Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men. I was expecting to regale you with cooking-related puns and a florid description of a beautifully completed section through my oven but, alas, it remained untouched despite a full day in the trench.
A cool but mostly sunny day on site; a view up the Stanegate road from the Birley Excavation Centre
The cause of this unfortunate situation is that the jumble of stones Dolores uncovered on day one – to Marta and Andy’s surprise – eventually spread for several meters in both directions. There is no discernible pattern or structure in them (other than a nice drain on its northern edge) and the stones themselves are a poor quality mix of sizes and random shapes – including mudstones – that would be completely unsuited for building walls. It seems highly likely now that they were thrown in to fill a low area before being capped with clay, during construction of the first (wooden) Antonine period fort.
Andy going over the plan for the morning with Pippa, who is standing in the midst of the stone jumble. A line of stones that seem to form one edge of a drain is marked in blue
The plan is to get these cleaned up as much as possible, ready for recording by 3D photogrammetry by early tomorrow and then we can finally dispatch them to the spoil heap. The anaerobic layers begin just below them, so it’s been frustrating to all concerned that we’ve had to spend so much time and effort troweling around them over the last few days; by the end of today there were six of us involved in the task.
The “stone-field of death” at the end of the day, with my oven patiently waiting in the wings
Fortunately, the fill around the stones was peppered with enough pottery to keep you on your toes (see below for a couple of examples), as well as a nice small find for me that’s unfortunately in the category I can’t describe further. The P7 team as a whole had its best day for finds so far, with the beautifully preserved knife reported on the Trust’s FB page (my own photo of it below) as well as a comb and an ink writing tablet. Hopefully a taste of things to come for us too, as we enter the anaerobic beneath its heavy rock blanket, possibly as early as tomorrow.
A couple of my pottery finds from among the stones: a large fragment of black-burnished ware from a carinated bowl; a sherd from a plate – a form I haven’t seen before at Vindolanda. Also, the knife found in a period three context and posted on FB by the Trust earlier today
As I boarded the plane in Boston just five days ago, the six weeks of drought at Vindolanda were very much on my mind. The extreme dryness of the trench was already beginning to delay opening of new anaerobic levels, so I was desperately looking for signs of rain in the forecast. How things have changed.
Morning view of the site through the window of the Birley excavation centre
After a dry start the drizzle gradually thickened and by lunch break it was clear that would be it for the day – the bleak afternoon forecast as well as an increasingly mushy trench and treacherous barrow run to the spoil heap put paid to any further digging.
A busy trench shortly before the drizzle this morning
So, what of my oven and its “iron spit”? It turned out to be a rather anticlimactic morning as the extension of the iron cone was shown to be an illusion, and the clear perimeter stones I’d found on the north side became a jumbled mess on its southern edge. The voids did continue beneath some of the stones, however. Perhaps the oven is lying on a bed of stones that were scattered around to level the area when the next fort (I think the Antonine, first stone fort) was constructed? Tomorrow the plan is for me to do a vertical section through the middle of the heavily reddy-brown, burned area, so a clearer picture should emerge then.
The oven, surrounded by a maze of disorganized stone
The afternoon was not wasted, with almost the entire team paying a visit to Magna, for an in-depth tour of the site. The brand new excavation of the second Roman fort in the Vindolanda Trust’s portfolio begins on Monday, but the freshly-minted excavation team of Rachel and Franki have already made a start, opening up a sizeable trench over the anticipated remains of milecastle 46.
The view west from Magna fort, on this wet, windy afternoon
The rain – carried on a steady 20 mph wind – buffeted us throughout, but they took us through the full five-year plan for the excavation: moving from the milecastle, across the vallum, over a possible (previously unknown) Roman road, a likely well, finishing at the headquarters building within the fort itself. I’ll have more to say about it later, when I participate in the second fortnight of digging there. For now, here’s a gallery of images from the 90 minute tour.
Yes, I know, the title for today’s post is a little odd. But bear with me, all will be revealed. First, clearing up something from yesterday, here’s a shot of one of the new ground monitoring stations, just beside our trench, as we got going this morning:
Environmental monitoring station inside the fort
The Vindolanda CEO, Andrew Birley, often refers to there being a microclimate around the site and I’ve learned over the years that he has apparently secret – and uncannily accurate – sources of weather information.
It seemed this morning however that, no matter your source, the prospect for any digging was remote: the radar showed an enormous and multicoloured band of showers moving into the north of England from Scotland. Although it was dry when my sister and I reached the excavation centre at 9:30, the low clouds began depositing enough rain that Marta made the call to delay the start, to see if it would blow though. This meant that instead of getting wet, we sat in the dry of the Birley Centre, getting a half-hour talk on contexts, pottery collection and finds processing. Luckily this seemed to appease the rain gods: the precipitation eased off, allowing us to start around 10 and to our astonishment we made it through the rest of the day unscathed, despite the dark, low clouds and occasional periods of light drizzle.
