With robots done it is time to look ahead. I'm off to excavate at Vindolanda in about six weeks. Oddly the first real find of the 2020 season has already been made....and quite by accident.
There is a stream that runs past the site. Of course the fort is built on a hill, and logically stuff rolls down or is tossed down said hill over the centuries. Well, in January a fellow clearing a fallen tree in the embankment came across this tangled in the roots:
It is a broken section of a Roman altar!
How did it get there? Was it chucked off the fort battlement when the Empire went Christian under Constantine the Great? Did it knock around a while getting reused as part of assorted Dark Age and Medieval structures? That is impossible to say.
But I have a theory about how it got so worn down and eroded. I have it on very good authority that stream levels vary on a regular basis. Something to do with volunteers walking to the site along the road adjacent to the stream after having had several cups of tea (British diggers) or coffee (Americans) to fortify themselves for an active day of work!
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