 Good afternoon, evening, everyone. I hope you can hear me. It is my great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker today, Rebecca Becky Jones, Head of Archaeology and World Heritage at Historic Environment Scotland. She started at the universities of Newcastle and Glasgow, completing her PhD at Glasgow and Roman Camps in Scotland. She also works for the University of Wales and has recently been appointed as visiting professor at Herriott World University. Her book on Roman Camps in Britain was awarded the prestigious Book of the Year prize at the current Archaeology Awards in 2013. Her research interest focused on the Roman campaigns and occupations north of Herriott's world and making archaeology more accessible. She was part of the European Union-funded Frontiers of the Roman Empire project and led the mapping for the successful nomination of the Antonine Wall as part of World Heritage. She is on the committee that manages the World Heritage property as well as its expert advisory, Bratislava Group. Rebecca Jones is also co-chair of the International Conference of Roman Frontiers Studies and led the development of Scotland's first National Archaeology Strategy which was launched at the year in Glasgow in 2015. Her keynote lecture today is entitled What divides us also connects us Roman Frontiers, World Heritage and Collaboration. And without further delay, Becky, I very much look forward to your lecture and the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Is that coming across? Okay. Well, I want to start by thanking you very much for inviting me. When I was first asked to participate in the Budapest EAA, I was really excited at the prospect, giving a keynote for the Limes and Boundaries theme in a city which sitting at the heart of the Carpathian Basin, an area that connects across Europe and beyond and sitting astride the second largest river in Europe. Networking seemed to be a very apt theme given the geography of Budapest. And the Danube serves as a major frontier of the Roman Empire, something I'll be principally speaking about today. Now, at the end of 2019, the Economist produced this, which was what it thought would be the key issues for the world in 2020. It's not that easy to read, but it includes politics, such as the American presidential elections and Brexit, also the Tokyo Olympics, the World Expo in Dubai, climate issues, and a new James Bond film. Nobody was predicting a global pandemic, lockdowns, and a fundamental change to the ways in which we work, including this conference. And I congratulate all the organisers on turning it into a virtual event. And I especially want to thank Alexandra Andrews for inviting me, catch a climb over for all the help on the technical stuff, and Manuel for that kind introduction. So I've decided to tweak my planned paper into two halves. Firstly, to give a brief explanation of the frontiers of the Roman Empire as a case study in networking and international collaboration. And secondly, to consider why, in a world of changing priorities, anyone should care about heritage and think about the role that it plays now and in the future. I will have a bias towards Scotland, where I live and work, and also towards the Antonine Wall, which forms a great case study for this. So here we have the Roman Empire and its frontiers in the middle of the 2nd century AD. A large empire which spreads from Britain in the north through to North Africa in the south, Spain and Portugal in the west, and the Black Sea and Near East in the east. This shows that the empire covered a diverse range of geography, peoples, climates, as well as pressures within and beyond the empire. By the mid 2nd century, these frontiers had developed into boundaries, walls, river frontiers, fortified roads, desert frontiers, different types of frontier to suit different circumstances. Now what was their function and purpose? Was it purely for defence? Was it to control raiding? To control transhumance? Or movement into and out of the province? Was it to protect travellers in the frontier zone? Was it purely just to keep the troops busy? Or was it to create an edge to the empire for the Romans? Or perhaps to serve as a symbol and an object of intimidation? Now these various purposes have been debated, and the answer probably lies in all of them at different measures at different times. So almost 2,000 years later, what does that actually mean? Well to start with, we have the linear barriers, including the timber palisade and ditch of the upper German Raish and Limes. We have the turf rampart and ditch of the Antonine Wall in Scotland. The façadum africi, sections of a linear barrier recorded since the 1940s in North Africa, and of course the iconic Hadrian's Wall in Northern England. And then we also have the river frontiers. Across Europe, this frontier is dominated by the rivers Rhine and Danube, natural barriers that serve for communication as well, and often marked key cultural zones. And in the Near East, the Euphrates forms the frontier for a part, marking a border between Rome and Parthia. Across parts of the Near East and North Africa, the deserts formed boundaries, with soldiers stationed in fortifications close to sources of water, such as Oasis, and connected by a network of roads. Such a vast empire encompassed various mountainous terrain, gorges through which rivers flowed, and upland areas, some of which were controlled through military installations and networks of roads. And finally we have the sea frontiers. The Mediterranean was under Roman control. There are outposts on the eastern Black Sea. The Atlantic bordered the empire in the west, and installations were built at various times to watch and control, and also deal with piracy. Now David Breeze's book on the frontiers of Imperial Rome provides an excellent overview of the frontier systems of the Roman Empire. There are some similarities around the frontiers. We have forts and fortlets, towers, legionary fortresses, roads