By lunchtime Max had made progress revealing the small oven at the edge of our zone and Emmy and I had made it most of the way back to the larger oven at the opposite corner (above). The area I exposed included a broad expanse of iron pan, visible above as a rust-coloured area to the right of the shoe-shaped stone that I initially imagined as a gravestone when its edge first appeared.
And finally, your reward for reading this far is to find out where the bizarre title comes from.
After lunch I reached the northern edge of the oven and was tasked with some furtling (“to gently delve; to probe or rummage tentatively”, according to the WordSense dictionary) to define the outside walls of the big oven. Almost immediately, my knee knocked loose a small, reddish stone that had been left embedded in the soil surface by the period 6 team. Upon picking it up – expecting to simply toss it in the barrow – I found it was much heavier than a stone should be and must actually be a substantial hunk of iron, with a very non-natural, pine cone-like shape: pointy at one end and rather flat at the other. Marta took some time to decide it was eligible to be recorded as a small find, even though it wasn’t clear that such a corroded item could ever be identified as anything in particular. She jokingly nicknamed it “the pine cone of doom” and, with a smile, asked me to produce some better looking finds.
The iron “pine cone of doom”
However, the story became more compelling soon thereafter, when more troweling revealed that the object continued vertically into the heart of the oven: a matching iron circle sat in a small depression directly below the cone’s find spot. Could this be the end of a much larger iron post, perhaps supporting a spit? It’s too early to make any definitive statement about its function; hopefully tomorrow will reveal more.
And finally, the voids.
The oven at the end of the day. Outlined in blue are some large stones with voids beneath them that were exposed by the period 6 team; in yellow are the stones with voids at the opposite end I found today; the arrow points to the continuation of the “pine cone of doom”
My furtling revealed a promising set of substantial, connected stones that seem to define the beginnings of a proper outside wall for the oven. But, to my surprise, the narrow gap between the last pair disappeared into blackness beneath them. Voids like that typically don’t exist; my only previous experience with them was in 2013, when my son, Sean discovered one, revealing that we were digging in a dreaded “robber trench”. This occurs when someone in the modern period (probably 18th or 19th century in the case of Vindolanda) has robbed an archaeological site for its stone, dumping the rubble back into the hole. I hadn’t noticed that at the other end of the oven a set of stones had been exposed by the previous excavation team, also with voids underneath. This suggests that the main body of a large oven stretches between the two ends, with the base of the main cavity some distance further down. With luck I should be able to solve these mysteries tomorrow.
I close with a shot of a drystone wall near Vindolanda, taken on a stroll this evening, with a light drizzle still coming down.
My 2023 season got underway with a classic mix of Northumbrian early summer weather: bright sunshine this morning at 8, a couple of torrential bursts of rain during the morning, followed by a breezy but mostly sunny afternoon.
Our home for the next two weeks: the southwest quadrant of the last stone fort, as seen from the road beneath Barcombe Hill, yesterday evening
Even for experienced diggers, keeping track of the series of nine forts built on the site is a challenge. I’ve posted about this before, trying to make sense of the dates of each one, where they were located and which auxiliaries occupied them. However, knowing all that only gets you so far. Often, what you’d really like to know is the date and function of the consolidated buildings visible on site today, which are an eclectic mix from the later stone forts and their associated civilian settlements.
Marta, giving us the extended, first day introduction to the buildings and history of the site
In the past, volunteers would get a smattering of this knowledge imparted during the first day induction, but the more immediate focus was more on the task at hand: which area have you been assigned to and what’s the archaeological goal for it. This morning, after the standard introductions and health & safety briefing, Marta took us on a much more detailed introduction to the history of the site, including the process needed to dig here via the approval of a Scheduled Monument Consent. Her tour was very helpful in getting the big picture, but it was hard not to keep glancing at my watch and wish I was already digging!
Her talk also took in the dramatic effect climate change is having on the site. Over the last half decade or so the Trust has seen a noticeable decline in the level of preservation of wood and leather within the uppermost anaerobic layers, thanks to changes in rainfall patterns as well as the higher average temperature. To monitor this they recently installed three stations – in the vicus and fort – that use buried probes to continuously log moisture and pH of the ground. The data collected should strengthen their next SMC, helping to recover these precious artifacts before they are lost forever. I’ll include a photo of one of the stations in tomorrow’s post.
