Hawkshaw Head

Does anyone recognise this man?

In the National Museum of Scotland there sits an interesting artefact; the dismembered marble head of a slightly larger than life-size statue or bust of a Roman male.

In the 1980 National Museum publication; “Romans in Scotland” this piece is described as follows:

Marble (Roman) head from Hawkshaw, Tweedsmuir, Peebleshire. It has been suggested that this extremely well carved head once formed part of a triumphal monument erected in the Lowlands of Scotland to commemorate the Roman conquest of the area. It dates to the early years of the 2nd C AD.

Who was this fellow, is the description above accurate and can we hazard a guess how the head came to be found where it was?

The statue certainly is of good workmanship and has survived remarkably well. It does not however show stylistic similarities with any of the known Gods in the Roman pantheon of deities. Neither is it a likeness of any known Roman Emperor.

The sculpture exhibits a similar style of haircut to known statues of the Emperor Trajan (98 – 117 AD). The hair is combed forward straight – unlike statues of the earlier Julio Claudian and Flavian Emperors which usually exhibit a distinct stylised wave through the hairs fringe; see Claudius’s image later in this article – and is rounded off in the classic “bowl cut” sported by the Emperor Trajan.

Emperors and their wives greatly influenced fashion during their reigns, not least in matters concerning hair styling!

However while the head bears no similarity to those Emperors preceding Trajan on account of the wavy fringe they certainly can be discounted as belonging to any Emperor after Trajan, his successor Hadrian started the fashion for frizzy hair worn slightly longer than before complete with a full beard. This style remained in vogue – however like Caracalla not all appear to have been able to pull off the look - until the reign of the youthful Syrian Elagabalus in 218 AD when fashions again changed dramatically.

Neither our statue’s hair, nor its style match sculptural styles employed later. Syrian Elagabalus and Severus Alexander favoured an idealised contemplative but youthful style, while the rash of military warlords who assumed control with alarming frequency through the years of the 3rd C AD that followed tended to a harsh reality, a real warts and all style.

So we concur with the dating of the statue to the early years of the 2nd C AD when Trajan was in power. It clearly is not Trajan himself however as the man appears older and has paunchier jowls than surviving images of Trajan exhibit.
Trajan also appears to have sported a not inconsiderable nose and while it is true - in common with many sculptural relics - that the nose has been broken off this statue the remaining facial structure does not lend itself to supposing that the missing nose was particularly prominent.

So if it is not an Emperor or deity, who will this have been?

The clue we think is in the scale of the piece – larger than life size. Statues and busts of ancestors may well have appeared in Roman households or occasionally in funerary pieces however these are unlikely to have been to this size.

This not unreasonably narrows the list down to someone of importance locally.

A General?

We think not.

Military service was simply a step in the structured path of the Cursus Honrium, a necessity for all aspiring Roman male nobility.

Notwithstanding the outstanding military competence of any given Roman, a general was simply a politician undertaking his staged periods of military service.
By the time we are looking at, the age of the entrepreneurial generals of the past; Corbulo, Pompey Magnus and most famous of all Julius Caesar, were long gone.

Roman Generals now campaigned strictly under the control and on the instructions of the Emperor, with mandates and limits clearly set down. This was done – not always successfully - to keep a leash on potential usurpers who may attract the common support of local army corps. Generals who accrued fame in campaigns often trod a fine path between the aspirations of their troops and the possible jealousy or paranoia of the Emperor himself.

The Governor?

We think this is much more probable.

The Governor was indeed an individual in Roman Britain who was larger than life, was most likely to receive recognition in sculptural form during his life and would, of course, expect the scale of the piece to reflect his larger than life status in the highly stratified order of Roman life in Britain.

To start pinning down further who this may be we resort yet again to the vagaries of style and fashion.
For someone to reflect the hairstyle in the fashion of the Emperor Trajan and do so in a sculptural style similar to those showing Trajan himself then it is entirely reasonable to suggest that this person did this during the reign of the man who led the fashion.

Our knowledge of the Roman Governors of Britannia during Trajan’s reign is incomplete:

• Tiberius Avidius Quietus (c. 97 – 101 AD)
• Lucius Neratius Marcellus (c. 101 – 103 AD)
• Unknown Governors (103 – 115 AD)
• Marcus Appius Bradua – perhaps - (115 – 118 AD)

No Trajanic Governors are known with complete certainty after 103 AD and while the head may indeed be a representation of any one of these Governors events in Scotland suggest certain key timeframes.

Juvenal hints at warfare in Scotland around 105 AD led by a chieftain of southern Scotland called Aviragus.

Fronto and Spartianus both record war on Rome’s north west frontier at the time of Hadrian’s ascendancy to power upon Trajan’s death in 117 AD, the Ninth Legion (York garrison) most probably disappearing in action at this time.

