ABSTRACT
Roman frontiers continue to have a significant impact on contemporary geopolitical landscapes. In East-Central Europe, the Lower Danube frontier serves as the border between Romania and Bulgaria, while Hadrian’s Wall is persistently drawn into popular discourse as the imagined border between England and Scotland, despite it never functioning as a boundary between these nations. These frontiers each involve waterscapes that had a noteworthy impact on the frontier landscape and its continued memorialisation.
This chapter explores the waterways in and along frontiers as not only geographically expedient end points of the built environment but that have a linked materiality that has not been critically appraised and brought into discussions of these frontiers. Through a comparative approach focusing on portions of Hadrian’s Wall as well as the Roman frontier along the Lower Danube, this chapter demonstrates that an understanding of the interactions between the built and natural boundaries is essential for understanding their long-term impact on modern socio-political landscapes. Using spatial analysis within a geographical information system (GIS), this chapter probes the dual nature of waterways as both barriers and networks and how these aspects worked together to create perceived border zones that still exist in popular imagination of borders today.