connecting military establishments. Whilst there are numerous similarities between military fortifications, no two sites are identical, even when built and occupied by the same unit. And then we have a variety of material culture, inscriptions, altars, tombstones, metalwork, military equipment, coins, pottery, amphorae leatherware glass. Not in equal measures across all provinces of course, but a wealth of evidence enabling us to understand more about daily life, interaction within and beyond the communities on the frontiers, supplying for the army, their diet and environment. Indeed we have a wealth of evidence which benefits from a full range of study from the philological study of ancient texts right through to ancient DNA telling us about multicultural society on Rome's frontiers. And new theoretical perspectives are being applied to datasets to help us to understand and interpret the past. Such a wealth of evidence goes beyond knowledge about the soldiers, but tells us more about the military communities around the frontiers. One area which has seen increased research and awareness in recent years is the presence of women and children in and around the military installations on frontiers, families of the soldiers who were stationed there. Women are named on various pieces of evidence such as military diplomas and funerary inscriptions, as seen here in the tombstone of Veracunda on the Antonine Wall, and leather shoes from women and children found in numerous locations where anaerobic conditions enable their survival, especially noticeable at Vindalandha on Hadrian's Wall which has produced a wealth of evidence for the presence of families. The shoes shown here were found at Bar Hill on the Antonine Wall and here and elsewhere some tiny shoes have been found which cannot be explained away as shoes that have shrunk or of adolescent recruits. Research in recent decades has showed quite clearly that women and children were part of life in the Roman army far more than had ever been considered before. And this includes doing research on the artefacts themselves, their spatial patterning within and outside Roman forts and recognising women's social roles within military communities. An example from the Antonine Wall is Vibhya Pakata, the wife of Flavius Veracruz, centurion of the 6th Legion Victris at Westwood Ford. She is one of the few women who left a trace by the dedication of this altar stone to Sylvanus and to the goddess of the crossroads. They're the only married couple currently known on the Wall that we definitively know of and legal and army documents allow us to consider her travels through the Roman Empire. It's suggested from the dedication that they probably travelled from Pannonia, modern-day Austria and Hungary, possibly even via North Africa. And along with women and children we know that there were traders and other civilians on the frontiers. On the left we have a gravestone erected to Salmanes, a 15-year-old boy by his father, also called Salmanes. The name suggests a Middle Eastern origin of both, and as no rank is given for Salmanes senior, it's possible he was a trader or merchant. He was found not far from the fort at Bar Hill, where we know a Syrian regiment was stationed, something to which I'll return later. On the right we have a Samian wear bowl from Balmuldi, which carries a maker's mark, Sinem, indicating that it came from a pottery workshop in Le Zoo in modern-day France. So that's a very quick whiz through some of the archaeology. And so I want to ask next what we think we want to do with all this knowledge. Well, many of you will be familiar with the heritage cycle, something that some public sector organisations utilised to underpin a lot of their strategic work. The principle of it is relatively straightforward. We need to understand the historic environment or at the very least try to understand it using theoretical frameworks and use that understanding to explain it. And by understanding it people will value it and want to care for it. Caring for it through various methods of conservation will help people to enjoy it. And if they enjoy it they'll want to know more and the circle continues. Now in Scotland we have a strategy for the historic environment and a strategy for museums. And beneath both sits an archaeology strategy which is actively seeking to deliver against a range of objectives, understanding, caring and engagement built in alongside skills and innovation, recognising that archaeology is a highly skilled and innovative sector. And we also have delivering archaeology helping us all to do it better. So what do we want to do with all this understanding and knowledge? Well, interpretation is key and we bring together sites, artefacts and reconstructions to help to bring the past to life. We also collaborate across borders and countries sharing knowledge, skills and expertise. As archaeologists we're getting better at telling stories and collaborating across the Roman Empire to tell more stories of people like Salmanes the trader and Vivia Picarta the wife of the centurion. And these help to enrich the picture that we can present of life in the past. In Roman frontier studies we're extremely fortunate to have had the Limez congresses or international congresses of Roman frontier studies running roughly every three years since 1949. Traditionally there was one in the UK every ten years to tie in with the pilgrimage of Hadrian's Wall which has been running even longer since 1849 but that tradition has now been broken and the congress seeks to go to new areas and countries as well as revisit ones which have not held a congress for many years. You will see from the map here that it's dominated by congresses in Europe. There was one in Spain off the frontier but at the legionary fortress of Leon in 2006 and there have been two in the Middle East. It's still a long held ambition to take the congress to North Africa but attempts have usually been thwarted by other events. Congresses have grown