Vindolanda 2023 - Day Three

A day of wind, sun and T-shirt warmth.  The differing colors are from different years.  With a crew of largely veterans they run quite the spectrum.

I started the day in the same spot as yesterday.  An interesting place actually.  In the Antonine Period this was a main road inside the fort with some very swanky buildings along it.  This would be say, 180 AD.  Then the whole fort gets abandoned, razed and eventually replaced with a sort of refugee camp full of desperately poor somebodies who left very little material culture.  This all happens in about six inches of excavated dirt and rock.

It's hard to clearly show the road, but it is hard clay packed with rock, pebbles and the occasional bit of brick.

Very few artifacts to be found doing this bit.  But here is some sort of broken blade.  It was a military site after all.  Probably scrap included in the build process, the later destitute denizens might not have been allowed weapons.

At lunch time I was moved over to where the deeper, anaerobically preserved layers were now dry enough to work.  You find swaths of what is called "laminate".  Packed together masses of perfectly preserved twigs, branches, moss, leaves and so forth.

Leather scrap circa 120 AD.

You work this stuff carefully looking for delicate items such as writing tablets.  None to be found today but always things to marvel at.  A delicate frond of perfectly preserved moss.

Nice forecast for tomorrow.  Then things get trickier.