Detritus of Empire

The excavations at both of the sites run by the Vindolanda Trust have now wrapped it up for the year.  Some really good work done at each of them.

There is a natural tendency to be very invested in the areas you've personally gotten down and dirty in.  And in my case that enigmatic Dark Age structure that was slopped on top of the nice, neat right angled cornered Roman features.  I've talked at length about it HERE

An end of season drone shot shows it in a bit more detail.  I've put solid lines around the obvious parts and dashed lines where things are "maybe" extending further back.  Weird...

Ah well, if I'm lucky enough to be back next year in May that will be about the time this area is finished off, so maybe I'll find out.   

Here is the end of season Vindolanda video.

And I don't want to shortchange the Magna excavation which also finished up recently.  A good season with much uncovered.

There are times when the world seems particularly illogical.  Among the many reasons people give for this, our system of measuring things gets the occasional mention.  Why, if only we used logical metric stuff everywhere!

In large measure the system you use on a daily basis is what you are used to.  When in England I get acclimated, so to speak, and know that a 30 degree day there is sweltering hot, while the same 30 degree day back home (in my usual excavation time of April/May) is dreary and has a nasty chill.  

If used regularly any system works.  Perhaps not for scientific endeavors but just fine for staples of conversation like the weather.  Some of the old measures actually have a basis in our daily lives, or at least the daily lives of our predecessors.

One foot used to be the length of, well, one human foot.  Logical, although people have always had feet of variable sizes.....

Consider the "Big Foot" Roman shoes unearthed at the Magna site recently...

If you are having a hard time fathoming these off hand measuring units, well, a fathom is simply the distance of the outstretched arms of a good sized mariner.  That's about six feet.

Early folks were big on measurements that related to their daily lives.  Most of them were farmers.  So an acre - although initially just a term for forest land - evolved into the amount of land a team of oxen could plow in one day.  Distantly the word might have a joint origin with agri as in agriculture.  

And of course we have miles.  As I have documented previously, one Roman mile was one thousand strides of a soldier, or mille pacem.  As measurements go its pretty useful.  As are yards, the rough distance of one such stride.  I'm still using the latter getting ready for deer hunting season where distances to sight in rifles and crossbows are not given in meters.

The meter of course is a French construct.  But lets not let them off the hook entirely.  If you go back to define an acre it once was considered one furlong (660 feet) by four rods (66 feet).  Rods are an almost entirely extinct form of measurement but weirdly portages in the Boundary Waters Canoe area are still given in rods.  Why? Well its a bit obscure, but I blame the French.  That part of the world was explored and mapped by Voyageurs, who were using canoes about one rod (16.5 feet) long.  So a canoe length as a standard of measurement made as much sense as anything else.  Considering that most of these guys were traveling light and not bringing along the marking chains to survey a furlong!

Well, Dark Ages is not considered an appropriate label any longer.  Sub-Roman or Post-Roman are the preferred terms.

I've been puzzling over this feature for years.  Since 2010 as I recall.  That's the year I excavated the big paved road on the right side of the fence and wondered, why was there this odd curved "thing" built over the main road of the Roman fort?  Had to be Sub-Roman, but what?

So, what is this big, oval, decidedly non-Roman thing?

The Period 5 video round up discusses it a bit.  Here's the full video for those interested.

Things that were on a Roman site after the Romans are not as well documented as they should be.  Early archaeologists were called Antiquarians, and their notion of proper excavation was to hire a bunch of local lads to swing pick axes and mattocks on their way straight down to where they thought the good stuff was.  Temples, headquarters buildings, that sort of thing.  Obvious later stuff, in addition to being more beat up by plows, was just considered shoddy rubbish to be bashed out and forgotten.

I suppose we have to cut them a little slack.  Their understanding of history had a definite "Imperial" flair to it back then, and also, Sub-Roman structures did not have much for artifacts.  When your political and economic world implodes you, for instance, stop having any new pottery.  Oh, people still knew how to dig clay and probably how to make the stuff, but real expertise was gone, the roads were no longer safe for commerce, and coinage had gone away.  

Hopefully the few bits and bobs that were found - and I only know some of them - will help tell the story of these people.  People who lived sadly among the ruins of what must have seemed to them to be a lost, advanced civilization.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps the freedom to build and to live any darned way they pleased was precious to them.

It's necessary, but a bit sad, to see delicate features like this go away as the excavations go deeper.  But they've all been carefully documented.  And besides, that mysterious arc extending out the front will be preserved forever.

I'm just about ready to ditch Facebook, for reasons I'll get to in a bit.  But I'll actually miss some of the silly interactions with actual (endearingly silly) people.  As opposed to interactions with Slop AI content generated by uninteresting people.

One such discussion had a fellow claiming, and I guess he was serious, that carvings in a local brewery cave were perhaps ancient in origin.  Aztec maybe, but I bet I could have talked him, her, or it, into Roman.  The entity used as its argument "Hey, you were not around then, so all you have is what people have told you!".  Nonsense, but refreshing.  Even charming.

So I feel very confident in identifying this pottery shard as Samian.  It popped up when I turned over our community garden patch.  Somehow the Romans MUST have crossed the Atlantic, lashed the slaves enough to row a galley all the way up the Mississippi and the Chippewa Rivers, took a turn up Duncan Creek, then had a picnic before presumably expiring from exhaustion and implausibility.

