A Post from Area A

I've changed to the new area down the hill and closer to the stone fort. I'm working in building 29, which was given that number in the 1970’s when it was first excavated. The 1970’s excavation only found the outline of the late vicus building and barely scraped the surface of the archaeology in the interior. A vicus is the Roman name for the town that develops outside of a fort's walls. The vicus at Vindolanda seems to fall out of general use in the 280’s AD. Before that there are traces of a vicus present in the middle of the 2nd century AD. There may have been other towns that have not been found since the fort has not always been on the alignment it is today. This means that you can't just dig down in the latest vicus like for one season and understand the entire history and development of the vicus. Anyway, I am troweling a flagstone floor surface that is the interior to a Severan-era building that is actually inside the fort for that period. The Severan era is roughly 208-212 AD at Vindolanda. The fort is built more westerly, or upslope, from the previous fort and smaller. The building that I excavating within could be the headquarters, or principia, building. The principia is where the unit’s colors were kept, the mens' pay and savings, and where all official Roman military paperwork and announcements were executed. There is high hope for the area I am working in, as it was not part of any previous excavation. In the second picture the finely laid wall that is near the bottom of the trench and turns at a right angle is part of the Severan building’s walls. Everything above that is part of the foundations for later vicus buildings. You can see that later builders used the foundation of the Severan building to aid in constructing sound buildings. All for now.