from the first one in Durham in 1949 on the top left here with 20 participants from 11 countries plus their partners through to the largest top right at Ingolstadt in Bavaria with 370 participants from 30 countries in 2015. The most recent one bottom left Serbia in 2018 also saw over 300 participants and next year we hope to have a successful congress in Nijmegen in the Netherlands global health permitting. And as it has grown the congress has diversified we have a wider range of topics now presented from a wider range of scholars from over 30 countries. Lima's congresses have always been significant and take up considerable time. They usually last for at least a week and have pre and post congress excursions meaning that the full congress can take up to two weeks. The congress itself is a mix of days of academic papers and visits to the Roman frontier in the country or province being visited. This can include boat trips on river frontiers walking along Roman roads and frontiers visiting museums giving us time for the theme of this conference networking and if that's accompanied by local food and drink all the better. Now it was through these networks of collaboration that the eminent Hungarian archaeologist Professor Sjolt Vichy first proposed the idea of a trans boundary world heritage property building on the inscription of Hadrian's wall from 1987. This has started us on a journey on which we're still travelling. The EAA has been critical to this journey along with the Lima's congresses. In the late 1990s our German colleagues started discussing nominating the upper German Raeschen Lima's for world heritage site status and between 1999 and 2001 Sjolt led discussions on the potential of a multinational world heritage property encompassing different sections of the frontier in Europe. A group of archaeologists then met to discuss this at Esslingen at the EAA in 2001 and then held a round table the following year in Thessaloniki which was the occasion of my first EAA. The following year in 2003 we met again at the Lima's congress in Peitsch in Hungary to agree to collaborate and seek funding to work together on a shared vision. Also in 2003 a group was set up to provide professional and technical advice in relation to the proposed frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Property including the definition of the World Heritage Property its mapping and management as well as dissemination of information about Roman frontiers. The focus of the advice is UNESCO and the state parties containing part of the World Heritage Property or intending to propose their own sections of the frontier as part of the property. The group is known as the Bratislava Group named after where it first met in March 2003. At the third meeting in Koblenz in 2004 the group considered a definition of the frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Property and agreed to set its parameters as the line of the frontier of the height of the empire from Trajan to Septimius Severus so that's roughly around 100 to 200 AD and military installations of different periods which are on that line. The installations include fortresses, forts, towers, the Limes Road, official barriers and immediately associated civil structures. It's accepted that Roman frontiers are more complex and this might be recognised in a later amendment to the above definition but this definition is recommended as the first step in the creation of this multinational World Heritage Site. So this is known as the Koblenz Declaration and underpins our work on the World Heritage Property today. In 2005 the upper German Ryatian Limes was successfully inscribed by UNESCO as an extension to Hadrian's Wall and the frontier of the Roman Empire World Heritage Property was properly born. Also in 2005 we were successful in getting our first major pot of European funding and this set the scene for a succession of workshops and collaborations looking at World Heritage nomination at research and documentation monument protection conservation and preservation and management. Our first workshop took place at Chopron in Hungary followed by further workshops in Germany Scotland, Slovakia Bulgaria, Hungary again Germany again and conferences in Spain and Scotland. And then in 2008 the Antonine Wall was added to the frontiers the Roman Empire World Heritage Property and we had agreements as to the way forwards and our colleagues and partners in Europe were successful in getting further European funds including from the Central European Programme of the EU for the Danube Limes. Our goal posts were moved in 2010 by a decision taken by UNESCO and so the expansion of the frontiers the Roman Empire was put on hold while we found a new way forward. This resulted in a thematic study of the frontiers and a nomination strategy which was accepted by UNESCO in 2017. So alongside the existing frontiers the Roman Empire Property which is Hadron's Wall, the Upper German Ration Limes and the Antonine Wall three more World Heritage properties have been proposed for Europe. Firstly the Danube Limes which encompasses eight countries the nomination of the first four Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary is currently with UNESCO for consideration. Once inscribed it's intended to add an extension comprising the Danube Limes in Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria there's also the Lower German Limes in the Netherlands and Germany which was submitted to UNESCO earlier this year and then we have the Dacian Limes in Romania. We've also tried to start dialogue with colleagues in the Near Eastern North Africa so that we can work on progression of those areas as well. So that brings me to where we're at and where we think we're going. So then I consider the next part of the presentation which is so what all mean? Why do we do it? And beyond the networks, the conferences the workshops, building friendships sharing research for Romanists like me, where does the public benefit? Where's