Many visitors (and would-be visitors) to the Antonine Wall World Heritage Site find the task of interpreting and understanding the visible archaeological remains somewhat challenging. Over a number of years in the role of Head of Multimedia in the Hunterian Museum, and as an Associate Lecturer with the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, the author has been exploring ways of addressing this issue. Multimedia technologies have the potential to aid in the presentation and interpretation of archaeological sites, and their associated artefacts held in local museums collections, for a wide range of public audiences.

The coming of age of interactive digital information and communication technologies has provided cultural heritage organisations with a range of opportunities to utilise these ever more flexible digital technologies to provide access to their cultural resources in increasingly innovative ways. The advent of the World Wide Web, over 20 years ago now, presented heritage organisations with a unique opportunity to provide access to their resources to a truly global audience. Resources which hitherto were only available to those fortunate enough to live within travelling distance of archaeological sites or museum collections were suddenly accessible via the then new medium of web technology. Moreover, many museums around the world saw the potential to turn this new medium into additional virtual display space in which to reveal many artefacts that had been languishing in storage or in reserve collections.

Introduction

In 2009 Hadrian's Wall Heritage (HWHL) commissioned the Centre for Interpretation Studies, Perth College-UHI and Zebra square to carry out a programme of public engagement research as part of the process of developing the Hadrian's Wall Interpretation Framework. The purpose of the research was to explore and measure the views of a number of different audiences and stakeholders, all of whom were important both to the future sustainability of Hadrian's Wall as an overall attraction and to all of the individual sites and museums. The research was informed by the market data and audience research already in existence. As such, the public engagement research aimed to add to existing knowledge, providing a greater level of detail than previously existed — particularly in terms of visitor and non-visitor perceptions of Hadrian's Wall and the visitor experience. Full details of the research are available as an appendix to the Hadrian's Wall Interpretation Framework (Adkins and Holmes 2011).

The existing audiences for Hadrian's Wall are declining, yet the pool of potential visitors is large. A study by ERA (2004) found that 4.2 million people live within 40 miles or an hour's drive of Hadrian's Wall, 85% of whom are in North East England. A further 1.9 million live within 80 miles. Furthermore, some 5 million tourists, 4.4 million of whom are from the UK, stay within 40 miles of Hadrian's Wall each year. Yet despite being less than an hour's drive away, the majority of these potential visitors choose to visit other places instead.

Introduction

All Year 7 pupils who attend Burnside Business and enterprise College in Wallsend explore aspects of Hadrian's Wall, including its history. The college is located near Segedunum Roman fort and was designed with a ground plan based on the shape of a flattened Roman legionary helmet. Roz Elliott is Deputy Head and, for her and her students, perhaps the most important aspect of the Wall and all that it represents is how it helps to promote community cohesion by providing a context through which to explore contemporary issues of identity and multiculturalism. The soldiers stationed at Segedunum and at other forts along Hadrian's Wall came from many different parts of the Empire. The students can explore what it might have been like to have been stationed in a foreign land, to marry locally, to adapt to local ways of life yet maintain links with home, and relate this to their modern world.

Introduction

Hadrian's Wall is one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world. It tells us as much about ourselves as about the past. We should take pride in it and help unlock its potential to teach, inform and stimulate our own and future generations. The purpose of the Interpretation Framework (Adkins and Mills 2011) is to enable us to do just that; to create a structure within which more detailed strategic planning and coordination can take place and through which each site and museum can build on its own particular strengths and opportunities to create distinctive, differentiated and complementary experiences for visitors. Realisation of these opportunities will in turn deliver wider benefits:

1. • enhance the visitor experience and visitor enjoyment for the widest possible audiences;

2. • increase visitor numbers and, more importantly, encourage visitors to stay longer and to visit more sites;

3. • improve awareness and understanding of the WHS, its significance and the need to conserve and protect it, thus supporting the objectives of the WHS Management Plan;

4. • promote UNESCO's WHS values which seek to share the heritage and experience of people around the world.

Introduction

It is not difficult to find images of the Romans and information about Ancient Rome in contemporary sources. There are cartoons, picture books for young children, Hollywood films, television comedies, websites, school textbooks and popular histories for the general public, children's toys and violent computer games. This chapter discusses why the Romans and their barbarian enemies have been badly or incorrectly portrayed so often and for so long. In the UK, school textbooks from the 19th century and throughout most of the 20th century have often failed to present what classical texts, archaeologists and historians have revealed. More than that, these early school resources hardly ever presented any evidence for the authors' bold statements of presumed fact. This chapter also discusses the role of information books for children and the use of cartoons in storybooks about the Romans.

Although schools had existed since the early medieval period in Britain there was little opportunity for most children, and especially for girls, to be educated until parish schools became more common in the 17th century. The Education Act of 1870 created the opportunity to build secular day schools all over the country. School Boards were established in most districts and built public elementary schools, many of which still survive today as primary schools. Many children were educated at home in the 19th century and this promoted the growth of suitable textbooks for mothers or governesses to use in the home. Several history textbooks were written by women, sometimes using pen names, which demonstrated publishers' understanding of the market available to them.

‘But Dad, history is boring and the Romans are the most boring bit of it all.’ I may have paraphrased my son's attempted justification for not doing homework but the essence of his argument is, and was, very plain. A similar argument was deployed always when discussing going to visit one of the site museums on Hadrian's Wall; and yet a walk along the Wall where ‘British war parties’ (children), waiting in ambush for Roman supply columns (parents), were routinely ‘flushed-out’ by Roman scouts (the dog) but rallied to win the ensuing battle, were, for a time, one of the most attractive of weekend activities.

Where have we, as teachers, academics and interpreters gone so badly wrong? How have we managed to make the Romans such a hated topic? Readers may think I overreact but on a very brief and totally unsystematic survey (conducted in the last few minutes with two of my children and eight of their friends, home for lunch from school), the result was almost unanimous: the Romans are the most boring part of history — with one dissenter identifying ‘Medicine Through Time’ (although, when pressed by his peers, he acknowledged that the worst bit of this was ‘The Romans and the beginning of public health’ as there was no gruesome dissection or surgery to talk of …).