April 28, 2007

A bird's eye view of trench B.
The picture is taken from temporary scaffolding (ie., we take it down and put it up when needed). Sometimes it is better to look at the trench from a higher vantage point because the whole trench can come into focus. That's me in the trench just finishing troweling the section from lower left to where I am. Troweling the surface brings out the color differences which can show ditch lines, post holes, pits, places of severe burning. So in other words it is great way for the archaeologists to get an idea as to what is going on at that level.


This week's crew
The crew is Justin again, Chris (Vinovium Chris on the www.wedigvindolanda.com website), John (he's new to the whole archaeology experience), and Chris (volunteer Chris-dug at Vindolanda for his fifth season now). Great guys to dig with. There was a lot of jokes and plenty of good archaeology discussion.


Taking a break to mull over what could be going on in this complicated section of the trench. This if often what you may find happening at a dig site if you have a chance to visit a place doing archaeology. It is much better to sit back, listen to what everyone has to say and then decide on the next course of action. It also gives us out of shape diggers a chance at a break!

Saturday April 28

I am having some issues getting to a place to post for the blog so please bear with me for a few more days and I think I'll have things solved. One of the problems I have at the moment is an inability to download pictures to the blog as the connection I am using is not sufficient to handle the pictures. I promise to have pictures up as soon as I can!

The week has ended on a good day. Most of the week has been shoveling and troweling lots of dirt with hardly any small finds. Small finds are pottery and coins and glass. That sorta thing. Two new posts turned up today between the four posts I found in the first week and the two posts that are below the floor in the mausoleum. It has thrown a wrench into Justin's thoughts of the type of building that is in the area, but he will probably sleep on it over the next couple of days and figure everything out. John, the new guy to archaeology, got to the bottom of the ditch and found some more scraps of leather, a bit of shoe and some bits of pottery. He is hooked and looking to come back for more if anyone decides to drop out later in the dig season. I envy him since he lives just ten miles away. It would be great to come for a week at a time throughout the dig season and see everything progress. That is the downside to coming and volunteering: eventually you have to go home and know that great finds are going to be discovered right where you were digging! The two Chris's are back next week and a few other experienced volunteers will be on Justin's team which means he should be moving right along. Good luck Team B.

Tomorrow I start with Team A (the areas for excavation are A & B and A is run by Andrew). Andy's team is digging near the present fort below the floors of the town buildings nearest to the fort's northwest wall. I'm not sure if I will be in the pit that is almost five foot deep or if I will be part of a crew taking down a new section. All will be made known tomorrow.
Pictures soon.

Picture of Sole

David was kind enough to send me his photo of Annie with the leather hobnail shoe sole. So there you have it.

Today was the beginning of the new week and there are just four of us digging. One is brand new to the whole thing. Another was a professional digger for a couple of decades and the last has been coming to Vindolanda the last five years and has volunteered at sites nearer to his home. We had a good start as the expected rain held off the entire day. Not many finds again as we had to start in the units that had the topsoil removed last week since the trench still has water in the bottom. Hope to have decent weather the rest of the week and be able to get back into the ditches and post pits that are full of water right now.

A Digger's Kit

The picture above is the kit we use as diggers at Vindolanda. Let's see if I can explain this in some semblance of an order. From left to right (or as close as possible): Shovel-great for getting rid of the loose soil in the unit; Scoop-smaller version of the shovel and used mostly when troweling the unit floor and getting rid of the loose soil; Brush-used to clean a unit floor or stones in the floor; Bucket-used often when troweling or in a position more than a shovel toss away from your wheelbarrow and that would include being a number of feet down into the ground too. If you can't reach your wheelbarrow, then the bucket is best; trowel-used to scrape around stones, define floor surfaces, pick between cobbles-basically a jack of all trades type of tool. Most volunteers bring their own. Archaeologists and volunteers can get trowel envy- the more used the trowel the better you MUST be! Kneeling Pad- used by most volunteers who can't squat for hours on end troweling floors or picking around cobbles. I definitely have the Rolls Royce of kneeling pads (thanks Sara and Greg); Spade-multi-purpose use. Most often used to square trench or unit sides, peel off slight floor layers, and get up loose soil when trying to be precise; Mattock-used to get through topsoil and as a larger trowel just scraping the surface of the unit floor. The mattock is often better than a trowel for doing a whole unit floor in a quicker time; wheelbarrow-well without this there would be no volunteers. I don't know too many people who would want to create bucket brigades for soil removal!

There you have it. The digger's kit in a nutshell. All the basic tools needed to dig at Vindolanda.

Sunday April 22

Well, this time last week I was in shorts enjoying a warm walk along Hadrian's Wall. Yep, that's me in shorts in northern England. I wouldn't be doing that now. As everyone has told me, the weather we have had the last three days is more common for April. As you can see from the group photo for last week I am in my "chem" boots and it is overcast and dreary. It has rained everyday since Thursday. The rain has not been constant nor heavy but it does create muddy, gunky conditions in the trench. That would be the picture of the trench Friday morning, full of water. We ended up taking turf and topsoil off of new sections in preparation for this upcoming week of digging. Oh, and it seems in England, if you are wearing white waterproof boots that equates to hazardous material removal suits and hence the "chem" boots nickname for my white wellingtons.

The group picture is Albert and Annie who dug for the week and will be back again at the end of the season, Tom, Justin, myself, Amy, Pete, and last but not least, David. Katie will remember David because he dug the same we as we did last year. He has been coming for a few years as has Albert and Annie. I hope to be lucky enough to do the same, come back for a few more years. As Justin says in his speech to school groups, there is still 100 years worth of archaeology to be done.