the value in all of what we do? Well World Heritage is an exclusive club with only 1,121 properties listed around the world only 39 of which are trans-boundary so we know that these are important but what does that actually mean for people who live in and around the World Heritage property? And how do we make what we do seem important in the era of a global pandemic where health is the number one priority? The toll that the pandemic is taking goes beyond physical health. It affects our mental health and well-being too whether through the loss of loved ones or in struggles in dealing with isolation and lockdowns, closed schools and inability to meet work beyond virtual. And yet heritage and culture can provide a huge mental stimulus sites and activities rooted in local communities. In his opening keynote to this conference, Professor Cornelius Holtoff proposed three lessons to take the future seriously and do our best to ensure that archaeology actually contributes to sustainable development that will benefit future generations in concrete ways. To go beyond the notion of cultural diversity and focus on what people shared and indeed share, promoting trust, solidarity and collaboration between human beings on this planet. And to realise more often the value of culture, cultural heritage and archaeological practice to be inclusive and bring people together promoting peace among humans both in society and between societies. So I haven't been able to belatedly work all of these into this lecture but I hope that there is some synergy and relevance in what I'm saying about shared experiences and collaboration. Last year historic environment Scotland commissioned a survey and well-being and heritage so this was before the pandemic hit. But the results were very positive. Heritage engagement of all sorts leads to a variety of established benefits including physical activity, social benefits, having fun, building skills and confidence which in turn leads to a variety of well-being improvements including physical and mental health as well as economic outcomes. So in our survey 86% of respondents reported a health or well-being benefit from engagement 76% reported that their life satisfaction improved 78% were happier 68% felt more worthwhile 59% felt healthier and 29% were less anxious. In June Scotland's advisory group on economic recovery set up by the Scottish Government to advise on Scotland's economic recovery in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic produced this report. And in this report there is a dedicated section on the creative sector, noting that the sector should be given high priority in Scotland's recovery plan. Scotland must emerge from the crisis with purpose, humanity and resilience. We must look after our cultural heritage and create an enabled inclusive society to build the heritage of the future. One of the great things about World Heritage is that these are internationally important sites but they are rooted in local communities. We all have a role to play in creating an enabled inclusive society and what do we as archaeologists want to see as the heritage of the future? Well the word inclusive is all important here. Looking at the frontiers of the Roman Empire we have long monuments stretching for miles and miles through numerous different landscapes, modern-day land use and communities and yet they're all connected now through our aspirations for World Heritage status and shared research and management objectives and in the past through the diversity of the Roman Empire where soldiers and people from one end of the Empire could find themselves stationed or trading at the other end of the Empire connected and sharing practices and experiences. In Scotland on the Antonine Wall we have a military that some soldiers cooked their food in a style more popular in North-Western Africa than in North-Western Europe. The late Dr Vivienne Swan identified a number of different pottery types including a form of casserole dish that may have been a precursor to the modern tagine and brazier style cooking. Now whether these were soldiers from North Africa or troops who learned a different cooking style after perhaps serving in North Africa we do not know but a recently published diploma shows that the first cohort of bitersians from the modern-day Netherlands served in the Mauritanian War and we also know that they were stationed on the Antonine Wall as shown here at this altar to Jupiter found at Old Kilpatrick so we know we have a direct African connection and in addition Quintus Lolius Urbicus Governor of Britain who built the Antonine Wall was a Berber from New Media in modern-day Algeria and then later on we have the Emperor Septimius Severus from Leptis Magna in modern-day Libya often referred to as Rome's African Emperor who campaigned in Scotland and died in York. We have a regiment of Syrian archers stationed at one of the Antonine Wall forts along the wall. We've used the evidence from this to develop a Syrian archer teaching pack to be used in schools and in other educational settings and all these activities are about emphasising connections and what we have in common with people from around different parts of the Roman Empire. Since 2018 we've been running a project called rediscovering the Antonine Wall an over 2 million pound project with funding coming from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, leader, several landfill tax sources and from partner funds which is historic environment Scotland and the five local authorities along the wall listed here. The project grew out of the desire of the communities living along the wall to improve awareness and relevance of the monument so we asked local communities what they wanted to see and after an extensive consultation process these local communities helped to co-design a series of local initiatives. Now some projects are activity based and although paused to COVID we hope to restart them again once it is safe to do so. One is to work