Art back in 2006 and came across this ornate Villanovan bronze horse bit dating between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. My research revealed this extraordinary bronze horse bit exmplifies the remarkable technical virtuosity and artistic ambition of Villanovan craftsmen working at the dawn of Etruscan civilization in central Italy.

Cast bronze Villanovan horse bit 
📍 Dallas Museum of Art | Gift of Mrs. John Leddy Jones | Accession no. 1969.6

Rather than simple functional forms, the Villanovan smith has populated every surface with cascading openwork zoomorphic figures — small stylized animals clambering over one another in interlocking composition — topped by elegantly curved arms terminating in distinctive disc-headed finials. Below the mouthpiece, pendant elements hang in layered chains, themselves decorated with miniature figural forms that would have caught light and produced subtle movement and sound when the horse was in action.

In 8th–7th century BCE Villanovan and Etruscan society, horses carried enormous prestige as markers of elite status, and this social weight translated directly into the elaboration of the bits themselves — objects that functioned simultaneously as practical tack and as public declarations of wealth and power. The significance of horses is underscored by the frequency with which bronze bits appear as grave goods in the large Villanovan cemeteries situated just outside major settlements.

Technically, the bit displays the hallmark Villanovan snaffle construction with a jointed cannon and large, architecturally complex cheekpieces rendered through sophisticated lost-wax casting. The density of figural decoration — with what appear to be horse, bird, and possibly anthropomorphic motifs woven together — aligns closely with the Geometric artistic vocabulary shared across the central Mediterranean during this period, while remaining distinctly Italic in character.

The Villanovans didn't acquire bronze casting from any one culture, but rather inherited and developed the tradition through several overlapping channels:

Central Italy saw continuous development from the Bronze Age through the Villanovan period (900–700 BCE) into the Etruscan era — local evolution rather than foreign migration or wholesale cultural replacement. However, Bronze-working knowledge was already present in the Italian peninsula before the Villanovan period properly began.

Trans-Alpine and Balkan connections were significant early on. Bronzeworks indicate contact with Sardinia, central Europe, and the Balkans, and these links brought about a more advanced metallurgy.

Greek contact then accelerated sophistication. The culture came into contact with the wider Mediterranean via the arrival of Greek settlers, especially Euboeans, in the mid-8th century BCE, who were eager to exploit the mineral-rich region that would become Etruria.

Elite demand drove innovation. The great variability of formal features and techniques in Villanovan bronze production — from cast fibulae and weapons to hammered sheet bronze armor and vessels — is closely connected to the display expressions of new elites within proto-urban communities. In other words, the social ambitions of a rising aristocratic class pushed craftsmen to ever greater levels of elaboration

This piece represents a cultural threshold: by around 750 BCE the Villanovan culture had transitioned into the Etruscan culture proper, making objects like this living witnesses to that transformation. It is simultaneously a functional tool, a status object, and one of the finest examples of small-scale sculpture produced in pre-Roman Italy

📍 Dallas Museum of Art | Gift of Mrs. John Leddy Jones | Accession no. 1969.6

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Rethinking Iron Age Britain: Hillforts, Oppida, and the Origins of Urban Assembly

by Mary Harrsch © 2026

This morning I was listening to a podcast about Iron Age Britain and was surprised to learn hillforts and oppida are two very distinct architectural developments. I had always thought about these terms as interchangeable but the functional and morphological differences between the hillfort and the oppidum are far more significant than casual usage of these terms tends to suggest.

A reconstruction of the Basel oppidum  in Switzerland, 80 BCE  (CCO 1.0)

My research revealed the hillfort, dominant across the Middle Iron Age (c. 400–100 BCE), is characterized by its elevated topographic position, a single continuous defensive circuit of timber-laced ramparts and ditches, and a relatively homogeneous internal layout of roundhouses and grain storage features. These ramparts typically employed a box or fach construction — a wooden latticework filled with rubble and fronted by stone or compacted clay — effective, but vulnerable over time to fire and decay. Sites such as Maiden Castle (Dorset) and Danebury (Hampshire) exemplify this form. Their primary logic was defensive consolidation and the visible expression of communal territorial authority at a local or clan level: a single, unbroken perimeter through which no entry was possible without passing a defended gate.

