Day Nine – A find frenzy

Some days, things just go your way. As Day 7 dawned I was still to register a small find, but since then my luck has changed and this morning I hit one of my hottest ever streaks.

The morning walk down to the trench at the start of Day Nine

For me, this was perfect digging weather: 60F/15C and sunny, with wind gusting to 20mph. Plenty warm enough for a T-shirt, as long as you were active. Low, fluffy white clouds cast fleeting shadows over the trench, empty soil buckets went flying, but the midges were grounded. Some brief showers after lunch were annoying, but despite forgetting my rain jacket the rain didn’t dampen the spirits.

Pippa and I began the day trying to finish off the last of our sweep across the 3rd century barrack room. Within a few trowel scrapes of starting, a circle of that characteristic, copper-alloy green appeared, poking just above the surface. It went deep enough that I had to excavate around it for a minute before it finally was revealed: a perfect cylinder, about 3cm across and 1cm high, with an opening on one of the two sides. Andy described it as likely to be a decorative collar, where a wooden shaft of some kind would have been inserted.

The first of three, quick fire finds: a copper alloy collar

Within a few minutes of returning the “staff of distinction” I had a small iron sheet, of unknown function. No sooner had this been logged when my next set of trowel scrapes turned up another object, unfortunately in the class of unmentionables. Three unrelated small finds in less than 20 minutes, and my first soil bucket was still not even half full!

Unfortunately, the mother lode in the southeastern corner of the room was now exhausted and I had to turn my attention to the strange set of wall-like lines of stone running in an east-west direction not far from my oven. None of them seems completely convincing but were apparently created during 4th century remodeling of a partition wall from the 3rd century barrack. My brief was to find and follow the 3rd century barrack wall lying beneath. This turned out to be tougher than expected, but by digging more deeply, multiple, very solid and well-laid stones typically used in 3rd century walls eventually appeared.

Three, 3rd century stones (yellow “3”), with a complex group of 4th century stones on either side

The afternoon was spent tackling “my” oven. Once the large, 4th century flagstone was removed it was very clear that this was indeed an oven: extensive areas of burned clay lay beneath. Within the burned material I also had another small find – a copper alloy cylinder similar to the first, but hollow, narrower in diameter and longer than the first.

After extensive brushing of the entire room, as well as tidying the wall around the oven, it was time for Marta to make a 3D model of the space. I also made my own model, which is available here. Some sampling of the burned material still needs to be done tomorrow, along with further troweling of some new stones within the oven that emerged today.

The rain-spattered oven exposed, although before all the cleaning was finished

Day Eight – Baking again

The warmth of week two persisted today, although only after a chilly and thick mist cleared during the morning. Things heated up properly late in the day, though…

A beautifully decorated piece of Crambeck ware drying in the sun after cleaning, found by Willow adjacent to “our” barrack last week

The goal for the day was clear, follow the floor all the way to the southern end of the barrack room. Pippa joined me in this task and quickly picked up a couple of nice small finds, one of which I can show: a tiny, green glass bead that would probably have been threaded onto a thin, copper alloy bracelet. I also had one a little later, a small, curved piece of copper alloy that will be difficult to identify; Marta labeled the small-find ziploc bag for it as “Cu alloy dufus”. I’ve shown both below, along with a personal altar from elsewhere in the trench that caused a big gathering of diggers shortly before noon.

Pippa’s glass bead

My copper alloy “dufus”

Wileke/Craig’s personal altar

Progress was slow, partly because the clear stone floor mostly disappeared which made me more cautious, but also because its replacement was a compacted, tan-colored clay that required some hard, wrist-sapping troweling to get through. By the afternoon the sun was out in force, again making me glad to be in shorts; the finds also heated up.

One find of mine can’t be described here, another from elsewhere was a thing of beauty that I’ll wager will be featured in the video summary this weekend. The last one I found just before digging ended for the day – part of a lock plate. The intact plate would have had an opening for the key, with the lock mechanism itself hidden behind it. I might have discarded it as simply a thin piece of shale, except for the rivet in one corner.

Metal (copper alloy?) lock plate

However, the find of the day for me was structural. As I was trying to finish up the floor level near the barrack wall I tossed a couple of small, loose stones on top the wall and tidied the loose soil beneath them. One relatively thin, flat stone appeared, then another, followed by a third and each was set into a curved ledge in the wall. I’d also noted an area of burning in the clay just below, so it was clear I had to call Andy over.

