a ditch surrounding the perimeter and earth thrown up
behind it to form a rampart. On top of the rampart was a
palisade of timber or stone. Th e camps were divided into
three main areas, centering on the praetorium, the tent of
the commander, where the symbolic banners were kept safe.
In front of this structure was the praetentura, where the elite
troops camped closest to the entrance; at the rear was the
retentura for the common troops and cavalry. A principal
gate cut into the rampart faced the enemy, with secondary
gates sometimes built at the rear and sides. Th e largest forts
covered as much as 50 acres, included quarters for civilians
and slaves, and housed an entire legion of about 5,200 sol-
diers. Smaller outposts, signaling stations, watchtowers, and
temporary camps protected laborers, travelers, and smaller
campaigning forces, who would abandon these quarters at
the end of the fi ghting season.
Where the threat of attack was constant, Roman engi-
neers raised continuous physical barriers. Hadrian’s Wall and
the Antonine Wall in northern Britain protected Roman col-
onies against the troublesome Picts, who attacked from their
homeland in what is now Scotland. In Germany the Roman
limes, running nearly 400 miles, was raised in the fi rst cen-
tury, aft er the Roman defeat in the Teutoburg Forest. It was
a rampart of earth and stone, which was more a boundary
marker than a defensive structure, since not even Rome could
raise a wall strong and long enough to guard the entire Rhine
frontier. Watchtowers and small forts were placed at regular
intervals along the limes but were not always manned.
Tribes living outside the border stones and walls found
Roman territory, with its wealthy towns and farming estates,
a most inviting target. Th e long frontier could not be guarded
at every point, so Rome began hiring auxilia (mercenaries)
from the local population to beef up the army. In the sec-
ond century, however, Germanic tribes overran the Danube
frontier—a preview of the full-scale invasions to follow as the
empire weakened over the next three centuries. In the third
century civil unrest in Rome prompted the emperors to pull
back from the Rhine-Danube frontiers, leaving the northern
frontiers exposed. As Goths, Vandals, Franks, Burgundians,
and Huns raided Roman territory in northern Europe, for-
tifi cations were abandoned, and hundreds of Roman towns
were raided and pillaged.
In 293 the emperor Diocletian divided the empire in
half. Th e western half continued to be ruled from Rome,
with Maximian as emperor. Th e eastern half had its capital at
Nicomedia, where Diocletian ruled. In 324 the emperor Con-
stantine shift ed the capital to Byzantium. Th is former Greek
town, on the narrow straits between the Aegean Sea and the
Sea of Marmara, thrived as the western empire weakened and
Rome’s European provinces suff ered increasing violence and
administrative chaos. In 410, the Vandals stormed down the
Italian peninsula and sacked Rome itself. In 476 the Germanic
chieft ain Odoacer deposed the last western Roman emperor
in his palace at Ravenna, Italy. Historians traditionally have
marked this event as the fall of the western empire.
THE AMERICAS
BY J. J. GEORGE
Maps and timelines of the ancient Americas that outline spa-
tial and temporal borders are becoming more defi ned through
research and exploration. Culture area borders as clearly de-
fi ned as the contemporary border between the United States
and Canada or Mexico were unknown. Th e sweeping arcs
and circles that most maps use to delimit the ancient cultures
of the Americas are largely arbitrary, but nonetheless instruc-
tive. For the people who lived within them, defi ning these ar-
eas and then defending them proved to be a subtle political or
economic maneuver, though defensive architecture, battles,
and skirmishes oft en added clarity and defi nition.
A frontier generally designates a physical margin, fringe,
or outer boundary—more of a zone than a line—dividing
peoples. It is also the division between settled and uninhab-
ited parts of one nation, state, or culture area. Since the North
American landscape during much of the ancient period com-
prised vast swaths of variable terrain traversed by hunter-
gatherer bands and some semisedentary groups, it can be said
that much of the land was frontier. Similarly, in Mesoamerica
and South America, early settled agrarian culture areas were
small in comparison to the total landmass, and oft en a sub-
stantial frontier existed between contemporaneous cultures.
When those cultures came into contact, the notion of borders
became relevant.
Borders symbolize aspects of nationhood and identity
construction and are linked to state building. Factors that
ultimately defi ne borders include natural topographic lim-
iters or barriers (mountains, rivers, or forests, for example);
competition for space, resources, or power; the relationship
of a dependent periphery to a central core; trade; tribute; mi-
gration; warring; and, on a broad scale, climate change. New
technologies allowed for expansion into previously uninhab-
itable areas. Any combination of these factors contributed
to the classifi cation and continuous redefi nition of borders
throughout the Americas.
By 300 c.e. the Inuit of the far arctic north had settled
at Birnirk, in what is today Barrow, Alaska, where they
maintained a subsistence pattern based primarily on mari-
time resources such as whale and seal. Scarce resources
and a changing climatic environment necessitated group
cohesion for survival. Later, having mastered the technol-
ogy necessary for surviving the harsh climate, a period of
expansion ensued. Th is time of ferment meant that new
groups were coming into contact. War and trade, instead
of subsistence, became the focus of innovation, sometimes
expressed aggressively across informal borders in order to
procure goods meant for survival. Farther south the fron-
tier between Inuit and Aleut populations on the Alaska
Peninsula was relatively resource-poor and acted as a buf-
fer zone between two relatively richer zones. Th e boundary
remained stable over a long period of time until the Th ule
culture—because of environmental change, increased tech-148 borders and frontiers: The Americas