Talk:Boudican revolt

Proposed merge of Defeat of Boudica into Boudican revolt

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was there was an agreement to proceed with the merger. Amitchell125 (talk) 07:11, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

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@AntientNestor, NebY, Richard Keatinge, Nicknack009, Titus Gold, and Flalf: I propose merging Defeat of Boudica into Boudican revolt. I think the content of an article that describes Boudica's defeat at the hands of the Romans can easily be explained in the context of the Boudican revolt, and a merger would not cause any article-size or weighting problems. Amitchell125 (talk) 15:35, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

OK, I've used Twinkle to follow Wikipedia:Merging and tag both articles, creating and linking to the standardised section heading, and taken the liberty of replacing your heading with that one. Hope that's OK. The rationale I provided to Twinlle is below. NebY (talk) 16:14, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Largely duplicates Boudican revolt. Not an event for which there is much substantive evidence, its notability depends entirely on the notability of Boudica and the revolt. Editorially problematic, maintenance and improvement especially of overlapping/duplicate/contradictory content sometimes being done on only one or the other article. NebY (talk) 16:00, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the merger. I would suggest copying all cited content over and then trimming down and removing excess and duplicate content. Titus Gold (talk) 16:47, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree as well. Really no need for two separate articles. --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:10, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

That method would undo work already done at the destination Boudican revolt to remove excess content, some of which had been added to both articles. NebY (talk) 20:26, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support merger per nom.'s rationale. No need to have this hived off into a separate article. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 18:17, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
• Reluctant Support I initially split this off because I do believe that the conflict deserves a separate article than Boudicca, however, as it is I don’t really feel like the article adds anything. Flalf^Talk 19:44, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

  We'd still have this Boudican revolt article as well as Boudica. We'd merely not have a third article, Defeat of Boudica. NebY (talk) 21:44, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

@NebY: I misread the merge. Lack of sleep. Thought the revolt article was being merged into Boudicca. I don’t think the battle itself has enough notability. Flalf^Talk 23:03, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh good (apart from the lack of sleep). I do like the idea that a mass revolt shouldn't be relegated to part of a single biography and so Boudican revolt should be separate from Boudica, and it occurs to me now that if we didn't merge Defeat of Boudica into Boudican revolt, it should at least be renamed Defeat of Boudican revolt! NebY (talk) 09:40, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support per nom and Neby. Thanks to Flalf, but sadly I don't think that a separate article can add anything. Richard Keatinge (talk) 20:05, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support per nom, and with acknowledgements to Flalf.--AntientNestor (talk) 20:58, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Makes little sense to keep them as separate articles, under the circumstances. P Aculeius (talk) 14:01, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merge Battle of Camulodunum?

Another related article discovered, which should really be merged to this one. Any objections? --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

No objection at all, Merge whatever's worth merging. As most of the article is context around the tiny mention in Tacitus, context which is supplied better here, and the account here of the fighting or battle is already good, there may not be much to merge. (I am rather surprised by the article's existence and the implication that a Battle of Camulodunum features as a named event in any WP:RS). NebY (talk) 17:50, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Notes

Redirected. --Nicknack009 (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

NebY (talk) 19:02, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Location of last battle

An IP editor has re-asserted an edit including an unpublished paper to mention Church Stowe as a possible location for the last battle [1]. The citation is in as a bare URL to a self published paper on Academia. I would revert it, citing the original reversion and WP:ONUS, but the edit summary says: link to Church Stowe paper added. This reference is stronger than most in this section so it's[sic] removal will require the removal of a number of other refs. Of course, inclusion of material is not a negotiation. We don't keep one sub-standard source to save another. Yet looking at that section, the IP has a point. The sourcing there is not up to standard and we just have a mish-mash of editor selected theories and quite a few sub-standard sources. I think it needs rewriting, following a suitable secondary source and with random theories then kept out. Any suggestions for the best source? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:34, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I have been reading three good sources. we have:

The location of the final battle is debatable. Tacitus records that Suetonius chose a strategic location, a narrow pass cut off by a forest at the back. Among modern scholars, Mancetter in North Warwickshire, and High Cross in Leicestershire, the crossroads of Watling Street and Fosse Way, are favored possibilities (Gillespie, 2018:31).

Gillespie cites Webster (2004) and also Gould (2004). The next source could support some text much as we have it as it asserts Mancetter has long been favoured, with an in-text citation that takes us to (Sealy, 1997):

There has been considerable speculation as to the precise location of this final and decisive pitched battle. It is usually placed somewhere in the Midlands ..., and Mancetter has long been a favoured choice. But recent suggestions include Paulerspury near Towcester in Northamptonshire, a place that fits Tacitus’s brief description of the battlefield and which would accord with the Roman army’s march down Watling Street from the north-west to intercept Boudica’s forces surging towards them from St Alban’s, the last urban victim of their annihilation campaign; and a location between Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire and Great Chesterford, Essex. The simple fact is we will never know (Aldhouse-Green, 2006:196).

Webster is good, and already cited on the page, although making the case of Mancetter, it does not support alternates. I would use this part to stress that Webster is as clear as others that we probably will never know the lcoation for certain:

The site of the great battle which decided the fate of Roman Britain will never be known for certain, unless some quite remarkable finds are made, such as a mass burial with closely identifiable weapons in association. The ground suggested above, near Atherstone, is the best guess one can make within the limitations of the historical account and the broad strategy of the opposing forces, as we imagine them (Webster, 2018:111).

