Along the Border

Abstract

A series of colorfully enameled metal vessels name forts along Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. They preserve creative responses to one of the empire’s most ambitious construction projects, a complex fortification system that was never represented in official art. Three well-preserved vessels have been recorded in England and northern France, and more fragmentary examples continue to be registered with England’s Portable Antiquities Scheme. The designs of this expanding corpus draw on six key elements: a vessel shape popular throughout the empire; enameling technology associated with the Celtic peoples of the empire’s northern lands; letters of the Latin alphabet; place names in the Celtic language; a fortified wall motif with precedents in Hellenistic court mosaics; and a triskel motif common in Celtic metalwork. These intricate portrayals conjure a place that was far more than a wall, while illustrating the entangled aesthetics of an evolving borderland.