Vindolanda 2026 - Day Nine

Rain shortened day.  This will happen in England.  Annoyingly after the day was "called" the skies cleared and it was rather nice.  Sigh.

I started the day back in the Centurion's apartment.  It had been a tedious bit of floor cleaning the day before so I was angling for a reassignment but was sent back for more exposing and polishing of cobbles.  Fair enough, I am actually quite good at this.

My karmic reward was a coin.  Now, I am not allowed to show any metal finds of consequence.  And so I shan't.  But I don't see that there is any prohibition against noting that the Romans often put on the reverse of their coins an image of a goddess holding a staff.  Sort of like this:

Interestingly the recording of small finds is done differently this year.  In times past the finder of something fun would be given a special marked pole and one of the archaeology team would record the find with something like a surveyors device called a Total Station.   It was fun, you held that staff up in victory even though it was not your picture being taken.  Nowadays there is a GPS based device and it is generally held by one of the assistants.  I think the similarity to the above coin image is rather interesting....

Last day tomorrow.   Sigh.

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Eight

The days are winding down....

Current place I'm excavating is the apartment of the centurion.  His room was always the largest and always at the end of the barracks block.  Here's an overview.  I know, making surfaces look interesting in a photo is a challenge.

The very observant among you might note that the floor is not buckled and bowed like the other barracks rooms.  In addition to quite probably better maintenance, it seems likely that the earlier wall that "broke the back" of the other rooms is not present at this end of the building.

Various small things turned up.  Not all that exciting.

Lumpy iron thing.  Probably a nail, but outside chance of it being a low grade "bow brooch".  It goes in the general finds bag with the pottery, glass, bones, and, yes, nails.  Let post ex figure it out.

This one I had figured out right away.

It is an iron ring...with a rust stained stone stuck in the middle.  Use? Ah, who knows.

And lacking knowledge I can have a little fun with speculation.

One of the ladies digging the same trench is from New Zealand.  In the course of chatting I learned that she had a side gig as an extra in movies filmed over there.  Of which there are many.

In one production she wore pointy ears and was part of a fantasy genre.  She had signed an NDA and so could not tell me which one. * But it got me to thinking......

Hmm, hobbit sized person.  Comes from as close to Middle Earth as you can get on this planet.  And I find a mysterious Ring.  Knowing that The One Ring can change sizes based on its wearer it is probably for the best that there was a stone wedged in there.  Otherwise I supposed I would by now be turning dark and hissing about "MY PRECIOUSSS...."

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* she showed me a photo of herself in full makeup and costume.  At which point I asked if I would have to watch the execrable Rings of Power series on Amazon to see her.  Thankfully, no.

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Seven

Wally World.

 Spent a good part of the day chasing a wall.  

The barracks room we were in was constructed circa 213 AD.  On top of a different barracks from 50 years earlier.  Presumably nobody on the later construction crew had any idea what was underneath, so things were plotted out nice and neat....and then started sinking into earlier ditches, pits and assorted features.  Here's an example of what can happen:

Yes, this is a wall.  Or rather the top of one.

It dates to the Antonine stone fort, so lets say 140's or 150's.  It looks like junk at this level but I'm told is actually pretty nice down another foot or so.

What we had to work with was without question an annoying bump in the floor to the guys who lived in this barracks room in later years.  And I mean lots of later years.  After the 213 build was completed the space was occupied through the end of the Roman era in the early 400's, and to some extent on into the Dark Ages.  So, a couple hundred years of slumping floors, patching and replacing floor levels.  And through it all the big ridge right down the center of the room was just....there...

You can actually see evidence of this buried wall all up and down the length of the barracks block....

As viewed from the next barracks room over, you can see where the later wall has had its back "broken" where subsidence has happened on either side of the presumably solid wall beneath.

That's a bit more "feature" talk than many will find of interest.  So here's a sight from my morning walk up to the site.  It's about forty minutes of up and down hills.  At one point I go past a riding stable.  I'm becoming friends with the horses who continue to expect me to produce an apple or carrot out of my pocket some day.  I like the zebra style horse coat....

