Newsletter 43 - Spring 2005

Is RIB 98 a Milestone?

John Spaul

Discussing Roman Hampshire in the Victoria County History (vol 1, 1900) Francis Haverfield suggested that in the first two centuries, the Andover district was probably an imperial estate, replaced in the 3rd and 4th centuries by a cluster of villas. The suggestion of an imperial estate in northwest Hampshire may be strengthened by RIB 98, a quadrangular block of sandstone, 13 x 14 x 11ins with the front chiselled flat and the other three sides roughly picked, as if for building into a wall. Found in 1897 in ploughing 10 yds south of the Roman villa at Clanville in Weyhill parish, and reported by the Rev G H Engleheart in Archaeologia lvi (1898), it is now in Winchester Museum. R G Collingwood pointed out that 'In type it resembles a milestone, but its association with a villa situated nearly 3 miles from the neighbouring Roman roads makes it more likely that it was a commemoration to an Emperor than a milestone'. The inscription is very simple:

R P Wright pointed out that there was no trace of a fourth line and Karinus, or Carinus, son of Carus, was nobilssimus Caesar in AD 282-3 (Roman Inscriptions of Britain, 1965).

R S O Tomlin, on the other hand, stated that as 'two 3rd century milestones have since been found re-used in the Rockbourne villa (JRS lii (1962) 195, no 23; and lvi (1966) 219, no 9) this too should be seen as a milestone'. The stones to which Tomlin refers are a topic to which I shall return. Meanwhile the question arises, 'is RIB 98 a milestone?'

In this connection it seems imperative to consider the corpus of milestones which have been found in Britannia. In other Roman provinces these circular columns have been found very useful for incorporation into a mosque. This is especially the case in Turkey, where some milestones have been so re-used, while in Morocco no milestones at all have been found. In Britannia, Wright (Roman Inscriptions of Britain, 1965) records a total of 96 inscriptions (RIB 2219 to 2313) on 88 stones, some having more than one inscription. Most of the main Roman roads have one or more milestones, and in some instances a milestone does not appear to be associated with a road, as the map shows (Fig 1).

Fig 1. Map of Britannia with approximate position of milestones, road-markers and imperial stones. Drawn with the assistance of Kaplan Systems of Tidworth, to whom the author is very grateful.

On only 13 stones is a distance recorded. Allowing 0.4m for the depth of the stone below ground in two cases and disregarding a lost stone and a fragmentary stone, the average height of the eleven stones for which heights are known is 1.44m above ground level, with 0.4m below.

In places where the track is difficult to follow, a standing stone would help the traveller find the line. Thirty-three cylindrical stones, either circular or elliptical in section have been found in association with known Roman roads. With three exceptions the stones record the name of a 3rd or 4th century ruler. Two of these exceptions may be dated to the same period; one records the ruined state of the roads and the other is a patriotic inscription which may date to a period when there was no single accepted Emperor but a vacancy on the imperial throne. The third exception is a stone from Bar Hill which is assumed to have an association with the Antonine Wall.

Sixteen of these stones are complete and have an average height of 1.22m, slightly smaller than the 'distance stones'. They are, however, very similar to them, and had they had a mileage incorporated, would have been immediately acceptable as milestones. Without the mileage their circular or oval shape and size indicate their usefulness to travellers, hence the term road-marker. Stones of various shapes might also be road markers if they conform to the pattern established above.

Twenty-nine rectangular stones and one octagonal, RIB 2286, three irregular stones, RIB 2219, 2220, and 2269 and three amorphous, RIB 2295, 2296 and 2314, carry an imperial name. Three of the inscriptions refer to a Caesar rather than an Augustus. Most of these stones are over 1m in height, the average of the 26 more or less complete stones is 1.06m; less, but perhaps not significantly less, than the average of the 'road-marker stones.

The conclusion must be that a true milestone would be cylindrical or at least columnar, of adequate height, and would incorporate a measured distance in the inscription. Other tall stones recognisable from a distance should be regarded as road-markers rather than milestones, or as Imperial honorific dedications which happen to be alongside a road. This leaves a number of stones which do not appear alongside a road, to be considered in another category.

RIB 2230, 2231, 2232, 2233, 2338 and 2239 are examples of quadrangular stones sufficiently tall to be recognisable as markers on the road-side. One ought not to consider rectangular stones less than 1m high as road markers unless they were found along the course of a Roman road. The most suitable term for those not found in association with a road should be 'honorific pillar', to use Haverfield's term (EE ix), but stones less than 0.6m high seem more like owner's name-plates, a modern feature rarely seen in Britain, but frequent in the USA. It may be that RIB 98 falls into this category, if not into the category of boundary marker, and the two stones from Rockbourne likewise. Boundary markers, however, usually indicate the owners of the areas on either side of the marker. Such stones were used by auxiliary units to separate their sphere from that of the town near which they were stationed or to decide between towns.

The stone found at Rockbourne in 1961 (JRS lii, p195, n23) was in the footings of a flint wall at the west end of the north side of Room XIV. It is described as a quadrangular pillar of limestone 15 x 37 x 9ins, broken off at the top with a dressed face, though 6ins at the top and 22ins at the bottom had been removed. The other stone from Rockbourne was found in 1965 (JRS lvi, no.9). It was 'a quadrangular milestone of Chilmark stone, 11 x 20 x 8ins'. The top of the stone is irregular but seems to be original, while the base has been broken off, and the back of the stone has been worn by its use as a flagstone in the floor of Room VI. The two inscriptions with translations are as follows, the 1961 find first:

Decius, or Traianus Decius was Emperor in the period 249-51, while Tetricus was the son of the Emperor of Gaul 270-273, and Carinus was Caesar in 282-3.

Haverfield preferred to regard RIB 2220, found in a villa at West Worthing in 1901 as an honorific pillar rather than a milestone, since he knew of no Roman road in that locality. Wright was unwilling to classify the Clanville stone as a milestone for the same reason, but Tomlin reclassified it as such, since 'two 3rd century milestones have since been found re-used in the Rockbourne villa'. These three stones, if Haverfield's suggestion has any value should be indications of imperial estates in north-west and south-west Hampshire, not just for the first two centuries, but lasting through the 3rd century as well.

In the 4th century the imperial estate was replaced by a number of villas few of which, if any, have produced traces of earlier work from the 2nd or 3rd centuries. Indeed, coins found on these sites are invariably late 3rd or 4th century examples. The villas of north-west Hampshire are worth a study of their own.

Editor's note: This article has three extensive tables, detailing the three classes of stones: space does not allow their inclusion here but a copy of the full article is available on request from the sub-editor.

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