An oven, set into the 3rd century barrack wall, with an area of burned soil nearby

He took one look and confirmed it was an oven, before inviting me over to one of the barrack blocks in the northwest quadrant. There was an oven he’d excavated, years before, set into the wall in just the same way (below). We’ll investigate my new oven further tomorrow, with some environmental samples from the burned area hidden below the later flagstone now lying next to it. A hot day indeed.

A 3rd century barrack oven, built into the wall, in the (previously consolidated) northwest quadrant of the last stone fort

Day Seven – Seventh heaven

I’ve spoken before about the pleasure of finding and chasing a well-established floor. To my surprise, this turned out to be another of those days. Day 7 was also very satisfying because my hunch about the wall turned out to be true…

Marta and Inge, one of the Saxion students, yesterday afternoon

The day started on a positive note. Before I could even wield a trowel I ran my filled-doorway idea past Andy and he was unequivocal: “100% a blocked doorway!”. However, I had to put further investigation of it temporarily on hold – the first order of business was to remove a raised area of non-floorish-looking rubble, as well as probe a potential gap in the possible barrack wall. The “gap” proved to be just that, and with further work exposing more of it by Pippa and Leanne, it’s looking unlikely to be a 3rd century barrack end wall after all; instead perhaps a later, more ramshackle partition erected in the 4th century.

Shortly before lunch I was finally ready to begin tackling the “doorway”. After removing some obviously disconnected stones within the presumed opening and scraping within and around it, pretty quickly it became clear I had happened upon a proper floor, made of either closely packed river stone or slightly larger, flatter material:

The doorway exposed: original 3rd century wall outlined in yellow, two remaining stones used to block the doorway in the 4th century (or later) marked with a white “B”, stones on-end, packed in clay sealing the closed doorway on the street side circled in blue

The floor crossing into the doorway means it must have been in use when the doorway was open; perhaps there was a problem from water washing in from the street, which is higher than the floor in this building, so it was blocked off. You can see in the image above a series of relatively thin stones, set on end just outside the doorway; these outer stones were packed with a gray clay that would have aided in keeping water out.

I was able to track the floor gradually further and further away from the doorway – ultimately perhaps a couple of meters – helped by how well packed together the stones were as well as the sandy/loose/small pebble texture of the material lying immediately on top of it. The image below captures the scene at the end of the day; a little drizzle that started during tea break helped to make the stones “pop” in the image, but didn’t cause any time to be lost (again).

End of the day view

The satisfaction of finding the floor and confirming the doorway hypothesis was amplified by logging my first small find of the period; nothing particularly special, but unfortunately in the category I can’t describe further.

A couple of other notable events for the day: first, we had what I’m guessing will be the top small find of the period, and among the best of the year, but you’ll have to wait to hear from the Trust about it. Suffice it to say that it will end up in the museum in the future. Second, we heard a little about what Gary has been up to at Magna, with a post by the Trust on social media announcing the first shoes have appeared from the anaerobic material in the vallum. This is spectacular news, indicating that the promise of leather and wood preservation at Magna is being realized. Here he is, no doubt having long forgotten what he left behind at Vindolanda:

The first leather shoe fragments (just the soles) from Magna, announced by the Vindolanda Trust on social media today. Both are of a size that could only have been worn by children

Day Six – An end to the barrack?

This has been an exceptionally wet 18 months in the UK. Both the Magna and Vindolanda digging teams have lost an unusually large number of days due to rain, in addition to suffering from below normal temperatures. Fortunately for us, period 6 has bucked the trend for the rain, but until today had not seen much need for ice creams.

View of the site at tea-time

With a full day of sun forecast, along with 22C/72F for the high, it was time to bring out the shorts. Either nobody else thought we would need them, or they were simply happy being hot, but I was certainly glad of mine today.

With my new trench-mate, high school student Felix, we began the day delving into the area Gary and I deturfed on Friday and by lunchtime had uncovered a plethora of stones. Several look to be a continuation of the 3rd century barrack wall (probably also reused for the 4th century building that inherited this space), whereas others look likely to form the northern end of the barrack:

Barrack wall extended (yellow) and a possible back wall appearing (white dashed line)

Unfortunately, the possible end wall remains partially under the grass and Marta is reluctant for us to deturf any further north before the mid-season break. However, we may be able to lower the level of our floor and expose the southern face (if indeed it is the end wall) before period 6 is over.

An intriguing aspect of the new barrack wall stones is the possibility we have a doorway that was filled in during the 4th century remodel. This is suggested (in my imagination at least) by the straight line of stones running across it, marked in the image below; hopefully I’ll have a chance to explore the western side of my “doorway” another course deeper and test my theory.

