Gone Digging, 2012

Posting will be spotty for a couple of days as I set out for the annual haj to dig at the Roman site of Vindolanda.  We-my brother and his wife are coming this year-are wheels up at 3pm tomorrow, and it usually takes 24 to 36 hours of travel, sleep, and fussing about with UK electrical outlets to get back in touch with the internet. 

Once that happens expect daily posts.

This is actually how I got started in blogging, as I was sending a daily email from the diggings to the folks back home.  And although Detritus of Empire often covers issues related to current events, for the next two weeks it will be literal, a report of my digging about in stuff the Romans left behind, or lost.

What will be found?  Who knows.  This year the digging will be out in the vicus, the settlement outside the fort.  The doings of the Roman Army got some mention in surviving histories.  The activities of (and we are making some assumptions here) tavern keepers and trollops and slaves and blacksmiths are mostly lost to the written record.

In the fort there is at least semblance of order.  Sure, the later builders were a bit shoddy, and walls that started out straight often buckled and broke over earlier layers of ditches and walls.  But things at least looked straight, and corners were right angles.

Out in the vicus all bets are off.  Walls, roads, pits are willy nilly.  It is confusing and so very enigmatic.

But I think I can safely assume that there will be reports covering:




The weather.  Here, two years ago, my brother contemplates cobbles and muck.

The locals.  In this part of the world the ratio of sheeps to peeps is rather high.

Tales of the odd.  Here one of the Roman re-enactors arrives for the day.  Not sure how he got the spear into that little car...

So, off to adventures.  Back in touch when I get boots to the no doubt muddy ground.