Vindolanda 2025 - Day Three

My idle hours reading is "Emperor of Rome" by Mary Beard.  She's a good writer and is describing what it was like to be in charge of the Empire at the peak of its power.  

What we are digging in these days is at the opposite end of things.  Not Rome, but the absolute farthest frontier, with at best rustic and at worst hostile natives.  And also, not a place of palaces and luxury, but by the end of days at Vindolanda, a more hardscrabble place.  As such, the material culture of the buildings we are working was pretty crummy.

Here's the sort of very late pottery we are finding.  Yuck.

 Rome did not "fall" here, so much as stop paying the help.  When your low morale, mostly locally recruited troops don't get paid, they revert to being just a batch of local lads with weapons.  The post Roman era is harder to document, because those guys had very little in the way of goods.  No more pottery being made.  Not much trade with other areas.  And what structures they cobbled together out of existing and repaired older stuff was right on top, and first in line to be....

Clobbered by farmers in the modern era.  See the deep scratches in these stones?  Each one caused by a plow hitting it as some poor guy tried to eke a living out of this thin soiled patch of rocks.  

After of course they nicked a lot of the surviving good stones for their farm buildings.

Well, tomorrow is another day.  When I get a bit closer to the wall shown above its likely there will be a bit more archaeology preserved.  Most of what I worked today was just churned up plow soil with a few random bits of pulverized brick, and pot, as well as tiny fragments of glass from Roman times on up to not long ago.  

Vindolanda 2025 Day Two

Sunshine and warmth.  I find this disorienting.  My first decade of volunteering at Vindolanda I carried the same small vial of sun screen back and forth every year, never using it up.  

A delightful day of work.  But of course, responsibilities first.  Just across the way from our excavation is the spot where a child murder victim was found.  The deed was done in Roman times, and I missed making the grim find by a couple of weeks and by one room over.  Every year I leave a few flowers at the spot.

We are working the later Roman and into the Post Roman era.  A mystery on site is this:

That curved section at the front.  Romans, as befits a civilization who had mastered engineering, liked to build everything with right angles.  The exceptions are few, and which one this is is an enigma.  Having uncovered the big paving blocks that the visitor is standing on I can say that I've been wondering about this anomaly since 2010 or so......

A warm day's work.  My friend Pete has already started snapping odd photos of me.  I shall of course reciprocate/retaliate.  Soon, Pete.  Very soon...

Various bits of "manky" late pottery turning up, otherwise not much.  It was a long day's work.  Then a long walk to the pub where I reside.  Rarely do I need a pint before taking on the stairs, but today was such a day.  Contemplating the interesting patterns of foam on glass in the wilds of Northumbria.........

Vindolanda 2025 - Day One

First day of digging is always preceded by "Jet Lag Drinks Hour".  This is, by admittedly imperfect recollections, the 15th year of this ritual.  One was done virtually during Covid.  A couple have been very informal.  But a nice crew turned out this time.

 Participants from the UK, the US, New Zealand, and the only person I've ever met from Yemen.  The topics involved all manner of things.  Tattoos, what it is like to administer emergency first aid while dressed like a pirate, that sort of thing.  Then the customary toast to Absent Friends and off to bed.

Stunning weather and new areas to open up.  The process of removing the green stuff is called "de-turfing".  If you loudly announce that its time to get the Sod Off you will get some strange looks...

I will be showing fewer pictures of small pretty things this year.  Policy on this has gotten a bit tighter  In fairness they are doing a much better job on the "official" side regards publicizing what is going on.  Oh, and so far I've found only a few small bits of pottery.

So expect more reportage on the odd aspects of life as a volunteer excavator.  Such as, on my morning walk in, these big patches of stuff that look exactly like our rhubarb....but evidently are some sort of nasty super weed that can grow right through asphalt!

Off the Map

 

Adders and the Addle Pated

Getting close to departure for England.  I'm at the point at where I am steering clear of runny nosed people, even adorable grand children.  It's no fun to be sick far from home.  Once I'm on the ground in rural Northumbria the Things to Worry About shift.  Bad weather of course.  Aches and pains, one assumes.  And adders.  

In our part of Wisconsin there are no venomous snakes.  And if I happen to stray south a bit I  know what a rattlesnake looks like.  I won't bother them, they won't bother me.  But adders, those lone venomous critters of the British Isles (sans Ireland, thanks Pat!), well I don't know what they look like or how they behave.  Here's a picture to help me with the identification:

Got it.  They look enough like rattlers to encourage a wide berth.

But one thing leads to another, and I got to wondering if there was a connection between the words Adder and Addled.  Seems pretty close.  But......nah.

Adder has a long and distinguished history.  It seems most medieval cultures had a similar word for serpent.  I figure the whole Garden of Eden case got them disproportionate attention.  In Gothic the word was nadrs.  In German it was, and still is, natter.  The various dialects of Old English being derived from Germanic sources the word was similar.  At some point a typo occurred, and "a nadder" became "an adder".

The most famous modern use of the word comes from the British classic "Blackadder", in which the scheming titular character always had a side kick named Baldrick, who could charitably be described as "addle pated".

"Pate" refers to one's head.  It derives from the Latin "patina" which means dish and also gives us the word pan.

My initial assumption that addle had a connection with a low crawling reptile, well, I was wrong.  It's considerably worse than that, and I don't feel obliged to recount it.  Lets let it be with the observation that it was not too far removed from the noxious insult that was unearthed at Vindolanda a couple of seasons back.  I think Secundinus and Baldrick had qualities in common.....

When Worlds Collide - The FIRST game for 2026.....

FIRST is known for "teasing" next year's game with early trailers.  They seldom give any real clues, just the name, the sponsors and some ambiguous images.  For 2026 it looks like the theme is archaeology!

Well, my mechanical engineering skills have fallen far behind the current technology, and my software skills have always been minimal.  But archaeology?  That I know!

Tree Shaped Tombstones - A New Road, a New Discovery

The route to and from the new deer hunting land takes me down roads I've never traveled before.  I mean that literally, not figuratively.  They traverse some wild and lonely parts of the back woods.  So I'm consulting my map program periodically, and while doing so I noticed a little country church.  Anah Emmanual Church, some five miles east of Spooner, Wisconsin.

I didn't have much in the way of expectations regards "Tree Shaped Tombstones".  The church was only built in 1909, past the heyday for these monuments.  But there ya go, a dainty little example of the "rugged cross" variant.  The interesting thing is....its only a few years old!  So somebody out there is making new versions that are close enough to the 19th century originals to fool my well trained eye.  Good for them.

A closer look.  Sorry 'bout the lighting, chance finds rarely happen during the pre-sunset "golden hour".  And for that matter, with gravestones traditionally facing east, anything I encounter late in the day is likely to be back lit.

I don't usually pay much attention to more pedestrian monuments, but this one caught my eye:

I assumed Country Ray was a nick name, and that he was a bit of a character.  Well, I appear to have been half right!  Rest in Peace Country Salquist.