Vindolanda 2023 - Day Five

 Start of day looking out over the area where bits of early fort buildings are sticking up all over.

Trying to explain what is going on here would be difficult.  But the planks are for us to walk in and out on so as to minimize footprints on the delicate archaeology.  There is a stone fort wall with foundation in the background.  The other stone structures in the middle are felt to be stalls for cavalry horses.  Why?  Because they have urine pits in their floors.  The urine was apparently saved for some industrial purpose.  Given the surviving comments on same, perhaps it was used to brew British beer in Roman times.....

I started the day back by the wall, showing off a cross section of horizontal face and more posts in the lower clay banks.  Not much for finds.  Bones and glass.

Oh, and this really odd bit of pottery.  I'd never seen this style before.  On inquiring I was told that it was a Batavian style.  This presumably means it was brought over when soldiers from modern day Netherlands garrisoned the fort.  It is known that the Ninth Cohort of Batavians were on site between about AD 90-105.

After lunch a shift in location.  Now we were carefully excavating the floor of a building next to one of the horse stalls.  The technique involves using a spade to cut slabs of floor material...

The matted clods of "stuff" are then hand crumbled looking for delicate artifacts.

Not much for finds in our trench.  But a little ways over a wax stylus tablet - and a no doubter this time - came up.  Oh, and near our horse stall we might have the handle of a tool peeking out of the floor.  Perhaps it is a shovel.  Wonder what that got used for?