The Romans actually knew about zebras.  They called them Hippotigris, which means horse-tiger. Once in a while a live specimen would be brought back from the coast of East Africa.  They were rare novelties that were occasionally seen pulling chariots in the circus or being dispatched in the Colosseum.  

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Six

Guess I didn't take any pictures today.

Nice weather, steady progress.  But I didn't find anything novel.  Just another spear point and I showed you one of those last time.  Mostly we were chasing walls and trying to find the perimeters of an oven.  Not glamorous stuff.

So instead, a few pictures from my in between weekend.

We did a number of things, some I'll report on presently.  Among them was a visit to "Northumberlandia", purportedly the world's largest human figure sculpture.

112 feet tall.  1300 feet long.  Yep, she's a big gal.

It's quite a climb up to her, er, features.

The view from nose level......

Evidently some bits are more popular with visitors than others, and people don't always stay on the appropriate paths.  Hey, treat the Lady right...

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Five

Finds and Features.

Everyone at the fence and "out in the world" is always interested in whether I've found some clever artifact.  OK, fine, that's part of what we do.  I'll get to that in a bit.  But almost nobody asks about interesting "features".  So bear with me, I'll try to show you something.

The barracks room I have been working in was occupied for about 200 years.  That is a ridiculous span of  time.  Over it there were certainly renovations, mishaps, additions and removals.  Doorways come and go.  Hearths appear.  When floors get uneven piles of debris are added and a new floor level is added.  In post Roman times there were Dark Age types building ramshackle structures on top, then later still farmers trying to plow the land for a meager living.

These photos show something unusual...

Here is a nice East - West wall inside an infantry barracks room.  It has the usual configuration, decent stones lined up on the inner and outer faces with a bit of rubble core in the center.  It's in decent shape for having been presumably laid down in 213 AD and then repaired and kept in service for about 200 years.  It sits roughly on an earlier wall from perhaps 50 years previous.

But if you look in the middle portion of the photo you'll see a red and black trowel handle sticking up.  This is sunk into a small more or less round hole in the wall.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

And a look at the wall front below this....

This appears to be a "post hole", a little socket into which a wooden post would have been inserted.  The packed stones around the hole held the post in place.  So, what was it?  When you see a line of these in soil you know you have a wooden building.  But built into a wall is weird.  Did it support a canopy?  Had the back of the barracks collapsed at some point?  I've seen a lot of walls but this looks like a first.

Oh, OK, you want a "find"?  In keeping with my policy of not showing things that might attract "night hawks" looking for a quick nocturnal pay day let me say that this artifact was falling apart when I found it and has zero market value.  

Photo One.  Something vaguely pointed and made of disintegrating iron.  Note the weird folded appearance of the central metal bits....

Photo Two.  A bigger chunk.  Man, that central area looks odd.  Almost organic although it is of course highly degraded metal.

Last photo, three bits assembled.

Obvious now.  I must say, while I've found a few of these before this is the first example that, by way of its deteriorating state, showed me a bit about how Romans worked metal.  When making something substantial such as a knife, spear or sword, you started out with thin sheets of iron and combined them by a process of heating, folding and hammering at the forge.  It seems plausible that this level of technology would have been available "on site" where it is known that metal smelting and working was carried on.

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Four

Usual parade of rain coat on/off/on/off but we got about 90% of a day in.

It was fun to have a full day of actual archaeology, although I did offer to pitch in with the tedious backfill clearing if extra hands were needed.  And stuff was found.

Roman Glass.  You can still see through it.

Bits of pottery.  Sometimes they pop out of the ground, sometimes they are embedded in the layer you are supposed to go down to.  I don't mind leaving the bits in situ.  They look happy there and probably just appreciate some light, fresh air and a quick clean by the recurrent rain showers.

On occasion I have something that has to be carefully considered before posting.  Anything metal for instance.  The concern is that "night hawks", a contemptable species of nocturnal metal detectorists will hear about nice finds and show up after dark and pilfer.  But....