The oppidum (pl. oppida), emerging in the Late Iron Age from roughly 150 BCE onward, represents a qualitatively different phenomenon in nearly every dimension — including its fortification technology. Rather than the timber-laced rampart of the hillfort tradition, oppida frequently employed the murus Gallicus ("Gallic wall"), the most sophisticated defensive construction of the Iron Age. As described by Julius Caesar, this technique involved horizontal timber beams laid perpendicular to the wall face, pinned by iron nails, and sandwiched between a dressed drystone facing and a rubble core. The result was a structure that was substantially more fire-resistant and structurally robust than its predecessors — and the quantity of iron required for its construction was itself a conspicuous signal of accumulated wealth and organizational capacity.

Equally significant is the strategic philosophy underlying oppidum defenses. Where the hillfort enclosed a single hilltop within a neat, unbroken ring, the oppidum deployed multiple, discontinuous linear earthworks to control movement across a much larger and more irregular landscape. These are perhaps best described as enclosed but not fully encircled — defended by a discontinuous system rather than a single perimeter. Camulodunum (Colchester) illustrates this well: situated on a low plateau rather than a prominent peak, three sides of the site benefit from natural protection afforded by marshland and the River Colne, while the landward approach is blocked by a series of massive linear earthworks — Gryme's Dyke and Berechurch Dyke among them — stretching for several miles. Large areas within this defensive zone remain open, and the logic of the system is the control of movement through defined corridors rather than the creation of a fortress.

Internally, oppida reflect an emerging proto-urbanism that stands in sharp contrast to the hillfort's relative homogeneity: zoned quarters for residential occupation, specialist craft production (including on-site coin minting), and — of particular interpretive interest — large open areas understood as deliberative or assembly spaces. It is this last feature that marks the oppidum as a central place in a genuinely political sense: a site where regional elites, tribal councils, and wider populations convened for governance, dispute resolution, and ceremonial life.

The transition between these two settlement forms tracks closely with intensifying continental contact, the influence of Gaulish oppida described by Caesar, and the growth of long-distance exchange networks linking Britain to the wider Mediterranean world. It is no coincidence that Roman administrators later adopted many of these same sites as their provincial and regional capitals.

For those who want to explore this further, The Ancients podcast covered this material in an accessible and well-researched episode — well worth a listen.

Image: Basel oppidum reconstruction, Switzerland, c. 80 BCE (CC0 1.0)

#IronAgeBritain #Archaeology #Prehistory #Hillforts #Oppida #LateIronAge #MurusGallicus

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Beyond the Antonine Wall: Rome’s Forgotten Frontier in the Highlands

 by Mary Harrsch © 2026

I was listening to "The Ancients" podcast on Amazon Music while I exercised this morning and the guest historian mentioned the remains of over 150 Roman forts have been identified in Scotland. I researched this a little further and discovered while over 150 Roman forts have been identified, the total number of Roman sites in Scotland, including temporary camps and other installations, is over 330. The concentration of Roman remains in Scotland is the direct result of two major, but ultimately unsuccessful, military campaigns to conquer the tribes of the north, known to the Romans as the Caledonii 

Reconstruction of a Roman fortlet from Gask Ridge 1st century CE courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Veleius, colorized by the author

These campaigns left behind a complex landscape of military architecture, which can be grouped into three main categories:

• The Forts (Over 150 Identified): These permanent bases were garrisoned by auxiliary soldiers to control the local population and patrol the frontier. They varied in size from "slight" fortlets holding 50 men to large military complexes that could house a 500-strong cavalry regiment .
• The Walls: The Romans built two famous linear barriers. Hadrian's Wall (started 122 AD) was the empire's northern boundary. Later, the Antonine Wall (started 142 AD) was pushed further north, running between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde, effectively cutting Scotland in two.
• The Temporary Camps: These were marching camps built of turf and earthworks, thrown up by legionaries at the end of each day's march. Scotland is one of the best places in the former Roman Empire to study these camps because they are so well-preserved and numerous

Before the construction of the Antonine Wall, Flavian forces constructed what has become known as the Gask Ridge Frontier. This line of forts and watchtowers between Dunblane in Stirling and the River Tay in Perthshire was constructed in the 70s or 80s CE, predating the more famous German frontiers, making it a prototype for how Rome controlled its borders. The fortifications run along a 10-16 mile (16-37 km) ridge of high ground that naturally separates the Scottish Lowlands from the Highlands. The name itself comes from the Scottish Gaelic word gasg, meaning a "projecting tail or strip of land.”

The Main Forts (from south to north):

• Camelon
• Doune
• Glenbank (fortlet)
• Ardoch (a major fort and likely supply depot)
• Kaims Castle (fortlet)
• Strageath
• Bertha (near modern Perth)
• Cargill (fort and fortlet)
• Inchtuthil (the massive legionary fortress—more on this below)
• Cardean
• Stracathro

The Watchtowers

A distinctive feature of the Gask Ridge is its series of timber watchtowers (signal stations). One of the best-preserved examples is Muir o' Fauld, where you can still see the circular mound, ditch, and outer bank that surrounded the original timber tower.

Forts like Drumquhassle, Bochastle, Dalginross, and Fendoch, known as the Glenblocker Forts, were positioned at the exits of Highland glens. Older scholarship saw these as a separate "staged withdrawal" line, but modern research views them as an integrated part of the same frontier system, controlling access to the major valleys that lead into the Highlands.

The largest installation in the system, Inchtuthil was a full-scale legionary fortress built to house the Legio XX Valeria Victrix. Its size and strategic position (with access into Braemar and beyond) made it the major deterrent and potential springboard for further invasions northward.

Based on the historical account of the Roman governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola (father-in-law of the historian Tacitus) and archaeological evidence, Initial construction began under governor Petilius Cerealis in 70 CE. The fortifications were subsequently used during Agricola’s campaigns in Scotland from 79-80 CE and during 84 CE when Agricola defeated Calgacus at the Battle of Mons Graupius. Abandonment and withdrawal south did not occur until 86-87/88 CE. Archaeological excavations have revealed that many of the forts and watchtowers were rebuilt, sometimes twice, without evidence of destruction by warfare. This suggests the Romans actually stayed in the area for up to 15 years.

However, during the Antonine Period (c. AD 142-165): Forts such as Ardoch, Strageath, Bertha, and Dalginross show evidence of reuse, contemporary with the Antonine Wall further south. The area was again under Roman occupation during Emperor Septimius Severus's campaigns (208-211). This time, the focus was on the legionary fortress at Carpow, downstream from modern Perth.

 Dr. David Woolliscroft, Director of the Roman Gask Project, has proposed instead of a frontier built solely for conquest and defense against hostile Caledonian tribes, Gask Ridge may have served a protective and trading function:

1. Defense of harbors: The system guarded strategically important harbors at the Firths of Tay and Forth, critical for Roman supply lines.
2. Protection of trading partners: Rather than fighting all locals, the Romans appear to have established trading relationships with farming communities, exchanging Roman goods (wine, olive oil) for local products (beer, mutton). The Gask Ridge may have been built to protect these allied farmers from cattle raiders sweeping down from the Highlands.
3. Supervision, not blockade: The Glenblocker forts lacked the manpower to stop a major invasion, but they were well-positioned to monitor and control movement through the glens.

