Vindolanda lies deep in the dramatic but now-tamed Northumberland countryside on a
stretch of flat land overlooked in the east by a steep and partly wooded hill. My arrival on
a sunny Sunday September afternoon gave lie to the name ‘White Field’; clearly
Vindolanda’s original garrison arrived here after the summer had departed. The
predominant colour was green, the lush green of freshly-mown grass, in the midst of
which stood the majestic remains of the last stone fort that oversaw the end of Roman
authority in Britain. Outside its still impressive walls lay an apparently random scattering
of stone houses, shops, temples, tombs, workshops and water feature while at the south
west corner partial reconstructions of wooden and stone forts stood silent guard.
My first surprise was the accommodation. Unlike the austere housing usually
offered to dirt-archaeologists, the modern Hedley Centre provides single en-suite rooms,
a comfortable lounge-cum-dining room – and home-cooked meals comprising full
English breakfasts (if wanted) and three-course dinners. Think up-market Premier Inn
with excellent food. By 6pm the week’s team had all arrived and, in keeping with
Vindolanda’s inhabitants over the centuries, it was international: 4 Brits, 2 Italians, one
Croatian and one Dutchman. Experience ranged from that of a first-time excavator to a
professional archaeologist.
The following morning began with an introduction from the Director of Excavations,
Professor Andrew Birley, grandson of the first modern excavator Eric Birley; and son of
the Vindolanda Trust founder, Robin Birley. Here we met our supervisors for the week:
Marta and Lauren, full-time professionals of the Vindolanda Trust, and Graham, an
amateur of great experience and remarkable commitment, driving one and a half hours to
and from the site every day during the digging season.
Before we got down to work Andrew took us on a short tour of what is a large and
complex site. He explained that the site was chosen for the abundance of fresh water
supplied by a river and several springs. He went on to tell us that there were nine forts in
all, the earliest being of timber construction, together with associated civilian settlements.
Apart from the first, these early forts were both larger than, and on a different orientation
to, the later stone forts. The first four were built before Hadrian’s Wall was constructed
and formed part of the original frontier on the Stanegate, the Roman road linking the
military bases of Carlisle in the west and Corbridge in the east. Although Vindolanda is
one mile south of the Wall it remained an important part of the frontier system
throughout the Roman occupation.
Today the most visible and impressive building is the ninth fort, constructed in AD 213
by the 4th Cohort of Gauls. Here Andrew drew our attention to some unusual features
within the walls. In the north-east sector the original barrack blocks had, in the 4th
century, been converted into a military village with shops, houses and workshops. At the
end of the village’s main street was a temple to Jupiter Dolichenus, a god imported from
what is now southern Turkey, complete with a small heated dining room. The other
intriguing feature was a series of circular huts underlying the walls of this final fort. They
had bases of stone with thatched, timber roofs and are unique, in a military context, to
Vindolanda. They were, of course, of British rather than Roman architecture and Andrew
thought that they might have housed a native workforce or refugees from Septimius
Severus’ campaign north of the Wall.
1
The fascinating tour over, it was time to get our hands dirty. We were split into three
groups, each being allocated a trench in the area to the west of the final fort, south of the
main street, beneath the foundations of the 3rd century vicus buildings. My group was the
most international: one Brit, a Croatian, a Dutchman and an Italian, all under the
supervision of another Italian, Marta. Our trench was at the south end of what originally
had been one of the Severan period barrack blocks. At the north end deep excavation had
penetrated the anaerobic levels of the earliest wooden forts; this was where the most
exciting artefacts were to be found and the area we hoped to reach by the end of the
week.
The first day was a relatively gentle exercise in trowelling. We made slow but
steady progress, carefully working down from a fairly indeterminate level to reveal part
of a stone floor and a feature that looked, at first sight, to be a stone drain with an
associated stone cover. Finds on this first day included part of a bronze mirror, an
amphora lid, the jawbone of an animal (probably a sheep) and masses of pottery.
Walking up to the site on the second day was an eerie experience. The ruins were
wreathed in a thick mist and it was easy to imagine that, at any moment, a group of
Roman soldiers might emerge to question our presence in such a military area. But we
were left unchallenged. On arrival at our trench we partially forsook the trowel for more
robust work with the pick-axe, our aim being to work down to the next layer. This turned
out to be of grey clay and contained a lot of pottery. The star find was a small but
beautiful piece of Samian Ware decorated with a dancing maenad. The stone drain of
Day 1 turned out to be a collapsed oven. Such structures are rather time-consuming as
each stone has to be clearly defined and cleaned prior to photography. Then, of course,
the complete feature has to be removed, stone by stone – the initial task for our third day.
The second day also marked the end of relatively painless excavation; from hereonin we
would be faced with digging in thick, glutinous clay, hoisting heavy buckets of spoil out
of the trench and running even heavier wheelbarrows to the spoil heap. The full English
breakfast was beginning to look an essential start to the day!
On Day 3, having removed the collapsed oven, we started to dig below this level, down
into the viscous grey clay. The technique for this stage was for two of us to do the
digging, filling buckets as we did so, and for the other two to use their fingers to break
open the resultant clay ‘pies’, searching for small finds. Again there was a lot of pottery
including some fine Samian ware, some of it with figured decoration. The day ended with
our revealing another stone floor with a quern stone embedded in the south end of the
trench together with, probably, another collapsed oven on the west side.
The floors and stone features had slowed down our vertical progress and we were anxious
to reach the anaerobic levels on Day 4. Firstly, though, we had to define the floor and the
individual stones of the oven and quern ready for photography. This completed, we were
able over the next two days to dig carefully down into the waterlogged levels of the early
timber forts. Here we were not only working among the ghosts of the early garrisons, we
could actually smell them – a pungent but not entirely unpleasant odor released by our
careful probing.
Using the same technique as on Day 3 – two in the trench and two fingersearching – we found a number of interesting artefacts. In addition to more figured and
non-figured Samian ware, there was a plethora of other types of pottery, including a
2
complete, though broken, burnished black ware jug; part of a glass bottle; a large number
of bones and many pieces of wood. Also uncovered was an iron nail, a mundane but
beautifully preserved object, looking as if it had just come off the shelf at B&Q and a
large piece of leather, as fresh now as when it had been discarded. Then, as our time in
the trench was coming to an end, we came across several timber posts for wattle and daub
walls, and an extremely well-fitted wooden floor several feet below our starting level of
Day 1. Reaching this level had been hard work, but we felt that this final find was a
suitable reward.
Our colleagues in the other trenches had enjoyed equal success, uncovering floors, walls
and even a cobbled road. Among their more significant finds were two shoes (not a pair),
an alloy brooch, a writing tablet, a stylus pen, a demolition tool (looks like a chisel), a
complete perfume bottle and several coins.
Our week was blessed with generally good weather and the group quickly gelled into an
effective team. We may not have made any earth-shattering discoveries but, under the
expert guidance of our supervisors and the overall direction of Andrew, we may have
added a little to the ongoing story of Vindolanda, a story that has many decades left to
run. To conclude, I should like to thank the Roman Society for making this interesting
and rewarding experience possible. I hope to return.
Michael Clegg
September 2015
3