Bibliograhy

• Aldhouse-Green, M. (2006) Boudica Britannia. Pearson-Longman.
• Gillespie, C. (2018) Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain. Oxford.
• Gould, J. (2004) “Boudica— Yet Again.” London Archaeologist 10 (11): 300.
• Sealy, P. R. (1997) The Boudican Revolt Against Rome. Shire, Princes Risborough.
• Webster, G. (2004) Boudica. The British Revolt Against Rome AD 60. Routledge.

Thanks Sirfurboy, excellent points, this is a difficult problem. Would you find a conference organized by a local history society adequate as a reference for fairly uncontroversial points? If so we could use this one. It does list a series of studies and offers a critique of these in relation to their use of the sources in their geographical and strategic context.

And, rather than a narrative account of the suggestions and their authors and detailed argumentation, maybe a map would be useful.

Does anyone have access to Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen. By R. Hingley and C. Unwin. Hambledon and London, London, 2005. Pp. xviii + 293, illus 8. Price: £19.95. ISBN 1 85285 438 3, which I don't have access to but is favourably reviewed by Niblett and might have something relevant?

Richard Keatinge (talk) 22:16, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Richard. The Atherstone Civic Society paper certainly has good information in it, and the map they present is just what we need I think (and as you suggest). There is a curation bias problem if we follow them closely, but we already have a curation bias issue, and this would at least be better. I would be interested on the views of others on that though. As to Hingley & Unwin, I don't have it but Open Library does (although only showing as for preview right now) [2]. There is also a paper copy in one of the libraries I have access to locally. I might be able to get hold of it tomorrow. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 22:41, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I'll look forward to this. Meanwhile, how to approach the problem of curation bias? Perhaps the most defensible option would be to start with the list analyzed by the Atherstone society, possibly adding any publications in academic works / by academic presses, or authored by established academics in the relevant field.

The Atherstone society does provide a list of criteria to compare the various suggestions, and we could use that, but it's probably impermissible original research to use their criteria to judge any studies not included in their list. Mildly unfortunate, because they do point out that there are other studies that would be worthy of inclusion, but we do need better criteria than editor selection.

We could consider adding a complete list, any idea with any sort of publication, all the way to the fringe ideas and beyond, using them only as sources for themselves. If there's a consensus to do this, I would suggest putting them in a collapsible section. Richard Keatinge (talk) 12:26, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I have, on loan, Hingley & Unwin. I have located the relevant discussion on pages 102-104, where the case is first carefully made for Mancetter, before admitting that this is based on supposition, and that other suppositions might suggest other sites (probably further south). However, no other sites are named. They are more optimistic than Webster that the site might be discovered one day, pointing out that although the Roans would have carried off much from the battlefield, they would not have been able to collect shards and fragments, so perhaps archaeological work will one day find the site. However, in terms of naming locations, Mancetter is the only one to get significant treatment.

Regarding the Atherstone selection criteria, that may actually be okay. Some selection criteria are better, I think, than admitting everything. (Not sure if anyone has suggested the battle took place in Atlantis... but it's only a matter of time!) It is also better than editor whim. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 19:34, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Martha Vandrei mentions several historic proposals that we don't. In his Nero Caesar, or Monarchie Deprav'd (1624), Edmund Bolton places the final battle at the River Wylye near Stonehenge (which was erected in her memory). In 1894, somewhat hampered by large numbers of watching public and reported in newspapers across the country, Charles Hercules Read excavated a tumulus on Parliament Hill in London's Hampstead Heath as "Boadicea's Grave", battle being presumed to be somewhere near. No ancient relics were found. Morien watched Read's excavation with interest, told the London press the tumulus was really a sort of Druidic pulpit and that Celtic scholars agreed Boudica was buried in North Wales, and in 1913 published Queen Boadicea: Her Life, Battles and Death Near Rhyl. The 1926 pressbook for the silent film Boadicea claimed they filmed on the battle's original site, Ivinghoe Valley.

There's a case for recording such proposals along with more modern ones as part of the revolt's legacy, (as Vandrei) a cultural phenomenon itself worthy of study. We'd still need to follow the usual WP policies - eg no WP:SPS - and exclude some as lacking encyclopedic significance. For example we currently have "More recently, a discovery of Roman artefacts in Kings Norton close to Metchley Camp has suggested another possibility." That BBC source reveals that when Roman artifacts were discovered, a local councillor got excited ("It could be England-shattering if not world-shattering") and got himself on the radio, despite two experts debunking it. Unless there's evidence this suggestion's had any lasting impact, let's leave it out.

BTW The Cambridge Ancent History (Vol 10, Chapter 13e; John Wacher) is vague: "Suetonius, apprised of the rebellion, hastened from Wales in advance of his main army, and reached London before the rebels, but realized that there was little that could be done to save the town. He fell back to join his advancing army and finally brought the rebels to battle, probably somewhere along the middle section of Watling Street." (Even that requires Wacher to go beyond the somewhat contradictory accounts of Tacitus [3] and Cassius Dio.[4]) NebY (talk) 22:11, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

References