Archaeological evidence supports this: native Iron Age settlements show no signs of destruction, and farming appears to have flourished during the Roman presence. 

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Harnessing the Soul: Butterflies, Grasshoppers & the Art of the Roman Intaglio

by Mary Harrsch © 2026 

I saw this whimsical Roman carnelian sea dated between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE and did a little more research on the symbolism it represented. I was aware of butterflies often representing human souls but I wasn't sure about a grasshopper driving the team.

Carved from reddish-brown carnelian — a stone whose crystalline structure doesn't stick to wax — intaglios like this one from the 1st century BCE - 1st century CE were pressed into softened wax to seal letters and documents. Image courtesy of (Bertolami Fine Art)

This extraordinary carnelian intaglio — small enough to fit in the palm of your hand — is one of the most charming survivals of Roman gem-carving, depicting a grasshopper driving a chariot pulled by butterflies. It repays close looking.

The stone itself is significant. Carnelian was among the most prized materials for Roman intaglios, associated with vitality, good fortune, and protection. Pliny the Elder singled it out for its practical virtue as a seal stone: wax simply does not adhere to it.

The grasshopper (*gryllus* / *locusta*) was a richly layered symbol in the Greco-Roman world. Athenians wore golden grasshopper pins as markers of autochthony — indigenous aristocratic identity — a resonance Roman owners would have recognized. The insect was also linked to Apollo and the Muses through its song, embodying poetic inspiration and the aristocratic ideal of *otium* (cultivated leisure).

The butterflies are doing something philosophically serious. The Greek word Ψυχή (*Psyche*) meant simultaneously "soul," "breath of life," and "butterfly" — these were not distinct concepts. Butterflies appear regularly in Roman funerary art at the moment of the soul's departure from the body. To harness them as draft animals, guided by the grasshopper-charioteer, is to picture *reason directing the soul* — a strikingly visual rendering of Plato's chariot allegory in the *Phaedrus*, in which the charioteer represents intellect governing the competing forces of the psyche. For a Roman owner educated in Greek philosophy, this reading would have been immediately available.

The piece belongs to the well-documented genre of *grylloi* — fantastical, often humorous intaglio scenes in which insects, animals, and hybrid creatures act out human roles. These were wildly popular in this period and operated on multiple registers at once: as displays of wit and *urbanitas*, as apotropaic objects (the grotesque was believed to deflect the evil eye), and as vehicles for genuine philosophical reflection.

What makes this gem so compelling is precisely that layered ambiguity. It is funny, beautiful, philosophically serious, and magically protective — all carved into a stone no larger than a thumbnail. Roman glyptic art at its finest.

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Solidifying the Dead: Material Innovation and Mortuary Meaning in the Gypsum Burials of Late Roman York

 by Mary Harrsch © 2026

Introduction

Among the most unusual mortuary phenomena in Roman Britain are the gypsum-encased burials of third- and early fourth-century Eboracum (modern York). These graves, characterized by the application of gypsum plaster around articulated corpses within coffins or sarcophagi, remain geographically concentrated in York and its immediate environs. Their rarity, technical distinctiveness, and apparent restriction to high-status contexts have prompted a range of interpretive proposals, including ethnic importation, military association, conspicuous consumption, ritual preservation, and apotropaic containment.

Two Roman adults and an infant covered with liquified gypsum found near modern-day York

 dated to the 3rd - early 4th century CE courtesy of the Seeing the Dead Project, University of Yorkshire, UK.

This article evaluates the gypsum burials within four interlocking frameworks: (1) the intensification of elite competition in York following its transformation into an imperial residence under Septimius Severus; (2) the broader third-century shift toward inhumation and heightened corporeal emphasis; (3) the hypothesis that gypsum encasement functioned as a deterrent against malevolent spirits and (4) hypothesis that encasement served to prevent post-burial desecration. It argues that the available archaeological evidence most strongly supports a model of locally developed elite differentiation embedded within late Roman funerary ideology, rather than ethnic importation, military burial adaptation, or defensive measure based on superstition or anxiety about desecration.