In our The Eagle of the Ninth and Lost Legion articles we have argued that the events surrounding the legions loss probably took place in southern Scotland. Based on the evidence of marching camp remains we further suggested that the legion may have been lost at or near Eshiels by Peebles while undertaking punitive campaigning against the hostile Selgovae tribe.

It is of great interest therefore that this head is recorded being found at Hawkshaw in Tweedsmuir, a distance of a mere dozen miles as the crow flies from Peebles and located deep within Selgovae territory.

A coincidence?

We think not.

How did the head end up here?

The National Museums suggestion at the top of this article is, unfortunately, ridiculous. It is typical of the topsy-turvy theories commonly trotted out by Romanist academia in Britain in an attempt to put a triumphant spin on all of Rome’s affairs on its north west frontier.

Let us be very clear on this, Rome’s hegemony over southern Scotland – established in an earlier era (79-81 AD) - was rapidly waning in what appears to have been a series of waves of retrenchment, all of which ultimately saw Roman control rebound to the line of the Stanegate.
It was these years that saw Rome’s last outlying forts in southern Scotland destroyed or abandoned and this devastation is indeed recorded extending to and reaching along the Stanegate line itself.

Hadrian’s decision therefore to build a mural barrier to improve the defences of his frontier within only 4 years of this storm of destruction can hardly be seen as surprising, and makes a mockery of current fashionable academic pretensions that Hadrian’s Wall was constructed as some kind of celebration of unchallenged Roman hegemony in Britain.

In such light then, it remains inexplicable that the Roman state would construct a monument celebrating an unrecorded Roman Triumph in southern Scotland during the reign of Trajan (as the National Museum would have it) when there was clearly neither the historical event nor apparently even the appetite to attempt it in those years of quite dire Roman reversal.

It is no great leap of imagination therefore to speculate that belligerent tribesmen lopped the head of the Governors’ statue during one of the many episodes of strife in southern Scotland during either Trajan or (the earliest year of) Hadrian’s reigns. And if nothing else the Hawkshaw heads find-spot certainly proves that the Selgovae tribe were indeed at odds with the Roman state at this time.

The reverence placed on the severed head of a vanquished foe was a recorded predilection of Celtic tribes, if little noted in Scotland.

The Hawkshaw head therefore suggests, as does the earlier bronze head of the Emperor Claudius -associated with the Boudiccan revolt- found in the River Alde in Suffolk, that while the head of the living person may not have been available for the locals to take reprisal against then the head of totemic imagery such as larger than life statues would serve as an otherwise perfectly acceptable substitute.

The marble head is likely to have been looked upon by the Selgovae warlords as a trophy of war as well as a spiritual and physical taunt to the individual whose image has been thus desecrated.
There is nothing new in this; statues of tyrants have long come on the brunt of vengeful retribution; witness the treatment meted out to Sadam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad in recent times to see the trend of associating violence against the image of a dictator where the individual himself is otherwise absent.

Could the taking of the Hawkshaw head even be interpreted as a challenge back in antiquity to the Romans? One they may indeed attempt retaliation over?

Perhaps though we can only speculate.

Lastly, where may the head have come from?

Cosmopolitan Corbridge (Corstopitum) was- given the periods of sacking it endured - long a favourite hunting ground of the tribes looking for plunder during the many combatative years of interaction between Rome and the tribes of ancient Scotland.

However at this time Corstopitum was simply an auxiliary fort of no greater remark than the fact that it sat on the strategic junction of the Stanegate with the Dere Street bridging of the Tyne in Northumberland.

Corbridge was certainly a scene of some of the action of these troubled years; it was certainly rebuilt (by the Ninth Legion) after being sacked around 105 AD. It was rebuilt yet again during Hadrian’s frontier works in the early 120s AD.

This suggests that Corbridge was in all probability a casualty yet again to northern fury during the war of 117 and 118 AD. Yet in these years the station had not yet achieved the status it would later in the century.

So for a more likely Roman installation from where the head may have come we look north along Dere Street to Newstead (Trimontium) in southern Scotland.

This very large fort clearly performed a command function in southern Scotland, indeed the Ingliston milestone records that mileage on Dere Street was measured from this very fort.
This fort is the most probable location where a sizeable statue of the Governor may have been located; probably in the Principia but not altogether improbably in the garden loggia of the Praetoria.

Trimontium itself also shared Corbridges’ fate having been violently sacked in the upheavals of 105 AD, a period from which a great many of the exquisite finds since unearthed there seem to date. Their buried deposition – particularly the finely constructed full face cavalry sports helmets is widely considered -at best- unusual.

While this is a matter we cannot explain we should at least conclude by taking due notice of it and by considering if we see a parallel here with the eventual, though distant, deposition of the decapitated head of the Governors statue - it may perhaps be either Lucius Neratius Marcellus or Marcus Appius Bradua - at Hawkshaw by the Selgovae deep in the heartlands of their tribal territory sometime around 105 AD or 117AD.

 

©2009 Roman Scotland. All Rights Reserved
First Published November 2009