with asylum seekers and refugees who've relocated and better understand their stories in relation to the wall weaving them into the wider story. We know that the Romans moved soldiers around and that we have traders and families who came from around the Empire so this is a chance to explore stories and experiences from contemporary communities as well. Other projects include trishaws piloted by volunteers under the cycling with our age scheme. We're encouraging residents in local homes and sheltered housing who may otherwise be able to get out and about to have the chance to socialise and visit local heritage sites. These are intended to ease isolation and encourage socialising and provide a boost to mental health by visiting sites which they might otherwise find difficult to visit. One care home resident left his care home for the first time in over a year on one of our trishaws. And another one here is designed to appeal to younger people. A local graffiti company will bring artists to engage them and create Roman inspired graffiti. We also have gardens, community mosaic projects, arts projects, museum projects, creative writing projects. And we're also looking to see where our Roman heritage can have transformational economic and societal benefit. Some of the projects involve regeneration, whether regenerating forgotten areas through sculpture, Roman inspired art and replica distant stones through the development and redevelopment of play parks. Five have been planned, one is already open and another will be opening very soon. These play parks have been co-designed with local children and feature stories about the diverse military population that lived in the area when the war was occupied. And in all these projects, sustainable development is a key feature. For the distant stones, these have been carved by students from Glasgow University of Cambridge and alongside four replicas of existing Roman ones is one newly created for the project shown here, which is done in a Roman style but features imagery associated with the local Iron Age communities along the wall. And in addition, we've got recent work on pigments by Dr. Louisa Campbell, who's identified that the originals were actually brightly coloured, enabling us to have one of the replicas in full colour and certainly to colour in the digital world. Now during the pandemic and lockdown, the team have been exploring creative ways to engage with audiences, given that our capital and activity projects have all had to pause. This has included updating the blog on the website and creating new digital content both for the website and social media feeds such as Facebook and Twitter. Our wall mascot, the soldier Marcus has been on his travels and a series of postcards from the wall that these have served both to inform in a fun and accessible way, but also to keep a visibility and profile of the project during a period when events have had to be cancelled or postponed. And it's not just us, lots of resources are already online or promoted online. At Historic Environment Scotland, we brought all our heritage learning resources together, including our Antinine Wall learning material, knowing that thousands of parents across Scotland and indeed across the nation. We've got cut out and make Rowan Helmut and Celtic Armlets alongside a whole host of other activities including colouring in and we aim to add to this as more online resources are developed. Children in Scotland have now returned to school but blended learning models and local lockdowns and school closures could happen at any time. And in April, the UNESCO UK National Commission brought together a diverse range of educational resources from different designations such as heritage, biosphere reserves, geoparks, creative cities and the memory of the world inscriptions to aid with the availability of material. Alongside this, we've recently finished a project to create and enhance content for our digital app for the wall, thanks to funding from Creative Europe and with partners in Germany and Austria. It brings the site and artificial material together through a range of different types of digital applications including reconstructions and augmented reality. You can stand on a site and find out about the artefacts discovered there or stand in a museum and find out about the sites that material came from or sit at home and browse from there and we also have an interactive game called GoRoman which is a quest style game and this app is made available to all our partners across the frontiers and at this point I must acknowledge that we continue to work together to create and enhance content for our digital app for the world. We are very much open for collaborative opportunities now and in the future. Our colleagues in Glasgow University and the Hunterian Museum were recently part of the European Union Horizon 2020 funded emotive project which was looking at emotional responses and different ways of using storytelling. As the Hunterian has a wealth of evidence we study in their storytelling creating interactive stories that require the user to engage and help determine where the story goes next. One such story that they've developed is around the soldier Ibutius who scratched his name on a bronze hammer found at Bar Hill. The visitor to the museum uses this and other objects to find out more about the life of Ibutius and answers questions about what decisions he may have taken at various points in his life. So when we're thinking about our mental health and well-being stories can be challenging, inspirational and indeed relevant. So how can we help and what can we do? Well healthcare professionals are looking at social prescribing developments to develop community link workers in order to improve health and well-being and reduce pressure on general practice. How do we get archaeology and heritage plugged into this? We need to emphasize the link between good mental and physical health and getting engaged with your local