Archaeologists have discovered that the Romans ejected locals by force in order to build the 117-km long Hadrian's Wall, stretching the breadth of northern England.
The wall stretches from the Solway Firth in the west to Wallsend on the river Tyne in the east. Construction on the wall begun in AD 122, during the rule of emperor Hadrian.
It was Roman Britain's most ambitious building project, designed primarily to mark the northern limit of the Empire, The Independent reported.
Since the 1970s, when serious excavation began, experts believed the local population living in the shadow of the wall had actually flourished under the Roman invaders.
However, the new evidence suggests the Romans actually cleared a 16-km stretch in front of the wall by force.
Using carbon-dating techniques archaeologists pinpointed the chronology of the local settlements far more accurately than in the past.
More than 60 radiocarbon dating tests were undertaken on Iron Age settlements between 2002 and 2008 around the Newcastle area, giving the most complete sample ever of Iron Age settlements north of the wall.
Data from the investigation, led by Nick Hodgson at TWM Archaeology, will be published in journal Current Archaeology.
"These new excavations suggest these settled farming communities survived the first Roman appearance in the area. But it's only when Hadrian's Wall is built that they suddenly seem to go out of use," Dr Matthew Symonds, an expert on the wall and editor of Current Archaeology, said.