On Saturday we were able to get back into the units that we had been digging in earlier in the week and some great archaeology turned up. Justin found a ditch that may end up being fairly large running through his unit towards the mausoleum that was excavated the previous week. Annie and Albert also found a ditch, again quite large, and pulled out the first organic small finds of the season for Area B. They found a bit of leather, roughly the size of the palm of your hand, and the left sole of a hobnail boot. Excellent stuff. I was not able to get pictures of the shoe sole since it was found right at the end of the day Saturday but I promise to get one up next week. The other big find was an almost intact rim, neck and shoulders of a black burnished ware storage jar. The picture is Annie holding the jar find. The jar would have stood approximately 2 feet tall. Big storage jar! There was an incised pattern around the shoulder but no graffiti. next week, whoever has that unit will probably be finding more organics and maybe a stamp may still be legible on the leather.

April 18

This was a great day digging. Pete and Amy have continued down in their end of the trench and have found a drain just to the north side of the cobble patch. The drain is next to Pete in the picture. But the find of the day was the stone altar I found just before lunch. The altar is the long bit of stone just below my hand in the first picture. The altar has some great stone work done at the focus but may have been thrown into the ditch I am excavating because the column chipped and has another fracture in the stone. Unfortunately no inscription was carved but it is still an altar and I was grinning from ear to ear! I've been revealing more of the posts in the trench and continue to pull up bits of black burnished ware and different forms of samian ware. Enjoy the pictures.

First Week April 10-14

The dig got off to a slow start. No mechanical digger to pull off the topsoil this time around. It took some of us a day to get the topsoil off and begin to get into the ground where plows have not turned up the earth and damaged the Roman remains. Fairly quickly Sue found the first small find of the season for Area B! That was quickly followed by Roman architectural remains showing through as the bottom courses of the walls. The structure is small and may be a room or mausoleum. The two temple/shrines found a couple of years ago are just west of where we are digging. One of the pictures I'm posting is the first week crew for Area B. The picture is of Sue, Tom, Amy, Justin (the archaeologist), Tassos, Pete, myself, and Roger. Sue, Tassos, and Roger were with us for just a week. We will be getting three veteran volunteer diggers when we start on Tuesday. We dig five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday.

On Saturday, while Justin was talking to another group of tourists, Tassos found another great small find and I found what may be one of the pre-Hadrianic posts. Within five minutes of each other! Needless to say, when the tourists knew how important the discoveries were, we got a round of applause. Definitely made me feel like an animal on display. Great to have found a post so early. There will be pictures of it next week when we are able to excavate around the post. It is important because wood does not preserve well in the ground.

The other picture is of the Twice Brewed Inn which is where I am staying for April. It is less than a mile from Vindolanda. I would normally have to walk to be there by 8.45 but Pete, one of the diggers in my crew, has a car, so I am able to get a lift.

The last two pictures are of samian ware bowls, semi-posh serving dishes basically, with decoration. The one is a lion and the other looks to be Hercules. All for now.

Background

It is cold in England, even in April. I am travelling from Florida to the north of England. I have put up some pictures from last April of Katie and I all bundled up. Compare our choice of clothing to the Brits. You would think it was below freezing. Well, to us, it was! I am going back this April the same week as when Katie and I went last year. The weather for this week is lows in the 30's and highs in the upper 40's. Did it get that cold in Florida this year? I have plenty of warm clothes and the hot tea at the morning and afternoon breaks hits the spot. Enjoy the few pictures from last year.

Vindolanda

The fort at Vindolanda was constructed in the 80's AD as part of a frontier system established by the Roman military. Agricola, probably the best known Roman commander for the early years of Roman conquest in England, is said to have either created the frontier or consolidated it, during his four years in England. The early fort was constructed of earth and timber and went through a few construction phases before being finished in stone. The present fort platform and stone remains that visitors can view comes from the 4th century AD and is in the classic Roman "playing card" shape. When the Emperor Hadrian visited England in the early 2nd century AD the frontier that Vindolanda was a part of seems to have been a major boundary zone with two classic Roman roads heading north into the lowlands of present Scotland and south into England and another, the Stanegate, connecting the frontier forts to each other, running east-west. Hadrian decided to have a wall built along the Stanegate frontier but did not incorporate Vindolanda into the Wall itself. Vindolanda is sited around a mile south of the Wall and may not have been as important in the operations along the frontier as it once was. The fort was occupied almost continuously from its inception until the 4th century AD, though, so it was not entirely abandoned to decay. There's the history lesson for today.

Today, Vindolanda is best known for the writing tablets that come up in excavations that are sometimes 10 feet or more below the modern land surface. The tablets are wood and preserved in a waterlogged, oxygen-free environment. When infrared pictures are developed of the tablets the remnants of Roman writing often show up. All sorts of information has come from the tablets. A great book to read about how Vindolanda may have been, based on the tablets is by Robin Birley and is called "Band of Brothers". Just a week until I'm digging. I'm not counting or anything!

My first post

Hey everyone. This is my first post on any sorta blog, so welcome aboard! What a strange trip it's gonna be. I'm leaving Easter Sunday for the frigid north of England to dig at a Roman fort and settlement site near Hadrian's Wall. The dig site is Vindolanda, "white field", and was occupied by the Roman army and assorted peoples (the Roman Empire and local British) from around 80 AD to well into the 4th century AD. The digging is split into two teams that will be excavating in the settlement outside of the remains of the later stone fort. I'll be digging with both teams starting April 9 through June 16, 2007. Two websites worth a visit are the official Vindolanda Trust site at http://www.vindolanda.com/ and an unofficial site that has the Trust's blessing at http://www.wedigvindolanda.com/.