Over the Hump

This will be my sixth week digging and I am now half way through my digging vacation. I've had a great time experiencing again the thrill of archaeology. And the soreness and the unpredictable weather. But also the great finds by everyone and listening in to the stories of why people come to dig at Vindolanda and the ideas of the archaeologists about how each season of excavation helps further the story of the area. Archaeology should be a changing, ever evolving story, not something that lays stagnant, giving up nothing new to further the understanding of the past. Unfortunately that is what is happening in England. The governing body that oversees the heritage of England, i.e., all the castles, monuments, ruins and remains of past groups of people, has decided that the heritage is best preserved and maintained by not learning anything new. Vindolanda is a rarity as it is most similar to an academic dig in the States. Very few places have excavation seasons as long as Vindolanda, the facilities to conserve and show what is discovered, and the skilled and unskilled labor dedicated to doing positive beneficial archaeology. I think more places in England should review their goals in the coming years and maybe seek to have some archaeology done, where applicable, to give new life to a heritage that is losing visitors in droves every year. To have the heritage "protected" is not enough. To have the heritage and display it to the best benefit of the public should be the rule and not the exception. Vindolanda is an exception and I am glad that I have been a part of this year's excavation season for as long as I have.

Thanks to last week's crew for a great excavation week. Andy believes we have possibly found the Antonine era stone fort- one wall acting as the foundation to the later IV Gaul fort which would help to explain just how big was the first stone fort at Vindolanda. Four of us were given that task. Richard, Lydia, and Vicky lent their labor as did I and it is good to feel like an archaeological question has been answered. Of course I may be back in that trench next week and a new revelation could throw a wrench into what we have found but until then the question has been answered! The rest of the crew continued work in one of the vicus buildings excavating down looking for the Severan era floor level. Some great pottery finds continued to come out of the building as did a large, square brick oven platform. By the end of next week the entire oven should be excavated which should be exciting to see. Stay tuned for the pictures.

Here's last week's crew in all our glory. Beth, Andy's assistant (and fellow American!) is on the far left, in the front is Michael and Andy. The back row is (from the left): Vicky, Lydia, Marilyn, Catherine, Lawrence, Richard, and Liz.

Latest from the Trench

My week started Sunday in a new area (picture above, looking south). I have been given the task along with three other volunteers of finding the northwest corner of the Antonine era (160's AD) stone fort wall. After digging like mad for two and a half days we have been rained out for a half day today. But we have discovered a turf rampart under a thick layer of rubble and just this morning before we had to stop for the day we discovered the tell tale Antonine stone work actually under the present fort wall which is 50 years later in construction. Or at least we think we have it. Hopefully the rain will let up and we can get down a bit deeper to see what is what. We started by having to deturf the area for excavation and have dug as far down as you can see in the picture of Richard and I.


The both of us have shifted a bunch of dirt and I for one have been exhausted at the end of each day but it is worth it as we may have answered a question that has lingered for a number of years at Vindolanda:"What are the dimensions of the first stone fort?" I have another week to go with Andy's crew and I hope to be able to give a good account for the phases of construction. There have not been many finds.


The picture of the two pieces of decorated samian ware have been the two best pottery finds so far. Bunches of animal bones were in the rubble above the turf rampart but not much else. Vicki and Lydia have found some bits of pottery, including some nice rims, and have been plugging away moving lots of stone and rubble. It has definitely been a team effort. And that is what an excavation is all about: team effort. Without everyone working together towards a mutual goal there would be chaos and disaster. Andy and Justin and Beth are great at making themselves clear on the goals and the best ways to accomplish what is needed and in answering the numerous questions by us volunteers. Many are repeat volunteers but there are a number who are new without any archaeology experience who come away from Vindolanda with a new found respect for what it takes to be a digger. And most of them end up being repeat volunteers just like myself and Katie.