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York as Imperial Capital and the Intensification of Elite Display

Between 208 and 211 CE, Septimius Severus resided in York during campaigns in northern Britain (Birley, 1999). His presence transformed the colonia from a provincial administrative center into a temporary imperial capital. Such elevation had profound social consequences. Provincial cities that hosted imperial courts experienced increased administrative traffic, military concentration, infrastructural investment, and intensified elite rivalry (Hekster, 2002).

Roman civic culture placed exceptional emphasis on visible status expression through architecture, patronage, and funerary display (Hope, 2009). In urban contexts newly exposed to imperial scrutiny, local elites frequently amplified competitive self-presentation. Funerary practice provided a durable and symbolically potent arena for such differentiation. The third century in particular saw increased elaboration of sarcophagi and tomb architecture across the empire (Borg, 2019).

Epigraphic Absence and Non-Military Status

However, no inscriptions, dedicatory altars, or structural evidence for epigraphy are associated with the gypsum burials. This is significant because Roman military elites relied heavily on inscribed tombstones to display rank, unit, origin, and service record (Hope, 2009; Anderson, 1984). Even lower-ranking soldiers in frontier Britain participated in this epigraphic tradition, as evident at sites such as Chester and along Hadrian’s Wall.

The gypsum burials include adult females and children, including infants under four months old, demonstrating that the practice was inclusive of entire elite households (Carroll, 2026). This demographic composition contrasts sharply with Roman military burial norms, which overwhelmingly commemorate adult males of service age (Anderson, 1984; Phang, 2001). Even Severan court officials relied on epigraphic titulature and military commemoration for public display (Hekster, 2002).

The presence of women and children indicates a household-oriented, domestic form of elite identity expression. It emphasizes familial status, care, and investment in ritualized mortuary practice rather than corporate, regimentally defined military identity.

The absence of epigraphy in gypsum burials, combined with the inclusion of women and children, effectively excludes a military interpretation. Likewise, the absence of inscriptions undermines the notion that these burials were related to Severan court members, whose mortuary practices relied on titulature and honorific display (Birley, 1999). Status signaling here was internalized into material care and ritual elaboration, rather than expressed via textual or architectural commemoration.These burials have not been found in proximity to known military cemetery zones either.

Within this context, gypsum encasement in York may be understood as a localized innovation emerging from heightened social competition. The material itself was not intrinsically luxurious; gypsum deposits were accessible in Yorkshire and widely used in Roman construction (Ottaway, 1993). Its funerary deployment, however, recontextualized a common building material into a highly distinctive mortuary medium. The cost signal lay less in raw material expense than in its controlled application within already high-status burial assemblages—often stone sarcophagi or lead-lined coffins. The practice appears socially restricted rather than broadly imitated, suggesting prestige boundary maintenance rather than simple economic display.

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The Ivory Bangle Lady and the Question of Ethnic Transmission

The hypothesis that gypsum burial represents an imported North African or eastern Mediterranean tradition has been weakened by bioarchaeological findings from York itself. The fourth-century burial popularly known as the Ivory Bangle Lady has yielded isotopic and morphological evidence consistent with North African ancestry (Leach et al., 2010) like Severus himself. Her grave goods—including ivory jewelry and high-status artifacts—indicate wealth and cosmopolitan connections.

Crucially, however, her burial did not involve gypsum encasement. This absence is analytically significant. If gypsum burial were a transplanted North African funerary custom, one might reasonably expect it to appear in the burial of an elite individual demonstrably connected to that region. Instead, the Ivory Bangle Lady’s grave conforms to broader late Roman elite burial norms without adopting the York-specific gypsum practice.

This suggests that gypsum burial was not simply an ethnic import. Rather, it appears to have been a socially mediated, locally bounded practice operating within York’s elite milieu.

