Ye Gads the weather was nice today. Shirt sleeves and sun screen. Why, one does not even object to the necessary but mundane chore of washing up finds. Doing so in bright sunshine and with good company is pleasant duty.
Of course you find lots of clever bits of pottery, but you are looking for more, for the things that were not identified when they went in the bag. For instance graffiti which we did not encounter today. And oddities, which we did. The iron item on the top appears to be a small, bent knife blade. The pot rim has a series of notches carved in its rim. Boredom? Or a way to indicate ownership?
Other things that come along in the finds bags. This one is obvious.
This one less so. Vindolanda is famous for the immaculately preserved wooden writing tablets. But what was used to write on them? With ink by the way. Well this is the nub of a Roman ink pen.
For reference it once looked like this, a modern reproduction based on examples found here.
And for fun here's a mystery item. Looks like an iron chicken drumstick.
I did get back to excavating in the afternoon, but was mostly doing a bit of demolition work. Even there I had an implausible find, but as we are specifically forbidden to show coins you'll have to trust me on that one.
1 comment:
Half the fun is seeing your working area and the rest is ts discovery! Rock on, Trowelsworthy. Your readers 'understand' it.
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