Lilia

The Roman occupation of the UK and Scotland has intrigued me for many years, particularly their ingenuity in infrastructure and the defensive mechanisms they employed.

The Romans remarkable skills in civil engineering plotted the perfect routes to navigate the topography of our country, using these to mobilise troops to the front lines of conflict and invasion. Subsequent generations benefitted from this infrastructure and built upon this expertise with many of our current roads constructed on top of these historical routes.

In order to control this movement of people, particularly to protect the invaders from attack, the Romans used the natural geography and topography to their advantage. The Antonine Wall was constructed around AD 142 and stretched between Old Kilpatrick on the banks of the river Clyde in the west, to the River Forth in Bo’ness in the east, providing a continuous barrier to halt the movement of people across the Central Belt of Scotland.

The land between the two major rivers formed a natural point for the Romans to control movement and trade. The wall had many forts and surveillance points along its route and was protected by many forms of defence, ramparts and ditches. ‘Lilia’ were groups of deep defensive pits, dug in the ground and filled with sharpened stakes. They took their name from their resemblance to lily ponds. These pits, arranged in a quincunx pattern (akin to a chessboard) would be camouflaged by branches and undergrowth, waiting to impale any invaders from the Caledonian tribes before they could reach the ramparts of the wall.

artist book:

size 20 x 19cm

laser print on 120gsm paper

Edition 20

£95

email mickmcgraw70@gmail.com