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The Third-Century Shift to Inhumation and Corporeal Emphasis

The rise of gypsum burial must also be situated within the broader transformation from cremation to inhumation across the Roman Empire during the late second and third centuries (Rüpke & Woolf, 2021). Christianity did not initiate this shift; Christians were a very small demographic minority in the early third century. Instead, the change reflects complex cultural dynamics, including eastern provincial influence, evolving religious sensibilities, and increased emphasis on bodily integrity (Hope, 2009).

Key developments included the growth of mystery cults (e.g., Mithraism, Isis cult) with an increasing interest in personal salvation. This was accompanied by a heightened concern with the afterlife experience as philosophical Platonism and Stoicism expanded as well. Many of these movements emphasized the individual soul, postmortem identity, and bodily continuity in some form. Inhumation better accommodated beliefs that stressed bodily integrity — even if not literal resurrection.

Inhumation had long been more common in parts of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. As elites from eastern provinces gained prominence in the second and third centuries, burial customs may have diffused westward. This diffusion does not imply direct “importation” in a simple ethnic sense. Rather, it reflects cultural exchange, mobility of administrators and military officers, and intermarriage among elites.

Some scholars argue that cremation, which destroys the visible body, may have become less emotionally resonant in a period marked by political instability, plagues (notably the Antonine Plague and later crises), and increased mortality anxiety. Inhumation provided a continued physical presence, tomb visitation with a tangible body beneath, and stronger familial memory associations.

The growing popularity of sarcophagi and tomb sculpture in the third century reflects intensified interest in corporeal continuity and postmortem identity (Borg, 2019). Within this ideological environment, gypsum encasement may represent an extreme expression of corporeal stabilization: the body is not merely interred but materially solidified.

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Evaluating the Apotropaic Hypothesis

The suggestion that gypsum encasement functioned to prevent the return of malevolent spirits requires specific archaeological correlates. In societies concerned with revenants, defensive burial features commonly include prone interment, decapitation, limb binding, stone weights placed over the body, nails or spikes driven through remains, or deliberate postmortem mutilation (Murphy, 2008). None of these are present in the York gypsum burials. Bodies are carefully arranged in conventional supine positions, often within costly containers.

Apotropaic anxiety is also frequently accompanied by magical inclusions or inscriptions. Roman Britain has yielded curse tablets (defixiones) at sites such as Aquae Sulis, demonstrating the presence of magical practice within the province (Tomlin, 1988). Yet gypsum burials in York lack systematic association with amulets, magical inscriptions, or ritual countermeasures.

Furthermore, apotropaic measures typically target socially marginal individuals—criminals, executed persons, or those perceived as dangerous. In contrast, gypsum burials are associated with high-status contexts and include women and children. Their demographic inclusivity and material investment are inconsistent with stigma or fear-driven containment.

The absence of physical restraint, magical paraphernalia, irregular body positioning, or epigraphic expressions of spirit anxiety weakens the deterrence hypothesis. While Roman culture acknowledged restless dead (lemures, larvae), ritual responses to such spirits were calendrical and domestic rather than architectural (Rüpke & Woolf, 2021). The archaeological tone of York’s gypsum burials is honorific, not defensive.

Gypsum encasement may have served as a practical deterrent to grave disturbance, however. While direct evidence of tomb robbing in Eboracum’s gypsum burials is lacking, the material properties of hardened gypsum would have created a formidable physical barrier to intrusion. Recent findings from the Seeing the Dead Project (University of York) suggest the plaster encasement would have effectively stabilized the coffin contents, limiting access to delicate textiles, personal ornaments, or skeletal remains (Carroll, 2026; Hitchens, 2026).

