Romans loved to wear socks and sandals — could that be the reason for the massive shoes found at Magna fort?
Excavations at the Roman Fort de Magna near Hadrian wall in northern east in northeast England discovered very large leather shoes. Their discovery, according to a media coverage, has “Confined” Archaeologists.
The survival of shoes is not itself miraculous or unusual. Excellent conservation conditions caused by low -water -based water environments means that leather and other organic matter survive in the wet soil of this part of northern England.
Many years of excavation by the Vindolanda Trust in Vindolanda just south of Hadrian wallAnd now in Magna, have recovered a huge collection of Roman shoes. These discoveries provided us with an excellent record for Soldiers and civilians shoes who lived around them.
Magna’s shoes are distinguished because many of them are large. Large shoes were also found in Vindolanda. However, among those whose size can be determined, only 0.4% are large. The average size of the shoe in Vindolanda is 9.5 to 10.2 inches in length, which is between a modern British shoe 7 to 8.
Large shoes are a much more important part of the shoes in Magna. The largest shoe is a huge 12.8 inches long, almost equivalent to a modern British size from 12 to 14.
This collection of shoes raises an immediate and obvious question: why did Magna’s people have such big shoes?
In relation: Thousands of leather shoes, bags and gastronomies of swords discovered during the excavation in the medieval port in Norway
The possible answers to this question raise more questions and highlight a central component of archaeological research: a good debate.
Emma Frame, senior archaeologist for Magna excavationssuggests: “We must assume that it is something to do with people living here, having bigger feet, being potentially larger, but we do not know.”
This idea of bigger feet, the greatest people make sense, although it suggests that some of Magna’s military communities were very large. And, like the Roman cemeteries of the Hadrian Wall were little excavated or studied, we have little information about the size of people in this part of the Roman world.
However, other ideas can be entertaining. For example, could this be a kind of racket or winter boots intended to allow additional layers of padding or several pairs of socks?
A letterPreserved by conditions similar to Vindolanda shoes, refers to a gift of socks and boxes that have been sent to someone parked there, probably to keep them warm during the cold winter nights. We also know by other evidence than Syrian archers made up one of the units parked in Magna. These men would not have been accustomed to the icy climate in northern England.
Could these large shoes be an attempt to cope with the bitter shock of a British winter? Or instead, could these shoes have a medical goal, perhaps to allow people with swollen feet or people using medical vinegots to wear shoes?
It is important to note that I do not pretend to have the answers. I simply publish a few hypotheses that could explain extraar shoes according to other evidence that we have and potential logical explanations for such large shoes.
These types of hypotheses are at the heart of the archaeological method. Fresh archaeological discoveries are made every day, and they often make the headlines on “disconcerted archaeologists”. Although this language can arouse public interest, it is also likely to give a misleading impression of the discipline. In reality, archaeologists like me and thousands of my colleagues from around the world is anchored in a prudent analysis and based on evidence.
The challenge does not lie in our lack of expertise, but in the nature of the evidence itself. A large part of the distant past has been lost in time, and what we recover represents only a small fragment of the original image.
We are not so “disconcerted” that we rigorously test several hypotheses to achieve the most plausible interpretations. Interpreting these fragments is a complex process, such as gathering a puzzle of a thousand pieces with many most crucial pieces (such as edges).
Sometimes we have exactly the right pieces to understand the overview, but other times, we have gaps, and we have to highlight a series of different suggestions until other evidence is revealed.
This published article is republished from The conversation Under a creative communs license. Read it original article.
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