This thin green line in the soil is copper alloy.  When you are troweling away in dull greyish brown dirt and suddenly spot something the color of a motel swimming pool, well, you've got copper alloy, aka bronze.

I feel OK about posting this because it was the thinnest bit of copper alloy foil.  No value, probably not even enough for a shady plunderer to detect.

It was in any case removed with great care and sent off to be studied.  Who knows, there might be something inscribed on it in spidery letters too small for my over 60 eyes to spot.

There was something going on over at the other end of the site that caused a bit of excitement.  I suspect The Trust will do a special posting on this find, so I'll just put up a distance shot.

If you can figure out from this angle exactly what is going on that is really rather remarkable, well, good for you.  Otherwise I'll update this when the Official social media has had their reveal.........

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Three

Weather was The Usual.  Alternating sun, clouds, rain, driving rain, birds singing happily.  You get used to it after a while.  Here's the site during one of the sunny spells.

I don't have photos of what I was working on today.  It is work in progress and at this point does not photograph well.  Why would there be a ridge of debris from the circa 150 AD fort be running smack through the middle of a barracks room from the fort of 50 years later?  Something has been filled in or built up or dropped by aliens.  I'll try to do better on current events tomorrow.

Another thing about this spot is that it is next to the fence, so I get to talk to visitors.  Today I was chatting when a kid of about 11 asked me where I was from.

"Wisconsin", said I.

"Me too", said he.

OK that's unusual, and I wondered if just possibly the kid was putting me on.  No judgement mind you, I'd actually admire that level of brass.  So I asked him to prove it.

"Go Pack!"

"Nope, not good enough"

"Uh.....Culvers!!!"  Yep, he's from Wisconsin.  If you know you know.

Perhaps in a bit of similar vein is the fact that just this year wearing camo has become rather common.  Excavators and visitors both.  Here's a photo taken by my friend Pete.  It's me with one of the supervising archaeologists.   I suppose you could make up a story about how I ended up wearing her shirt or she my pants, but get real folks, these were in both cases outer layers!

Vindolanda 2026 - Day Two

Another day of "The Archaeology of Archaeology", sifting through refill layers after that 1980 excavation.  This had been carried out by a fellow named Paul Bidwell, so I decided to start a small "Bidwell Shrine" with artifacts left behind by he and his workers

Dixie cup.  Broken tea cup.  Looks like the top of a beer can.  Guess the boss must not have been watching the lads too closely....

As you can see from the photo, nice weather held for another day.  I got my customary morning walk to the site in, and happily find that the passing of another year has not made the hills steeper.

Next up is tbd, but we are probably done with the drudge work and on to actual archaelogy tomorrow, weather permitting.

Here's a barracks room that needs some attention.  The better walls are from 213 AD on to maybe 400 AD.  The curved "thing" from about 208.  The stuff under it is obviously earlier.  Layers and layers, the bottom layer dates to before 100 AD, but we won't be going there this year.

Vindolanda 2026 - Day One

Back to work.   

Day One was part orientation, part drudge work.  The are of current interest had a brief and somewhat chaotic excavation in 1980.  They backfilled the area, leaving a layer of plastic where they had stopped downward progress.

If cleaning up stuff that should have no artifacts in it sounds tedious, well it is to some extent.  But it is a necessary chore and should only take a day or two.  Plus, I found a nail.

Weather better than expected, and even a tedious day of digging at Vindolanda is a treasure.

Of course certain traditions must be upheld.  There is a spot where in 2010 a child's body was discovered under the floor of a barracks room.  Foul play most foul in the First Century AD.

On my first day I always lay a few flowers on the site.  Digging as I am at a later date the wild flowers are particularly beautiful...

Looking 2000 years into the past and 40 into the Future

Writing things in advance poses a challenge.  This applies particularly when you are jumping time zones and anticipating events yet to come.  Presumably at time of posting in the Western Lands I'll  be awake and starting my walk up the hill to Vindolanda for the first day of excavating.  I assume the effects of Jet Lag Drinks Hour will be shaken off by plenty of black coffee and sheer determination.  