This deterrent effect could operate on both practical and symbolic levels. Practically, the labor-intensive and brittle nature of gypsum makes extraction or removal of items difficult without considerable effort and risk of damaging the contents. Symbolically, the encasement may have signaled to contemporaries that the burial was sanctified or specially treated, invoking social or religious sanctions against desecration. This is consistent with broader Roman mortuary attitudes, where high-status burial goods were both materially and ritually protected, and where interference with elite graves could provoke censure or superstition (Hope, 2009; Ottaway, 1993).

However, unlike explicit apotropaic measures—such as decapitation, binding, or placement of protective deposits—archaeological investigation in York has revealed no associated magical or ritualized restraints. The gypsum’s protective function appears primarily material and performative, combining care for the body with an implicit deterrent to post-burial interference rather than explicit magical protection.

In this sense, the encasement fulfills a dual role: it preserves the corpse for extended pre-burial viewing and ritual display while simultaneously reducing the risk of post-interment desecration, supporting both the household’s social prestige and the integrity of high-status grave goods.

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Local Innovation within an Imperial Framework

The geographic concentration of gypsum burials in York, coupled with their absence in other British coloniae such as Camulodunum, Lindum Colonia, and Glevum, underscores their localized character. Other coloniae exhibit elite sarcophagi, mausolea, and lead coffins but lack systematic gypsum encasement traditions (Ottaway, 1993).

This pattern supports interpretation of gypsum burial as a micro-tradition—an innovation confined to a particular elite network in York. The city’s temporary status as an imperial capital under Severus likely intensified competitive display, creating conditions favorable to distinctive mortuary experimentation.

A critical feature of the gypsum burials is that the encasement is not visible after burial. This has led some to question whether the practice constitutes elite display. Roman funerary display, however, operated on multiple registers: public, semi-public, and internalized (Hope, 2009; Borg, 2019). Gypsum encasement aligns with the third category, functioning as an internalized and ritualized demonstration of care and status.

Recent analyses of preserved fingerprints in the gypsum indicate manual application (Carroll, 2026), highlighting tactile engagement with the corpse during funerary preparation. The process may have constituted a transformative ritual, converting the body into a hardened, stabilized form within the grave. Such treatment aligns more readily with preservationist ideology than with defensive containment. One additional interpretive advantage of gypsum encasement is extended pre-burial display. By stabilizing and preserving the body and its clothing, the plaster would have allowed the corpse to be viewed for a prolonged period during mourning rituals, even in the damp northern climate, before final interment (Rüpke & Woolf, 2021; Murphy, 2008). In this sense, the “display” was not public-facing in the sense of monumental visibility, but it was ceremonially performative and socially meaningful within the household and funeral context.

Rather than an imported ethnic custom or superstition-driven practice, gypsum burial appears best understood as a locally generated expression of elite identity within a broader late Roman revaluation of the preserved body.

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Conclusion

The gypsum-encased burials of Roman York represent a rare and geographically bounded funerary innovation. Their emergence during and after the Severan occupation aligns with a period of intensified elite competition in an imperialized urban environment. The absence of gypsum in the burial of the Ivory Bangle Lady weakens claims of direct North African transmission. The lack of apotropaic indicators—physical restraint, magical paraphernalia, irregular positioning—diminishes the deterrent-spirit hypothesis.

Instead, the evidence most strongly supports interpretation of gypsum encasement as a socially restricted, locally developed elite practice embedded within third-century shifts toward inhumation and corporeal preservation. In York, a common building material was transformed into a medium of mortuary distinction—an internal monument to elite identity at the northern frontier of empire.

Future Research Directions

Several planned investigations under the Seeing the Dead Project (University of York) promise to substantially refine current interpretations of the York gypsum burials. Six complete or near-complete gypsum casings held in the Yorkshire Museum are scheduled for CT scanning at Nuffield Health York, with remaining fragments to be x-rayed using portable equipment, to detect objects or grave goods preserved within clothing and shrouds (Seeing the Dead Project, n.d-a.). If grave goods are confirmed within the encasement, this would provide direct material evidence for both the high-status character of the interred individuals and the deterrent function of gypsum against post-burial disturbance — two interpretive claims that currently rest on inferential rather than direct evidence.