surroundings and community. In Scotland we have a thing called the place standard tool which helps to assess existing and potential strengths of a place which can help local decision makers to target resources where they're needed most, where we spend our time has an important effect on our lives and on our well-being quality of places and the opportunities we have access to can help to tackle inequalities. Through some of the Antonine Wall projects we hope to use our Roman heritage to improve play and recreation, facilities and amenities and identity and a sense of belonging to pictures three from the 14 areas listed here. And we're now starting to use the place standard in our management planning for World Heritage in Scotland. Now whilst COVID has completely disrupted the globe in 2020 other challenges remain. This image is a visual representation of the change in global temperatures as measured over the past 100 plus years. Each strike represents one year starting in the late 19th century on the left hand side up to 2018 on the right. The warmer the strike the higher the average recorded temperature was that year. In historic environment Scotland we've produced a climate action plan actively looking at what we can do for the historic environment in Scotland. Last year we ran the first ever test of a newly developed climate vulnerability index on a cultural World Heritage property, a tool that was first piloted on the natural World Heritage property of Shark Bay in Australia. Together with partners at the University of Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, Orkney Islands Council, ICMOS, the Union of Concerned Scientists and James Cook University in Australia, we ran a workshop with a range of local stakeholders to identify what the key climate drivers were and what the adaptive capacity was of the local community. These sites may be of global importance but they're rooted in local communities and what affects these communities is vital both for these communities as well as for their heritage sites. We have planned to run a workshop for the Antonine Wall in 2020 inviting our frontiers of the Roman Empire and our partners but we've had to postpone it due to the pandemic. But a large number of stretches of the Antonine Wall are properties in the care of Scottish Ministers looked after by Historic Environment Scotland and my climate change colleagues undertook a risk assessment of them in 2018 concluding that quite a number of stretches have had a high risk of slope instability, groundwater flooding and plumeal flooding. A climate vulnerability index workshop and subsequent report will aid with understanding of the vulnerability of the site but the base data and current climate trends do indicate the level of inherent risk to the site which we need to mitigate in order to reduce from high to a medium or low risk. Another global event that's happened this year has been the increase in awareness of the Black Lives Matter social movement. In Britain the most notable event of this was probably the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Coulston in Bristol. The statue has since been retrieved from the harbour and is undergoing conservation. That's led to much discussion and soul searching around public statuary, memorials, street names and the origins of wealth in countries that played a major role in the transatlantic slave trade. But here again heritage can contribute to the debate. Let's start with the statues. What do we do with them? Do we take them down? This has been incredibly controversial in Britain and yet people have been toppling statues for years. And indeed were we meeting in Budapest I'm sure that many of us would have taken advantage of the opportunity to visit Memento Park an open-air museum to statues of the communist period in Hungary. Many of the statues that adorned the past are now part of collections in museums and art galleries. We know that removing statues doesn't need to mean eradication of the past particularly if they end up in a museum but society reflects on what it wishes to commemorate and celebrate through such imagery. We have very few statues of Roman emperors on public display around the empire certainly not compared with 1800 years ago but we have many in museums we're preserving the collective memory of the past. I'm returning to Black Lives Matter. As archaeologists we can use the vast array of analytical tools and dissemination techniques now available to us to tell a story of a more diverse past. We know that the Roman Empire occupied a vast geographic space encompassing people with different skin, eye and hair colour and that people travelled vast distances across the empire, soldiers, families, traders, merchants. I've already mentioned Lolius Urbicus who instructed the soldiers to build the Antonine Wall and the possible present of Africans on the Antonine Wall along with known regiments from Syria and other places far away from Scotland. More and more information is becoming available from research projects and feeding into educational resources and into museum displays and interpretive information for visitors to sites whether these are physical visitors or digital visitors. Reading universities along way from home diaspora communities in Roman Britain has used skeletal evidence to demonstrate how multicultural Roman Britain actually was. The Romans revealed educational resource that they've developed as an example of how we can try and mainstream what we do as we collectively try to build a more inclusive society. And although I focus very much on the Antonine Wall on Scotland and on Britain many of our friends and colleagues from around the frontiers of the empire are also involved in a wide variety of engagement activities to try to bring the past to life to wider audiences. The images shown here are from the Porilisum Fest held a couple of years ago in Romania. And on this slide at Bavaria in Germany we have re-enactment groups and a reconstructed Roman