Possible filled doorway in the barrack wall. The ends of three stones (blue “D”) are aligned across the wall in a way that’s suggestive of them originally being facing stones lining a doorway when they were first laid down in the 3rd century

After tea it was time for some more deturfing, both for me, to the east over the 4th century street and for Leanne and Pippa, to the west as far as the fences delimiting the entire trench. This should please my most anal readers, because we now have a somewhat squiggly, but ostensibly straight edge of deturfing running the full width of the trench. I had time to start the lengthy process of cleaning the small cobbles that form the road outside the barrack; finishing that job will be first on the docket tomorrow morning.

No major finds to report for Felix and I, other than a very nice and substantial pot lid. I’m still awaiting my chance to hold the “staff of distinction”, with luck that will change soon…?

An unusually fine, stone pot lid uncovered by Felix

Day Five – finally finds and feeling the floor

Some of my most satisfying days in the trench have not come from bagging small finds. This is a statement unlikely to come from a novice digger who, myself included when I started in 2010, is typically much more focused on uncovering bling, especially coins.

Other than the single large flagstone that was already partially visible when we moved trenches, the original 4th century floor for our building has proven to be rather elusive. Although our sea of small and mid-size stone could be it – despite their rough and very jumbled arrangement – a floor that had seen any long-term use would normally have much more compacted soil around the stones that would be detectable during troweling.

The plan for the day was to complete another sweep across the sea, lowering some high spots and cleaning away excess soil around the stones in various areas to see if a clearer floor might emerge. A change to a darker soil ensued in multiple places, along with the arrival of more frequent and better quality pottery, as well as a few small finds. A nice black burnished ware rim, a spindle whorl and a lead plug were the best of the bunch.

One other object merits a mention. Even among experienced diggers the occasional item appears under the trowel that falls into a gray area: not obviously a Roman artifact but weirdly shaped enough to seem non-natural. One such showed up for me after lunch: cylindrical, of a cream-coloured material and with marks that appeared to have been scraped into it. On one side some iron-stone was fused to it, adding to its strange appearance:

Mystery non-find that generated some amusement this afternoon

After some brief back and forth about it with Gary – which included some unprintable suggestions as to its possible function – I somewhat reluctantly decided to offer it up to Marta for a “keep it/bin it” decision. She deferred to Andy, who jokingly played along with the humorous, suggested function, but then confirmed it as nothing.

However, around the same time I had that moment of satisfaction when the sound of the trowel changes along with it meeting very solid resistance, a combination indicating a large and therefore probably structural stone. Because it was perfectly flat and parallel to the surface it had to have been part of the 4th century floor. Soon thereafter, while scraping close by to see if the flagstone had any neighbours, I stumbled upon half a dozen pieces of iridescent black rock that Andy confirmed was coal. Given the lump of slag I found in the same area on day four it’s tempting to start drawing conclusions about a function for the building, but we really need much more evidence. The coal was bagged separately and will be sent to an expert for further analysis.

Coal in the floor and a beautiful new flagstone

By tea-break we had completed our third sweep through the trench. One more stone from the 3rd century barrack wall emerged, extending it to within a foot of the current trench edge and showing the end of the barrack block probably still lies hidden under the grass.

The barrack wall continues growing (new stone with yellow “W”; four stones possibly displaced from the wall marked with red “O”

Given that it’s too early to probe down fully into the 3rd century layers, the logical next step was to push the trench another couple of meters northward. Gary and I therefore spent the entire post-teabreak hour deturfing and doing first clean-up of another 2 x 5m section. Although I’ll reap the benefits of this hard graft on Monday, Gary unfortunately won’t, as he is off to spend a week at Magna. However, news of anaerobic deposits there, already producing leather and wood, means he may quickly forget about his former trench at Vindolanda.

The newly-expanded trench at the close on day five

Day Four – Good stones and bad stones

For me, a dominant aspect of the first year of each of the last three SMCs at Vindolanda is a jumble of stones everywhere you look. This reflects a combination of at least three different processes.

First, the site was most likely unoccupied for roughly a millennium until farming resumed in the area in the 17th Century, allowing plenty of time for the collapse of most buildings (but not all – the bathhouse roof remained intact into at least the middle of the 18th century). Second, many of the best remaining stones were pilfered by these returning farmers to build houses and field boundaries, leaving behind a scatter of rejects due to either their small size or irregular shape. Third, all remaining stones within reach of the plough blade were knocked about during a couple of hundred years of farming. No wonder then, that once the turf is peeled back a daunting morass of stone greets the eye.

