A Wall has been found and Celebs onsite

The new crew for the week: Bryan sitting on the turf rampart that would be inside the fort and Pam and Kate sitting on the Antonine stone wall. The later fort wall is in the background.

The Antonine period stone fort wall has been found extending north from the north west corner of the later stone fort. The 4th cohort of Gauls came along in 215 AD and built their fort almost smack on top of the Antonine period fort that was constructed 60-70 years before. What the Gauls seem to have done, though, is offset their fort further south. Last year, Andy's crew found the south west turn of the Antonine period stone fort wall within the Gaul fort so the thought was that the north west turn would be outside the later fort. Well, the wall has been found and now we are hunting for the turn. Sorry Richard, Lydia, and Vicki. We were just about a foot from hitting the top of the wall when we ended last week. The wall has been cut into the turf rampart and is at least five course tall on the turf side and four courses high on its outer face with a step back course just below. There is still a bunch of earth moving to do. The wall remnant is roughly five feet down. This week's crew has dubbed ourselves "Human JCB's" JCB is a mechanical digger similar to a back hoe in the States. I have even asked if there are any picks with motors to give us a hand! The weather has been dry the past few days which means the top couple of feet of earth is turning to concrete which is no fun to have to dig. But the prize waits below-the angle turret and the turn of the fort wall!

Sunday there were a couple of celebrities leading a tour caravan that stopped at Vindolanda. The two gentlemen in the picture are Julian Richards on the left who is the presenter of "Meet the Ancestors" and the man on the right is Mark Corney who has guested on Time Team and is an Iron Age/Roman Era Expert. I had a chance to talk a bit of archaeology with them about what we were doing with finding the Antonine stone fort wall. When they were there we had just uncovered the first definitive course of the wall but hadn't found the front face yet. If they came now it would look vastly different and more impressive! Made my day for sure. Find a stone fort wall and talk with some TV celebs. Can't say I do that everyday!