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.

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 finger-searching – 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 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

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