Hello and Goodbye from the Dark Ages

Well, Dark Ages is not considered an appropriate label any longer.  Sub-Roman or Post-Roman are the preferred terms.

I've been puzzling over this feature for years.  Since 2010 as I recall.  That's the year I excavated the big paved road on the right side of the fence and wondered, why was there this odd curved "thing" built over the main road of the Roman fort?  Had to be Sub-Roman, but what?

The arc seemed to enclose the jumbled mass of demolition that we had to pick through so carefully back in early May.

When digging at Vindolanda there are always those who come before you and those who follow after.  A more recent crew has painstakingly cleared away the rubble.  Before this "stuff" went away it was carefully recorded, and every nook, cranny and flat surface was examined for clues.  Sub-Roman strata rarely give up much.  More on that in a moment.  From a recent session end video, here's the wall with its continuation.

It's big.  It might have used the existing earlier wall as its back side.  I am pretty sure I am seeing the other curved bit peeking out on the left side, although not having the yellow high light makes it a bit harder to say for sure.

So, what is this big, oval, decidedly non-Roman thing?

The Period 5 video round up discusses it a bit.  Here's the full video for those interested.

If you want the short version, it could be a "hall" of some sort.  Some Post Roman notable, perhaps a war lord or some such, lived and/or feasted there.  

Things that were on a Roman site after the Romans are not as well documented as they should be.  Early archaeologists were called Antiquarians, and their notion of proper excavation was to hire a bunch of local lads to swing pick axes and mattocks on their way straight down to where they thought the good stuff was.  Temples, headquarters buildings, that sort of thing.  Obvious later stuff, in addition to being more beat up by plows, was just considered shoddy rubbish to be bashed out and forgotten.

I suppose we have to cut them a little slack.  Their understanding of history had a definite "Imperial" flair to it back then, and also, Sub-Roman structures did not have much for artifacts.  When your political and economic world implodes you, for instance, stop having any new pottery.  Oh, people still knew how to dig clay and probably how to make the stuff, but real expertise was gone, the roads were no longer safe for commerce, and coinage had gone away.  

Hopefully the few bits and bobs that were found - and I only know some of them - will help tell the story of these people.  People who lived sadly among the ruins of what must have seemed to them to be a lost, advanced civilization.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps the freedom to build and to live any darned way they pleased was precious to them.

It's necessary, but a bit sad, to see delicate features like this go away as the excavations go deeper.  But they've all been carefully documented.  And besides, that mysterious arc extending out the front will be preserved forever.