Hayes and Rutter state that such an embankment's primary purpose would have been to provide good drainage for a road surface. Archaeologist David E Johnston states that the structure is crossed by numerous perpendicular drainage culverts with small becks trickling through them since the ground is often boggy. This could suggest a reason for the embankment, and its early attribution as a causeway—a route across the wetland, normally supported on earth or stone in the form of a raised embankment. Nineteenth-century antiquarian Thomas Codrington argued that Roman roads in Britain were generally built on embankments regardless of the underlying ground's drainage. He states that the common appellation of "causeway" in the names of Roman roads may, therefore, relate to their embankments rather than indicate that the ground on which they were constructed was ill-drained. Some historians translate Livy's phrase for Roman military construction of roads, "via munire", as "making a causeway".