A bounty of barrows at closing time

Even after intrepid volunteers and their supervisors have begun to make sense of this jumble, the Romans are wont to make the job more difficult by repeatedly rearranging buildings and erecting new ones.

Another dry, warm day saw Gary and I (later joined by Julian from the eight-strong, Saxion University student crew) take our rectangle down a further six inches or so. In my half this revealed a darker surface of soil but still interspersed with mostly small stones; on Gary’s, larger stones were more in evidence but not yet forming any obvious structure (I forgot to get a full-trench view that includes his side).

I had better luck with further pursuit of the 3rd century barrack wall that forms the eastern boundary of our section, but not in the way I expected. The four new stones I identified yesterday turned out to have no siblings, but the opposite face (ie: on the eastern side) proved to have another, lower course formed by at least three more stones (below). A jumble of larger, closely packed stones appeared at the northern end of this wall; proper understanding of their function will probably require us to go significantly deeper.

Barrack wall extended by three more stones (marked with black “W”) and a currently uninterpretable stone jumble around the wall’s northern end (yellow oval)

Finds were few, perhaps a few dozen pottery sherds, a nice lump of slag and half a dozen nails; but in the same 59 context in an adjacent area Carey had a substantial piece of mortarium that I showed off to several school groups (below). The last day before the welcome weekend break looks to be dry again, so I’m hoping we can finish on a high note and lowering the surface again tomorrow will provide some answers,

A selection of finds from today: mortarium sherd, ball of slag and a piece of amphora

Day Three – Walls going and coming

This was a day of transition for Gary and I, as we started in the rampart building, before finding a new home on the opposite side of the trench after lunch.

First, I need to demolish one hypothesis from yesterday: the idea our wall was built as a retainer for the rampart. As we got started for the day Andy pointed out the telltale signs of a filled in hole within it, where the stones in multiple courses are butted up to each other rather than being bonded properly via a staggered arrangement (below). This must almost certainly have originally been a door – something that would not be there if its function was simply to support the rampart – because there was also a likely threshold stone still in place.

A likely filled-in doorway in our wall, with a large, flat stone as part of the original threshold (blue letter T) and butted stones marking its southern side between yellow arrows

Thankfully, the midges were nowhere to be seen today, so we could focus completely on following our jumble of stones further on each side of the wall’s end. It seems a shame to compress more than two hours of work into one sentence, but by noon it was clear the wall had truly petered out. As I explored further east it became clear there was no organization to all the new stones I uncovered (yellow area below); Gary had more luck going westward, finding many closely packed small stones that clearly formed the edge of the intervallum road (blue).

Marta admiring our morning’s work, as we wrapped up our stint in Eric Birley’s Theodosian rampart building

After lunch we were moved about 30m west, into a likely 4th C building that early indications suggest had a commercial function, with some very well-worn flagstones in the floor and an entry directly onto the street.

Our new home, a 4th C building (blue circle). Image is cropped from one posted by the Vindolanda Trust on Monday June 17. The deturfed area is centre-top, outlined in yellow

By day’s end we had deturfed a four by three meter area that Andy hoped might encompass much of the rest of this building, cleared all remaining ploughed topsoil and began troweling into the building. Finds were scarce – a single sherd of mortarium rim for me – but Gary logged a very corroded iron blade from a knife or chisel. However – emphasizing yet again the palimpsest nature of the site – I managed to reveal four facing stones from the 3rd C barrack on which the later building sat, marked in the image below (the 4th C wall was assumed to be laid on top of it, on almost the same alignment, based on the stones uncovered on the other side of the entry way).

Before…

… and after.

Four stones (marked W) from the wall of the 3rd C barrack below

A beautiful walk in the glorious evening sun yielded two more delightful small finds: a family of stoats (or weasels, hard to tell without seeing their tail) in a stone wall, and a deer with two fawns. Reminders of why I love to come to this part of the world; it’s not just the archaeology.

Day Two – Chasing midges and walls

There is nothing more irritating than a swarm of midges. These tiny insects are enough to reduce diggers made of stronger stuff than myself to a gibbering wreck, their bites producing a red welt and an itch far beyond any normal expectation. Diggers have even been known to exit the trench in a panic simply to escape their clutches, never to be seen again.

The trench this morning, with Gary the distant figure in the centre background. Barcombe Hill on the horizon.

