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.