I never know exactly who will be on hand for the digging crew.  Oh, the core group of The Anaerobes have been accounted for.  Some will be there.  Others are dealing with publishers, with nappies that need changing, with life in LA.  Who knows, perhaps our young friend Will might turn up.  He excavated for one year back in 2016, at which time I imagined his return to the site.....in 2066.  So how are my predictions holding up at the ten year mark?  Here's what I imagined him saying:

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 "Stop yer whinin' ya mewling cubs.  Why I started digging here long before we had HoverBarrows and back when your fancy Excavator's Spa and Therapy Centre was nothin' more 'an a hut with mud on the floor." (1) 

"Ah, we had some times back then, we did.  The Terrible Ancients still strode the land.  Their pint glasses held a gallon and every spade they threw filled a barrow.  Gone they are now, all over the edge of the spoil heap to wherever we all tumble"

"Except....except maybe The Old Badger.  They say that years ago - this would be after Her Ladyship passed of course - he was tricked into entering a Care Centre.  The day after his hundredth birthday party he opened his eyes and looked about slyly." (2)

"He mumbled something about walking to Vindolanda, but of course none of the nursing staff paid him much mind.  That was their mistake because before they knew it he had tossed the blanket off his lap and jumped up wearing a pair of old hiking boots he had been hiding somewhere." (3)

"He was out door before they knew it and hasn't been seen since."

"I've watched for him every May since then, but I'm getting a bit rusty myself and turn the task over to you now.  Oh, m' Lads, Lassies and Othertypes, (4) you may think he'll never get here, but I wouldn't bet against him.  It's a long walk and the road is not straight.  But I never knew him to give up on a thing he set his mind to."

"Yes, he's overdue, but when he felt like walking he never would consider accepting a ride."

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Our young friend Will went to Cambridge and has gone on to a career in comedy.  He's toured the US, he's been to fringe fests.  He's hard to find on social media, but actually did - here I'm being serious for once - win the 2025 UK Pun Competition.  I think he'd approve of this future version of himself.

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 1. Nailed this one.  A couple years later they built a very swanky, futuristic excavation centre.  This is my third "hut", and I like it the least.

2. My father in law made it to 103, both my parents to mid 90's.  So who knows.  And of course my Badger Trowelsworthy alter ego did strike that strange bargain with the Old Gypsy Woman...

3. Easy enough to pull off.  I still retire a pair of boots every three years or so and could start stashing them strategically any old time.

4. Was I prescient ten years ago anticipating the explosion of pronouns?  

Back to The Bowes

It's that time again.

Wheels up for the traditional two weeks of excavating at Vindolanda.  This is for Period IV, so a little later than usual.  I've been to P II once or twice, it can be rather chilly.  I've only been to IV once, that great year where I got to stay for two sessions.  

Many of the usual crew of folks will be on hand.  Selection of a digging time is not done in isolation.

So at some point in the weird time shifting of international travel I'll be arriving at my home away from home, The Bowes.

I actually can't recall when I first stepped in the place.  It was one of the years I traveled alone, and decided to take the train out of Newcastle.  I got off at Bardon Mill, and had a goodly walk ahead of me.  I distinctly remember thinking it would be good to fortify myself with a pint before slogging a couple of miles with all my kit.  This would have been roughly eleven years ago, back when we were still staying at The Twice Brewed Inn.  But did I actually do this or just think about it?  When you've been traveling for 18 straight hours and across six or seven time zones the details get fuzzy.

But for sure a year or so later several of us did stop in.  Big Steve, former barkeep at the Twicey, was now in charge at The Bowes.  He showed us around.  At this point the bar area had been remodeled nicely.  The rooms upstairs, not so much.  They were still very 1960's.  Steve said he'd get us a "diggers rate".  I thought it was a great opportunity.  Some of my cohorts were skeptical.

Fast forward a bit.  The Twice Brewed went full posh gastro pub, and the digger's discount rate there finally went away.  It was time for a change.  The Bowes had been fully remodeled, and we'd been there for a nice evening with great food.  I was all set to be staying there in 2020.  Then of course, Covid shut the world down.  No digging season in '20.  For '21 I just missed the slow, grudging loosening of restrictions.  Even in '22, my first year staying at The Bowes, there were still pesky requirements for testing and such.