Walking the Wall

Today I decided to go on a walk. It turned out to be a wet walk but I still had a good time. I walked a section of the wall that I had not seen before. I started at Cawfields car park which is near Aesica (Great Chesters). Aesica is a fort on Hadrian's Wall that Katie and I saw last year. It is part of the World Heritage Site but is a working farm at the same time. The north wall of Aesica is also Hadrian's Wall and the farm has destroyed the north east part of the fort and the section of Hadrian's Wall. Most of Hadrian's Wall from the car park through Aesica and west for a mile is barely noticeable since it was robbed for its stone for the last few hundred years. The ditch that is on the north side of the Wall (the barbarian side) is well preserved and is around 5' deep still. The south gate of the fort is now the farm track through the fort. The west gate is still in very good condition. The west wall of the fort with the corner towers and gate is the best preserved part of Aesica that can be seen. Near the south gate a Roman altar found at the fort in the 1930's has been set up and walkers often leave a bit of change behind. From Aesica it is a 3 mile walk to Carvoran or Roman Magnis. The fort is owned by Vindolanda Trust and the Roman Army Museum that the Trust operates is just to the northwest of the fort platform. There is very little remaining of Magnis. The fort was robbed early of its stone as were the vicus buildings to the south and east of the fort. Between the two forts Hadrian's Wall rises back onto the Whin Sill and there are impressive views especially looking south. The remains of the Wall are not very good until Walltown where the facing stones have been replaced. One very good spot for views in all directions is at a turret tower halfway between the two forts. The tower is still standing above my head and on the floor are the remains of the arch for a door into the groundfloor. Enjoy the pictures. I will be taking more of other forts along the Wall for comparison to what Vindolanda has to offer a visitor. Anyone wanting to get a feel for what a fort and vicus look like on a Roman frontier will need to stop at Vindolanda. There is no other location on the Wall that can beat what Vindolanda has to offer.

Friday May 10

It is the end of the week for Area A. What started out slowly due to rain and miserable weather ended with an amazingly rare find that earned a brand new volunteer the first bottle of champagne for this year's dig season. The reason for the champagne is a congratulatory gesture by the archaeologists for a truly top notch find. The bit of painted glass vessel that Linda found today is definitely worth the moniker of top notch. The painted glass is a rare find in Britain, possible even unique to Vindolanda. The style is termed "gladiator glass" because the scene is of gladiators in their kit. A piece of similar size is in the museum at Vindolanda but is from a different vessel. Hopefully more will turn up next week. The glass is dated 215-270 AD. Linda also found an intaglio which I was unable to get a picture of. It is a small gem meant to fit in a ring and is carved such that if you were to impress it into wax you would get the design. The gem is a shade of blue and has a scene of a shepherd, possibly, milking an animal, maybe a sheep or goat.


The next picture is of a melon bead which is a form of glass jewelry. This bead is in half and would have been decently large when whole. It is a beautiful shade of green with bands of darker green running through the glass. Just amazing the quality of craftsmanship by Roman artists 1800 years ago. Similar types of beads were being made in the 1500's and 1600's by the Spanish as trade items to the native Americans. The Spanish were probably using the same ideas as the Romans those hundreds of years before.

May 7 Shifting Dirt

This week started with cleaning out the drain that was found at the end of last week. I spent until afternoon tea excavating and cleaning what I could of the drain. I hopped over the building wall that is closer to the fort and found the drain in a matter of minutes. The picture is what I have done in the last day and a bit of excavating. I am now taking up some flagstones and rubble floor to drop down a quarter of what I have deturfed to the level of the bottom of the drain. Andy, the archaeologist for the area I am working, decided to see if the building I am in now has had previous floors slump into one of the Antonine ditches. This may get all convoluted but I will try to explain. The present vicus buildings are from the third century AD and overlay a few previous forts. The inner area of the fort from the Severan period, 208-212 AD, lies below the buildings. The Antonine fort is under the present fort platform but it was surrounded by three huge ditches for defensive purposes. Over time the vicus buildings built above the ditches (which were filled in and levelled in Roman times)have slumped into the ditches showing a curve in the building foundations. I will get a picture and post so that it may help in understanding what I am trying to say. The point of all of this is that I have more dirt and stone to remove first thing tomorrow before I get to a floor level that may give good dating evidence and help Andy figure out what is going on in the building I am now in.

The second picture is the rest of the crew digging away taking off the top layer from inside the building I was working in just yesterday. The group is now getting into some good archaeology and should get loats of pottery and who knows what else. The area seems to be the domestic part of the building which is usual for the type of building they are in. The building is known as a strip house becuse it has a short end facing the street and then runs back a good 30-40 feet from the street fornt. The best example in the States is a "shotgun" house. In strip house the front, closest to the road is generall a store or commercial area. The rest of the building is generally split into two rooms that are domestic in nature. In the one the group is excavating a round hearth is showing up which is unusual. Generally domestic hearths are square or rectangular and sometimes have flag stones set on end to define the firebox. This one has stones deliberately cut and placed in circular fashion which reminds me of the capping to a round well. That would be interesting to see if the hearth was placed over a filled in well since the stones were already there defining a convenient place for a fire or hearth. Only time will tell. Back in a couple of days.

