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Wales defined the boundary between the rebellious uplands and the subjugated lowlands. Smaller
forts at Caernarfon in the north-west and Carmarthen in the south-west contained Wales within a
fortified rectangle, supplemented with a network of camps and smaller forts placed one day’s
march apart and connected by straight roads. The military presence was strongest in the lands of
the most belligerent tribes, the Ordovices in Snowdonia – so some must have survived Agricola –
and the Silures of the south. The other Welsh tribes, the Deceangli along the north-western coastal
plain between Conway and Chester, and the Demetae of Dyfed, showed less appetite for resistance
and their territories were accordingly less densely garrisoned. Eventually the Celtic tribes of
Wales settled for the life of a distant outpost of the Empire. The Romans took gold from Dolaucothi
in mid-Wales back to Rome to be minted into coins and mined copper from the Great Orme near
Llandudno. The Romans began to withdraw their garrisons from Wales by the beginning of the
second century, indicating that the inhabitants were coming to terms with the Roman occupation, the
last to succumb being the Ordovices.
What might have been the genetic consequences of the Roman occupation that we should look
out for? After the initial campaigns of subjugation, which may well have resulted in the deaths of
thousands of men, the military outposts became important centres of economic activity. Around
Caerleon, for example, a small township or vicus grew up outside the walls of the fort. By AD 100
there were 2,000 people living in the Caerleon vicus, attracted from far and wide by, and
dependent on, the great wealth, in comparative terms, of the garrison. Even though there were rules
which banned official Roman marriage between the legionaries and the indigenous people before
AD 190, unofficial liaisons were tolerated. Indeed, as the threat level fell, garrisons were reduced
in size and troops were withdrawn to be redeployed elsewhere in Britannia; this had a severe
effect on the economy of the vici. And not only on the economy, according to one historian, who
points out the effect that the redeployment of the garrison would have had on the women who had
borne children. They had to stay behind.
As usual, if there is one, it will be the Y-chromosome that is the witness to this activity. But
who were the soldiers of the Roman army? Not all from Rome, that’s for sure. After the initial
campaigns, when there would have been a substantial Italian contingent in the legions, the
occupation itself was left in the hands of the auxiliaries. In Wales these troops, who would be
granted citizenship when they retired, were drawn largely from the valleys of the Rhine and the
Danube. It is for Y-chromosomes from that part of Europe that we should keep an eye out as a sign
of the genetic influence of the Roman occupation.
After the withdrawal of the Roman army from Wales in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the
demilitarized population came under attack from the Irish, including the infamous Niall of the Nine
Hostages. In a mix of raiding for slaves and settlement, reminiscent of the first decades of the
Viking age in Scotland, the coast of Wales facing the Irish Sea endured continual attacks. This
period of attempted Irish colonization coincides with the expansion of the Dál Riata into Argyll,
only 100 miles to the north. It may even have been carried out by the same people, and for the same
reasons: the ambitions of the Ui Neill. But the Irish never established themselves in Wales as
successfully as they did in Argyll. There was no equivalent in Wales of the continuous friction in
Scotland between the Picts and the Gaels of Dalriada. The Irish form of Gaelic never displaced the
P-Celtic of the Welsh as it did in Scotland.
Within Wales, the people divided into a succession of minor kingdoms and before long the