Something of an odd day. We had acceptable weather but had to stop early due to a site wide power failure. Oh well, I guess given the choice of quitting early and being dry, versus quitting early and being drenched with cold rain, this is preferable.
You often learn about the history of a place by what you find there. Sometimes you learn by what you don't find. Although the area we were on today saw hundreds of years of human activity, the main thing going on at this particular level seems to have been demolition and abandonment. As wooden forts got decayed, or as the military situation got better or worse, Vindolanda saw structures knocked down and replaced quite often.
In our area it looks as if the Centurions in charge of this process did a complete clean up. We are finding very little in the way of pottery or metal artifacts. Then the wooden buildings were probably set afire. Wood in various phases of charring is common, at least down to the soggy layers. Here you can see the tapered end of a post where it was hammered into the ground.
A full day of crumbling stuff into a wheelbarrow and my only metal finds were a few nails!
Weirdly some fragments of a woven basket came up. The sorry remains were packed off for conservation but a few fragments ended up in my bucket.
My favorite finds of the day aren't really artifacts but they do tell a story. This area must have sat abandoned for a while. Home to squirrels and similar critters. In one area we found a batch of perfectly preserved hazel nuts that the new inhabitants of Vindolanda tucked away in an odd corner!
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