Ancient DNA analysis, to be conducted at the Francis Crick Institute's Ancient Genomics Laboratory, will examine genetic sex, ancestral origins, and population affiliations of individuals selected for gypsum burial, as well as evidence of infectious pathogens (Seeing the Dead Project, n.d-b.). Carroll has noted that DNA potentially recoverable from preserved handprints in the gypsum represents a particular priority, describing the prospect of inferring the genetic sex of the individual who applied the plaster as "a huge result" (Carroll, 2026). Such findings could illuminate whether funerary preparation was performed by family members or specialist mortuary workers — a distinction with significant implications for the household-centered interpretation advanced here.

Complementing the genetic work, stable isotope analyses incorporating oxygen, strontium, lead, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur signatures will reconstruct both the geographic origins and dietary biographies of the interred individuals, enabling direct comparison with local faunal baselines from Sherburn in Elmet, Castleford, and Doncaster (Seeing the Dead Project, n.d-c.). These analyses will address the ethnic transmission question more definitively than current evidence allows, though it should be noted that genetic ancestry and geographic mobility are distinct variables that need not align, and isotopic findings will require careful interpretation alongside the DNA results.

Perhaps most remarkably, tresses of human hair surviving from a female gypsum burial are to be examined using scanning electron microscopy and incremental isotope analysis, yielding a dietary and health history of the individual concerned (Seeing the Dead Project, n.d-c.). That such analysis is possible at all is itself significant — the survival of organic hair material directly reflects the preservationist properties of the encasement, and thus stands as tangible confirmation of the interpretation of gypsum burial as a deliberate act of corporeal care.

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References

Anderson, A. S. (1984). Roman military tombstones. Shire Publications.

Birley, A. R. (1999). Septimius Severus: The African emperor. Routledge.

Borg, B. E. (2019). Roman sarcophagi. In B. E. Borg (Ed.), A companion to Roman art (pp. 286–300). John Wiley & Sons.

Carroll, M. (2026, February 18). Infants in Roman gypsum burials: New research from York. Seeing the Dead Project Blog. University of York.

Hekster, O. (2002). Commodus: An emperor at the crossroads. Brill.

Hitchens, S. (2026, February 23). Textiles in Roman gypsum burials: Analysis and implications. Seeing the Dead Project Blog. University of York.

Hope, V. M. (2009). Roman death: The dying and the dead in ancient Rome. Continuum.

Leach, S., Eckardt, H., Chenery, C., Müldner, G., & Lewis, M. (2010). A lady of York: Migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain. Antiquity, 84(323), 131–145.

Murphy, E. M. (Ed.). (2008). Deviant burial in the archaeological record. Oxbow Books.

Ottaway, P. (1993). English Heritage book of Roman York. Batsford/English Heritage.

Phang, S. E. (2001). The marriage of Roman soldiers (13 B.C.-A.D. 235) : law and family in the imperial army. Brill.

Rüpke, J., & Woolf, G. (2021). Religion in the Roman Empire. Verlag W. Kohlhammer.

Seeing the Dead Project. (n.d.-a). Seeing the Dead: Unlocking the secrets of Roman gypsum burials. University of York. Retrieved March 2, 2026, from https://seeingthedead.ac.uk/

Seeing the Dead Project. (n.d.-b). Work package 4: Items within the gypsum casings. University of York. Retrieved March 2, 2026, from https://seeingthedead.ac.uk/research/wp4

Seeing the Dead Project. (n.d.-c). Work package 7: Burial bioarchaeology. University of York. Retrieved March 2, 2026, from https://seeingthedead.ac.uk/research/wp7

Tomlin, R. S. O. (1988). Tabellae Sulis: Roman inscribed tablets of tin and lead from the Sacred Spring at Bath. Oxford University Press.

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