Vindolanda Day Three - It Rained.

It's England.  Sometimes you dig, sometimes it rains.  Today it rained enough that you shouldn't do archaeology.  You can't trowel mud.  And pushing wheelbarrows up and down slippery surfaces is certainly not ideal.

So we had a lecture in the morning.  Most of you would not find a discussion of how one records layers of archaeology to be interesting but it actually was.  And you need to be organized to make sense of some sites.  Here for instance is the deeper trench next to where I am working.

This is a causeway going over a whopping great fort ditch.  Boulders, clay, a layer of cut turf, and finally stonework. With a site of this complexity things are always sinking into other, earlier things.

Here is a drain leading out of a Roman toilet.  Open sewers were not considered a big deal back then.  I understand that an expert from University came today and took samples.  By using latest DNA tech he hopes to analyze fecal specimens and learn things.  Male/female, country of origin, etc.  

An odd little feature near where I have been excavating.  The little pillars supported an elevated floor.  Hot air would be piped in underneath supplying a very comfortably warm house.  Or in this case, little room.  It's purpose is the subject of speculation.

The forecast is better tomorrow, so I'll be hiking back down the road to the site for what we hope is a full day of interesting stuff.  Along my morning walk the walls grow moss.  No moss grows on me.