Bronze Leg Found in a Scottish Bog Is Rewriting the History of the Roman Occupation

A large bronze leg found in a bog in rural Scotland more than 200 years ago is helping to rewrite the history of the Roman empire. The gilded limb, known as the Mislington leg, is the centrepiece of the largest exhibition ever staged on the Romans in Scotland, which opens on Saturday at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Antiquarians once argued that the leg had been looted, perhaps from York, hacked off by marauding Scottish tribes and carried north over Hadrian's Wall. In 1932 the scholar James Curle wrote that the conditions which would have led to its erection anywhere north of the Great Wall could not be visualised.

Archaeologists now believe the hefty gilded bronze limb came from the Scottish Borders and was part of a vast statue of the emperor Antoninus Pius on horseback, erected near Hawick after his armies had wrested control of southern Scotland in about AD140. It bears significant similarities to imperial statues in other frontier regions.

After being dug up in 1820, the leg languished for 100 years in the charter room at Dalkeith House near Edinburgh, one of the stately homes owned by the Duke of Buccleuch. It is now displayed at the National Museum of Scotland alongside other artefacts in the exhibition Roman Scotland: Life on the Edge of Empire.

Dr Fraser Hunter, the principal curator of the exhibition, believes such statues would have had a profound impact on iron-age communities. In his words, they were not only visually dominant but looked really alien: there is effectively no naturalist art in the iron age, and the whole idea of depicting a person was absolutely alien to the iron-age worldview.

Hunter believes that instead of being hacked off, the leg was carefully removed and deposited where it was found 1,700 years later. The museum's curators believe the artefacts prove the Romans were a far more significant force north of Hadrian's Wall than previously realised, occupying large areas of the country, producing new artworks and shaping the politics of Scotland long after they retreated.

Among a series of firsts, the exhibition also includes a new reconstruction of a heavily decorated earthenware bowl from Inveresk, east of Edinburgh. The village is the site of a large Roman fort and town that, Hunter believes, was a centre of imperial power during the Antonine period in Scotland of AD142 to 165, the second of three periods of Roman occupation of Scotland.

Bethany Simpson, an assistant curator, said the bowl displayed a unique combination of animal reliefs involving dolphins, stags and a stylised hunting dog. In her words, it is found only in Inveresk — not seen anywhere else in Scotland, and not seen anywhere in the UK.

The museum is also showing for the first time two remarkably well preserved, locally carved stone altars from a mithraeum excavated at Inveresk. Dramatic lighting demonstrates the vibrant colours originally painted on them. One has slits cut into its hollowed-out stone, radiating from the carved head of Mithras, with holes carved into its eyes and mouth to allow lamplight to shine out in the smoky darkness of the temple.

The show also includes the entire skeleton of a horse, carefully buried at Inveresk, which was also home to a small amphitheatre, a rare find in frontier towns. Hunter said the burial of cavalry horses in Britain is rare — normally they were just disposed of — so this must have been a valued steed.

Hunter estimates that about 10,000 troops, including auxiliaries from places such as modern-day Romania and north Africa, were stationed across southern and eastern Scotland, alongside perhaps another 10,000 camp followers, wives and enslaved people.

The exhibition focuses on Rome's influence on indigenous Celtic tribes, their culture and political structures. Recent scholarship suggests there was no tradition of carving in pre-Roman Scotland, but from the Roman occupation sprang rich native styles, leading to highly ornate Pictish standing stones. The Romans used silver, until then unknown locally, to buy loyalty. Yet by the third and fourth centuries, the Roman threat led the Pictish tribes to merge forces into an anti-Roman coalition.