gateway helping to bring the past to life. And on the left, new sound devices have been put onto the Roman fort at Eining, so-called Zeitfenster or time windows, which are walk-in steel frames with text and reconstruction drawings. And these are acoustically accompanied by sounds to help the visitor appreciate different parts of the fort. And also in Bavaria this was on World Heritage Day in 2018, with archaeologists presenting a new reconstruction of the palisade and a small excavation. It was a community event with the mayor and people from the local museum and a local group of Romans who dressed up for fun and apparently provided some interesting drinking equipment. And then at Viminacium in Serbia there is an absolutely fantastic array of reconstructions, including a Roman fort and a villa used for a variety of events, ranging from Roman weekends focused on families through to business networking events in spectacular locations. The site has welcomed over 100,000 visitors a year. And here at the Lidry Fortress of Novi at Svistov in Bulgaria, we have an event where re-enactors from the Legia Wanatalica bring different aspects of being in the Roman military to life for visitors. Here in Budapest we have a festival at a Quinkum where volunteers helped visitors with guiding, selling books and also providing Roman food. So in conclusion, I hope that I've shown some examples here of where we can use our diverse past our shared heritage to tell stories that are rooted in local communities but demonstrate the international significance of what we do. We can use the tools and techniques available to us to help us to connect our communities and engage with more diverse populations. Despite the tragedies and disruptions of 2020 I think that we've all taken pause to reflect on what we feel is important to us. Health, well-being, family and community all feature and all of these are important to archaeology and the ways in which we understand and interpret the past. Roman frontiers may have divided communities in the past but through the lens of time they provide us with an opportunity to connect across communities across ethnic divides across countries and across continents. And as with all these things this has been very much a team effort and I thank everybody who's been working with me and helped me with this. Thank you very much. A great presentation many very important points that we are currently debating and facing and also strategies to move forward. I'm sure there are many questions. There was already a question by Cornelius Holtorf that has generated some exchange in the chat. Unfortunately as far as I know the online system doesn't allow people to speak but they can write their questions in the chat so please if you're writing the chat I will try to see all the comments. I see there are many coming now but yeah ask the questions to Becky we have time for some questions. The first question by Cornelius is a very good one. I actually had the same one similar he thanks for the great presentation and also for citing his own lecture. Becky I don't know if you can see the questions at the same time maybe for those people who are not seeing them I'm going to summarize it he says UNESCO came into being after World War II in order to work for global peace and it is ironic that there are several military sites on the world heritage list of Roman limes. What are your thoughts and your colleagues thoughts about how to deal with this conundrum? Yeah I totally appreciate the concerns as I said I think through the lens of time when you're dealing with something that was military a couple of thousand years ago that's probably easier to reconcile that than if we were dealing with something that's much more recent and it's a conversation we have had in Scotland around some of the major battlefield sites for example in Scotland and at what point are you celebrating as opposed to commemorating whereas in actual fact people died and these are things we should commemorate and the Roman Empire was particularly like many aspects of the past and the violence associated with it but actually when we're trying to tell the story to children and when I've taken some of our teaching packs into schools actually it's the soldiers stuff that the kids love the most they love playing with the sword and the bows and arrows the Syrian archer pack that we've got and to a certain extent you know it's actually about sort of recognizing well that's obviously not how we want to have the world today but it's actually part of our past I don't think I have a straightforward answer for that other than to say that actually I think the fact that I'm dealing with something that's 2000 years ago rather than 75 years ago makes it easier being brutally honest I don't know if that's if more people who work on the 20th century will probably take a very different perspective Yeah, thank you, thanks Becky very much Actually as Sebastian has said sooner or later all those systems are absolutely and it is part of our history Yes I fully agree I was also thinking about well we are in a time now when there are attempts to build new walls those physical walls and legal walls so what are the lessons that we can learn from Roman walls I think there was possibly going to be a session about this at the American archaeology a couple of years ago when they were having it in New Mexico because I think there was a suggestion that we have I don't know if it ever actually happened but there was a suggestion that we have a a limo session there I think one of the things you can say is that what are you actually wanting the wall for what is the purpose of it and actually have any walls been successful none of them are still in existence so they will fall eventually so why are we building things that divide us actually when we have such climate change that actually we would be so much better if we worked together as society rather than actually trying to put barriers between us Yeah I'm looking at