Freedom!!!-Sorta

I finally have a car. This is my fourth week and I now do not have to rely on the bus or the generosity of fellow diggers to get me around. I can go where I want to go, when I want to go, and stay as long as I like. Starting Monday. Right, Monday. See, I was supposed to get the car Monday but that is a bank holiday in England. So they dropped the car today. Great get my car early and start traveling around, right? Wrong. The car sits in the car park until Monday because that is when the insurance starts. So just a couple more days. The car is a Vauxhall. I think that is English. It is roomy-I've had a seat in it. And it is perfect for the roads around here which are no where near as big or have as many lanes as we have in the States. The main roads here are often two lanes. The motorways are four lanes and are equivalent to something like U.S. highways instead of Interstates. The best part about getting a car here is they drive on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road and I don't have to put anything on my car that says "Watch out, American on the loose!" Look out Northumberland I have a car!!!!.....on Monday.

Friday May 4

Quite a few pictures to update everyone on what went on this past week. In my trench I, with Andy and my trench partner Sophie, have been breaking up rocks that are too large to lift into a wheelbarrow. There have been quite a few. That's me busting up one of these monsters. I found it very cathartic. And painful at times if you hit the rock in the wrong spot. A lot like hitting a baseball wrong with an aluminum bat on a cold morning. Your hands do not thank you, that's for sure.

This is the trench I am working in at the end of Thursday, our last day for the week. Compare this to the post earlier and you can see we moved a lot of stone and rubble! Sophie and I discovered a drain that ran under the floor of the vicus building we were working in. The drain is at the back right side of the excavated section. Drains are great places to find all manner of things. We only just started excavating a section of it on Thursday and found a black burnished ware pot broken but not spread around. Someone back in the lab will be able to put the pot back together and just about the whole thing will be there. That is great because often, when digging, you find bits and pieces of pots but rarely do you find enough of a pot, or cup, or dish to be able to put it back together.

This picture is of Margaret and Fiona learning how to use a laser transit. Andy, the man in charge, is showing them the particulars before they use the range rod and rangefinder to plot in a building and some of the fort wall. Andy does this sorta thing with students and interested volunteers to give them an introduction into the other things that archaeologists do to record an excavated site. It isn't all just digging and bagging. There is some science involved, too.

This picture is of Dave, aka "Super" Dave, Steve, and Bob (left to right in picture) working on a road that separates the building I am working in from the building the ladies are working in west or uphill from me. The guys did a lot of work on that road and have excavated down to the next road surface. Often, when there was a need, existing roads would be raised up to account for the buildings around them being raised. Vindolanda is a very wet site and drainage is a key to being able to live without getting soggy. There are street drains on at least one side of every road and often on both sides of the major roadways. This week upcoming a new group of diggers will be tackling the other half of the road that needs excavating which is behind the guys.

This is a picture of a bit of samian ware (terra Sigilata) which Sophie found. It is very similar to what I found while working in Area B earlier in my season. The picture has the egg and groove sorta band around the top and a wreath decoration and most of the body of a lion or some sort of cat running or jumping. Pieces like this, that have well preserved decoration are helpful in dating the context, or layer, that they are found in. There has been research for decades into the decoration styles and maker's stamps for samian ware, amphorae, and mortaria (special kind of large mixing bowl). The stamps and decorations can sometimes help to date a context to within a decade or two which can be important when nothing else is diagnostic enough to give a date. The second picture is an amphora stamp Steve found in the roadway fill and has "L O A" as the stamp. The last letter is an "A" which is the common way of writing the equivalent of a Roman cursive Capital "A".


This is a picture of the ladies down in "the pit". Starting at the bottom from left to right is Bridget, Liz, Margaret, and Fiona. That's Andy taking a thoughtful break at the back. The ladies are down through successive layers of floors that were part of the late vicus that began around 213 and ended with the beginning of the fourth century (around 300 AD). The muck they were digging is the topmost layer of anaerobic conditions to the Antonine fort ditches which are dated to the 150-160's AD. The ladies found a couple of shoe soles (Vindolanda already has the most leather shoe parts of any Roman site in the world-over 4,000), bits of worked wood, and on the final day a very well preserved wattle fence that may have been a partition within a building, or anything really, since it was chucked into a ditch after its useful life. The next group to get in there may have to wait until the end of our upcoming dig week as it is expected to rain Sunday through Wednesday of this week.

And finally the group photo. Thanks everyone for a great week of digging, stories, and general fun. Let's do it again next year!
bottom (l to r): Sophie, Margaret, Fiona, Dave
Top (l to r): Bob, Andy, Steve, Anna, Liz, Bridget