Inside the trench at the end of Marta’s morning review
Shortly before lunch we learned our fate: I was assigned, along with Dolores, Emmy, Max & Michael, to an area adjacent to the left hand image above (in front of Marta); this is currently excavated roughly to period 5 level, 120-160 AD. The area contains three different ovens, outlined in red below and our goal is remove the 6-12 inch clay cap that separates us from the anaerobic layers beneath, which are from the early wooden forts, 85-120 AD. Marta is standing at the ultimate level we’re hoping to reach in the image above, surrounded by some beautifully preserved lines of wooden partition walls from those earliest structures.
Our mini-team’s area outlined in blue, ovens to be left intact shown in red
After some bursts of briefly heavy rain during Marta’s intro we had a largely dry afternoon under mostly sunny skies and cooled by a healthy breeze. A combination of mattocks and spades got Max and I through the first six to nine inches of clay over a decent size segment, thankfully now somewhat softened by some precious rain over the last few days.
Finds were very scarce, with the odd heavily corroded nail, a handful of pottery sherds, some glass and a bone fragment. A nice piece of rim from a mortarium was perhaps the pick of the bunch in our finds bag by the end of the day. A heavily-encrusted piece of iron was a close call as a possible small find for me (perhaps a key?), but was deemed too corroded to log.
A nice fragment of mortarium and a heavily corroded piece of undetermined iron that wasn’t a nail, but what was it?
We already had our first visit from a film crew, this time from the British Museum. As well as (mercifully brief) regular filming we had a drone buzzing overhead; thankfully it won’t be as intense as the France 5 filming was last year, they’re scheduled to be with us only one more day. However, tomorrow’s forecast looks pretty dire, so we may not see much more of them.
Overall, a great start to the fortnight; the end of day view of our area is shown below. Let’s hope the anticipated deluge doesn’t take out the whole day tomorrow.
On the eve of another dive into the trench, I’m stepping back for a moment to reflect on what it is that keeps me – and many other multi-year diggers – coming back for more.
Fields north of Vindolanda yesterday evening, including Hotbank Farm on the horizon, along the line of Hadrian’s Wall.
It’s clear by now that Vindolanda has a tight grip on me. This will be my eleventh season coming here, having started in 2010, and the pull to return has not diminished over those years. So what is it that keeps bringing me back?
The photo above explains part of the story. The Vindolanda site, and the Hadrian’s Wall region in general, is simply beautiful country. Spending two weeks here is not a hardship, with magnificent views into the distance in all directions. Every year I try to take time for pauses during the digging to take in the scenery, adding weekend hikes up to the Wall at Steel Rigg or evening strolls up to the highest point of the Wall at Winshield Crag.
Three more of my favourite finds: a Samian bowl fragment with a makers mark, a copper alloy bell shaped stud, and some iron pieces found together that may (with some imagination) perhaps have formed part of a helmet or armour
There’s no denying the thrill of that moment of discovery, as a Roman artifact appears beneath the trowel. The variety of the finds you can recover on any given day is enormous – as is obvious from my top ten – and further in the trio above that didn’t make that list. The level of preservation varies greatly, but the conditions at Vindolanda allow for some of the finds to be wonderfully complete, despite being buried for nearly two millennia.
The remains of structures within the fort (or the vicus beside it) can be just as satisfying as “small find bling”, such as the well-worn 4th century stone barrack floor and wall I helped uncover in 2021 (below).
Another element that explains the persistent lure of this place for me is the camaraderie of being part of a team of volunteers and professional archaeologists, all focused on this common goal. Sharing the excitement of this amazing site with visitors – especially children – is another piece of the motivational puzzle.
But what about the huge number of other volunteers that sign up every year? Are their motivations to return the same as mine? Marta Alberti, the Deputy Director of Excavations, is somehow finding the time to complete a PhD, with a focus on this very topic.
After the wheelbarrows were parked for the six-month winter break, she led a Zoom workshop with thirty of us in December 2021 to get to the bottom of this question. A handful of the group – including yours truly – then further volunteered to sort through the transcript with her, culminating in a manuscript that is now in the final stages of completion; with luck we’ll see it published later this year. I won’t spill all the beans here, but suffice it to say that volunteer motivations are far from monolithic.
Another digging fortnight kicks off tomorrow and the omens are good. The near-rainless month that has slowed progress into the anaerobic depths beneath the south western quadrant of the last stone fort is finally over, with thunder showers forecast for this afternoon, and some lighter showers expected during the week. Excitement is undiminished and I’ll be trying to maintain a daily update post. With the promise of time in the deepest layers of the site, who knows what may lie in store.
Digging Vindolanda 