Vindolanda 2023 - Day Eight

When you discover something specific - rather than a generic bit of pottery or bone - it is referred to as a "small find".  These are precisely located on the site plan using a sort of surveyor's instrument with gps capability.  You put the point of this "staff of recognition" on the spot of the find and the position is recorded by sighting in the reflective target on the staff.  So, it is not taking a picture of you at all, but it's still fun to strike a bit of a pose.  I told my trenchmates that for this one I was going for "Looking Confidently towards a Great Socialist Future".

My friend Sue does this sort of thing much better.

Anyway, that was yesterday.  Today we dodged showers but were able to put in most of a day working the anaerobic layers circa 100 AD.  I was in a really complicated area and frankly it was a bit stressful.  There were big sections of leather tent panels.  Each tent was designed to shelter eight Roman soldiers.  One tent was made of something like 58 goats and probably smelled like 'em when it got wet!

But the really complicated stuff was all jammed into a small section of the trench hemmed in by stone and fenceposts that had to stay put.

A curved bit of worked wood with a slot cut into it.  The white part is a bit of ash as artifacts in some of the early layers show evidence of burning. A destructive fire?  Part of the demolition process?  Below it is a bit of turned wood.  So, perhaps bits of furniture which would fit with some other "things" found nearby.

The solution is to have the Chief Archaeologist step in.  He's the final word on which stones, posts and so forth can be removed to get at sensitive things like this.

Part of a stool?  Broken lid for a barrel?  And the other item:

Square on one end, milled post on the other.  Maybe a chair leg?

More mysteries tomorrow.  Weather permitting of course.