the chat to see if there are more questions I hope I'm not missing many many people congratulating you for this excellent keynote Thank you So if there are any other questions just write them in the chat we have enough time So a suggestion of an interesting book as well about modern wall building Right I'll have to look at that one Thank you Howard with perspectives from archaeologists And I know someone's made the point about our shared Roman heritage could become a triggering catalyst for peace negotiations in the Middle East quite early on in the development of the whole front is the Roman Empire World Heritage Project A general guide book was produced explaining the importance of it and it was produced in Arabic as well as in English, French and German to actually recognise the language that's spoken in so many countries that have Roman frontiers in them as a method of engagement and in fact Tunisia has put its stretch of the frontier on the tentative list and indeed Sebastian's been leading some of the conversations with colleagues in the country in the Near Eastern North Africa and yes I live in hope that we can collaborate with them in due course Yeah Oh yes there's another point somebody's made about a diverse group of people the walls brought together, not of their own volition Yes they did foster cultural meetings absolutely Mm-hmm Becky I was wondering if you would expand maybe a bit about the role that volunteers have played in actually expanding our knowledge of the Roman frontiers in Scotland but perhaps also beyond so the participation of volunteers in field work and other activities of research Well I think there's been quite a lot of sessions on community archaeology and about the involvement of volunteers one of the things that we one of the reasons why we set up the rediscovery in the Antonin Wall project for example is we did an engagement survey some years ago and actually a lot we realised just how many of the local communities along the wall didn't really know anything about the wall didn't really it's a place some people walk their dogs but again there was very limited engagement so that was one of the reasons for the project to then actually go out and in that those community consultations we actually have pop-up stalls in shopping centres and things like that because if you go to certain local community groups you'll get the people that are already engaged and we wanted to actually find the people that weren't already engaged so that's why we've gone to places where the people are and expect the people to come to us and that's involved going into local schools and things as well and that's been and that's been quite educational and inspirational and hearing what they actually want to hear and we've set up what's being called a 21st century Legion which is a Legion of volunteers and they've been through a whole series of sort of I suppose they've had various learning experiences out on the wall they've been reading around it and they're wanting to sort of expand their voluntary experience in a variety of different ways some of them are going to be leading tours and doing guides along the wall and others are wanting to engage more in research and one of the areas that we think would be really useful to actually have more research on is the names of people that have come along the wall so we're quite keen to actually get more of that going I've mentioned obviously a couple of them but there are other ones and we haven't I think that there's still a huge amount of research that can be done on just actually finding out more about the people on the wall. Yeah and I see there's just another question coming from Rod. Oh the replica Roman coin session very rare Roman sessions in this annual meeting we do we do sometimes have Roman sessions at the EAA and obviously with the Limes and Boundaries theme they were intended to be more Roman sessions but I think quite a few of them pulled out if I'm right in thinking and so they may rerun in Budapest in two years time but it's I think because there is something as big as the Limes but again it's about actually we all need to talk to each other whether we're just Roman Frontiers specialists or whether we're talking about what we're doing with the Roman Frontiers and another thing I won't bore you with a great long lecture on camps which I could do because that's if you won that lecture you could have that but I thought it was actually more relevant to have with regards to actually what we think we're doing with our Frontiers and World Heritage is such an exciting concept and prospect and something that we're working on in all our countries across Europe and indeed globally we can have Roman camps for your next keynote I need to find a few more yet actually I was listening to some very good Romanian ones yesterday there have been some Roman papers I have been dipping in and out of them yeah and actually I suppose the other thing to bear in mind is that you know it's all very well the Romanists talking to the Romanists but actually there's the Iron Age interaction that people like you Manuel have been doing so getting that as part of as part of our dialogue as well yeah good I don't see any further questions now so yeah perhaps we can come to a closure of this brilliant keynote I think it was really good that you provided such a broad perspective and you made links with so many topics that are actually very pressing issues and provide a very interesting perspective so thank you very much and one of the unfortunately one of the limitations of this online format is that you cannot hear all of us cheering you now but at least symbolically I would like to say thank you very much Becky it was really really great and yes thank you all for attending this Saturday afternoon evening session keynote lecture in different parts of the world yeah EA conference continues tomorrow so you can keep enjoying some sessions and also keynote and thanks again Becky okay thank you very much