When I was little, I wanted to be an archaeologist.

I really did.

I remember that when I was about eight we had a school inspection and one of the things that the inspector asked kids to see if they understood that there were opportunities was what they wanted to be.

The primary school I attended was socioeconomically mixed, so there were kids who wanted to be postmen, kids who wanted to be accountants, as well as the more predictable doctors, nurses, truck drivers and so on.

When asked, I said I wanted to be an archaeologist, something that produced a stunned silence. In early nineteen sixties Scotland not even middle class kids became archaeologists.

And while I did want to be an archaeologist, there was no understanding in my family, in my school, of how you became an archaeologist. A nuclear physicist or a neurosurgeon, yes, but an archaeologist, no.

So I didn’t become one. Over the years I’ve done bits and pieces with archaeologists, but the nearest I’ve ever got to archaeology was the documentation of Dow’s pharmacy.

In part, the reason why I wanted to be an archaeologist was an obsession with Roman history.

Again in the sixties there was no Roman history or archaeology in Scotland. That’s of course not quite true, but it is true to say that there was no real understanding of the Roman engagement with Scotland.

Apart from some bits of the Antonine wall and few marching camps found by Ordnance Survey surveyors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, there were no visible remains, nor was there much in the way of textual sources other than Tacitus.

The odd hoard of Roman silver had been found by people investigating Pictish hillforts, but that just helped reinforce Tacitus’ (and other writers’ ) stereotype of the Picts as wild hairy uncultured woad painted barbarians.

The fact that the Picts had left little in the way of apparent remains other than a few incomprehensible carved stones didn’t really help, which resulted in a view about the Picts not dissimilar to colonial views about indigenous Australians – not people you’d have round for afternoon tea.

So, what we had was a situation not dissimilar to the situation in England and Wales a century earlier.

Little in the way of apparent remains and some fairly minimal textual sources.

There was one difference though.

People did know that the Romans had been in England and Wales, and so local antiquarians expected to identify Roman sites, and even investigated them reporting their findings in the learned journals of the day.

This also meant that when large scale industrial and railway construction began in the nineteenth century, people were not surprised to find Roman sites and particularly cemeteries.

Lying on the edge of Roman settlements, cemeteries were more likely to be found by railway construction works as most railway lines were routed outside the medieval core of towns which themselves had grown up over Roman settlements – Roman remains in towns were more likely to be found when installing gas, water and sewage pipes.

And on the back of this local antiquarian and field clubs became involved documenting and recording Roman finds.

In Scotland, substantial towns did not really develop until the middle of the medieval period, meaning people installing drains were more likely to find medieval cess pits than mosaics, which while equally valuable, were considerably less glamorous and hence less likely to attract the attention of local antiquarians.

And hence, due to the lack of apparent remains and textual sources, the history of the Roman engagement with the peoples north of Hadrian’s wall was sketchy in the least.

It’s different now of course, and I’m sure that if any eight year old was to say they wanted to be an archaeologist, people would know now how to encourage them, and also, simply because there is more archaeology around, would, when they were older, recommend placements on archaeological digs etc.