The morning session began in humid, cool and windless conditions – perfect for Culicoides impunctatus to wreak havoc. As someone who seems to be particularly attractive to the Highland midge, I spent a good portion of the pre-lunch session cursing their presence and attempting to rid my forehead, ears and arms of the annoying beasties.

The first order of business was to confirm where exactly we were digging. My memory was indeed faulty; Marta patiently reminded Gary and I we were exploring a structure that had been dug and subsequently back-filled by Eric Birley (Andrew’s grandfather) in 1930 and described by him as Theodosian in date (late 4th century). This evening I was able to find his report of this work and discovered that he had been investigating whether there was any evidence for an additional East gate, north of the one first described by Hedley. Below are a pair of images that I believe are matching; at left is part of a drone image posted by The Trust yesterday on their Facebook page, at right is what looks to be the same location in Eric Birley’s drawing from 1930. The yellow circled area is our remaining sliver of backfill, as it was at the end of period 5, the blue is what I think is roughly the same spot in the 1930 drawing.

Drone image (which is copyright Vindolanda Trust) of where Gary and I are digging (left) and what I think is the same location on Eric Birley’s map in his 1930 publication

By around 1:30 our rectangle of backfill was gone, revealing a more compacted, gray layer beneath, level with eastern side of the trench. However, with no clear feature appearing within, Marta suggested we turn to the rather forlorn-looking wall just to its south and trace that northward into our sliver; does it continue into/under it?

End of the day, our backfill sliver gone and some intriguing stones revealed at the end of the adjacent wall.

The immediate answer seems to be yes, although all that remains appear to be the foundation stones, including a rubble base layer containing some reused Antonine period, yellow sandstone, as well as some substantial, flat stones on the western side of the wall that look somewhat like the capping stones for a drain. So, what structure was this wall part of? Possibly supporting the rampart of the immediately adjacent fort wall? However the story can’t be that simple, because we uncovered a wider array of packed stone extending beyond the “wall” on the eastern side. Hopefully we’ll be able to sort this out tomorrow. A little pottery and a lot of animal bone filled our finds bag to the brim – almost all from within the backfill – thanks in no small part to good luck with the weather and a full day of digging.

Day One – Beginning again

There is something reassuring about sticking to a routine. In my case that manifests itself in a myriad of ways, not least of which is in the annual pilgrimage to Vindolanda in June or July. Part of that now well-worn ritual is to walk the four mile loop from Steel Rigg along the Wall as far as Hot Bank Farm, then back through the wildflower-filled fields just north of the Whin Sill. My older sister joined me on completing this task, on a typically brisk, Northumberland early summer morning yesterday. The only jarring note came from passing the forlorn stump of the Sycamore Gap tree, cut down last autumn in a shocking act of vandalism.

Looking west along the Whin Sill, with Hadrians Wall just visible on above Crag Lough

A pair of swans and their cygnets on Crag Lough

The first day of period six is behind us. The morning was taken up by CEO of the Trust, Andy Birley, taking the team on a grand tour of the site, encompassing the full sequence of forts and major events in their construction. Although this meant some discomfort from delaying the digging, it was nonetheless an inspiring way to start and even the most experienced volunteer would have learned something new.

In the temple to Julius Dolichenus, within the last stone fort at Vindolanda

Another well-established tradition is the some de-turfing on the first day of a new period, particularly when this falls within the early seasons of a new five-year SMC (scheduled monument consent, or official approval to dig on a nationally-recognized site, from Historic England). Removal of about 6-8 inches of topsoil is a necessary prelude to getting into the Roman levels below, but it would be fair to say is not most diggers favourite activity. To my great surprise, only about half the team were assigned to this task, not including yours truly.

Deturfing in progress this afternoon; a late period, mystery circular stone structure in the foreground

Instead I was assigned, along with volunteer Gary, to the interior of a late 3rd C decurion’s quarters, alongside the East wall of the last stone fort. Our task was to remove a remaining three-foot wide, two-foot deep sliver of backfill left from earlier stone-robbing activity (note: the details here may well have been mangled due to inattentiveness on my part, if so I’ll correct any errors tomorrow). We made a good start, hacking through a loose mixture of top soil and rubble, tempered with a significant number of large animal bones, several substantial nails and pottery sherds from multiple periods. Some heavy drizzle briefly threatened to put a stop to proceedings, but most of the day was spent under a mix of sun and clouds.

Gary getting started on our first assignment, removing the last remaining sliver of disturbed material within a decurion’s apartment (outlined in yellow)