This will be my/our fifth stay there.  I highly recommend it.  Friendly staff, really great food.  I like being able to enjoy a pint or two then just go up the stairs to my room.  

A fun day excavating - with or without finds - a nice walk back through English springtime. Then a spicy Masaman curry with a couple of pints.  It does not get much better than that...

I shall report back presently on assorted doing, including the annual Jet Lag Drinks Hour.

UK Prep - 2026

I have a travel check list.  Several of them actually.  

I keep my archaeology stuff ready to go, albeit no longer permanently packed in my carry on travel bag.  Since starting at Vindolanda I've been attending way more robotics events and it comes in handy for those.

Of late my collection of hunting garb and digging garb has started to intermingle.  They are both designed for layers on, layers off, although the former has more camo patterns.  I may bring along something bright yellow for visibility.  Some days I am crossing roads in early morning fog, and camo is not ideal.  Maybe this?

I wear low top hiking boots about 90% of the time.  With modern "quality" it takes me a month or two of trying pairs on to select one.  Then a couple of months to break them in.  I usually get about three years out of a pair.  I try to wear them until they are kaput, then "bin them".  I have at least once discarded a pair in the UK, sparing me some packing space.  Alas, my last pair started losing stitch cohesion in February, so I'm breaking in a new pain of Keenes.  They seem to have negotiated with my feet to a tolerant mutual understanding.

When in the UK I do lift things.  Barrows full of dirt and rock for instance.  I try to get ready for this.  Walking is good.  Working on the hunting land is good.  Recently I had a long bus trip back from a robotics tournament and in the days after noticed my back was complaining.  I admonished the malingering lumbo sacral regions and spent a few days moving rocks in our back yard pond feature.  That actually made things better.  

I also lift the occasional pint at the end of a digging day.  Prep for that also requires foresight.  Proper English ale is not easy to find in Wisconsin.  For a while I could get Lazy Monk Brewing's Scottish Ale.  Being close to the Border this is good enough.  And of course comes in the pint denomination which Bacchus intended for Mankind. 

Alas, it is a seasonal product.  At a store in the next town over I can get Boddington's Pub Ale.  It's not UK good, but will suffice.  

We generally bring a few US type treats over.  Girl Scout Thin Mints.  Maybe I'll bring a small bag of Dot's Pretzel sticks.  The UK has a bewildering assortment of snacks, biscuits, puddings and such but nothing quite like either of those very American junk foods.

That's most of the necessary prep.  Bank a few tall tales.  Avoid any discussion of whose political class is worst.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Odds and Ends

We 3D print our own robot wheels.  They are made of some magic stuff called TPU.  Super grippy when you are running on carpet.  You do have to swap them out after a certain number of matches.  Used red one on the left, new black model on the right.

Our driver from a few years ago was a ferocious young lady who loved to play defense.  She sent a video message to the team for our pack up to State night.  Basically she said: "Stop being so wimpy on defense.  You have TPU wheels for a reason!!"

So at State our robot had a rather vigorous series of interactions with other robots and with solid objects.  The front bar (top one) took enough force that the 1/8 inch thick box tube deformed about 3/4 of an inch in its center.  Impressive, but it still did its job.  Below is an undamaged section of the same stuff sans powder coating.  Of course we carried a spare, but also straightened out this damaged part.  It has become a souvenir. 

Mascots of course.  State had more of them than the smaller district events.  

I suppose my new Facebook profile picture needs a little explaining.  The game pieces were these yellow balls.  They were produced by various suppliers, and in testing we found differences.  Weights were anywhere from 7 ounces to 8.5 or so, and they also differed a lot in "compliance", the degree to which they compress under pressure.  We labeled them for selective use when doing various shooter testing.

Being non compliant in various ways, and remarkably resistant to going squish under pressure, I of course had to mug with one of these.....

Fishing Opener 2026

 Remember to follow the rules.  Especially as the kid on the cover is extra cute.