Hey, you were not around back then.  So you can't prove I'm wrong!

For those who followed my adventures at Vindolanda, here's what the last two weeks have revealed:

Of note, the video starts on the site of the mysterious Post Roman "thing".  It's hard to say, but it rather looks now like one building, and without obvious connection to the mysterious curved wall off of the front of the barracks.  Just what was going on there in the post Roman times?  Mention of a coin and its possible help in dating things seems a bit premature.  If it is a typical late Roman coin they stuck around for quite a while. 

Of course I'm going from available information, and don't want to speculate too much.  Perhaps future updates will show more.....

The late blacksmith shop I finished Period III in is not mentioned.  This could either mean they've seen enough and want to preserve/conserve things.....or that the ground is still rock hard despite some rain and it just can't be further explored yet.

Stay tuned....

Offered with minimal commentary.

As you walk in the western gate of the Vindolanda site you go past several benches.  Nice shady spots for people to rest, especially on their way back from visiting the site.

How about this:

Now I realize that the inscription will puzzle some people.  That's unavoidable.  Badger Trowelsworthy both is and is not me.  He's an alter ego, so if you want to be picky about it, I'm real and he isn't.  He of course insists that the exact opposite it true, and frankly there are times he almost has me convinced.  More on the old scoundrel HERE.  

Back home safely after a trip with eerily efficient connections everywhere.  Walk up, get on.  It will be a few days of mild mental and physical impairment, but circadian rhythms will be lulled with naps and flogged with strong coffee.  Time for a few follow up thoughts and pictures of May 2025 in eerily sunny Northern England.

For those following the story here over the past two weeks, the end of session video overview might be enlightening.  We had an extended version of this as our end of session site walk.

In the past my final day at Vindolanda was one of frantic troweling.  Surely that elusive find that had been taunting me all session was just another scrape away!  But no more.  I enjoy the last day, tidy things up, make everything nice for the next crew coming in on Monday.  It was in fact a minimal finds day....but again with the magnificent weather we've had the entire two weeks.

A few bits of scrap metal.  Iron, and as shown here, bronze.  You recognize this stuff by the green tinge in the soil around it.  I tell newbies to look for the color of motel swimming pools.

The area I'm working is looking more and more like a metal shop of some sort.  Some bits of metal working tools have appeared, including a fancy S shaped hook I found.  Just the thing to suspend a crucible over a fire.

The central feature, perhaps a forge, is looking majestic.

Hmmmm...

First off, apologies for teasing with respect to the big circular structure I was on last week.  It is turning out to be larger than expected, and will require a fairly major effort to properly excavate.  I shall update when feasible.

I did not contribute to that effort today, as I was assigned to a new area.  To the Ramparts, Comrades!

Although ramparts are made of packed clay, and as such have a bit of an ill rep among excavators, they were actually a spot where lots was going on.  Guy stuff, mostly.

Roman forts were not all stone, there was still a lot of wood around.  So cooking, at least for the common soldiery, was done on the ramparts.  Guys barbecuing meat.  You find lots of bones.

There also seemed to be, at least in our area, some kind of metal recycling going on.  Guys taking out the trash.  Plenty of scrap iron and the odd bit of bronze.  My friend Pete found some some especially good bits and is here hoisting the "staff of recognition" to site in a small find.

Bits and bobs.  A chunk of amphora tossed away 18 centuries ago and still where it landed.

Really outstanding weather again.  Various things happening on different ends of the site.  Someone came up with this:

This is an intaglio.  These were semi precious stones that would be engraved with an image - usually a god of some sort - and set into a ring.  Sometimes they fell out.  This was a random find, but they are very common in the drain systems of Roman baths.  The heat would make the metal expand, the stone would drop out and go down the drain!

Back to my area....\

And my star find of the day?

Intoxicating weather forecast for tomorrow.  And some of those rocks are going bye-bye....

I spent last week working on a couple rooms of a long infantry barracks.  4th century on the top, 3rd on the lower layers.  This week, something different.  Sitting on top of the north end of the barracks is an odd, jumbled pile of rough looking stones.  It's.....something.

It is more or less round.  The stuff off to the left is plain old dirt.  On the right it is set on top of the barracks structures, which like everything the Romans built, were made with straight lines and right angles.  Well, lets say almost everything the Romans built was like that.

Here's one exception.  Vindolanda has a large series of these round structures.  The purpose is a mystery but they were built in the time of the Severan campaigns and may have held British loyalists to the Imperial cause.  Or prisoners.  British folks lived in round houses after all.

Ah, but this critter is several layers higher, and probably a couple of centuries later, so not likely.  Well, how about.....

So.....I'll update when I can, but at the end of the day's work something interesting did turn up to suggest an answer..........

Brilliant sun to finish out the first week.  I've spent the whole time working on a side by side pair of infantry barracks rooms.  Can't say I've found much, just bits of pottery.  Oh, and I guess this:

Otherwise it was just cleaning floors.  2nd century floors,  3rd century floors....just bashed up floors in general.

Time for a weekend of diversions.  I'm not accustomed to working in bright sunshine and warmth.  Takes a bit out of ya.

The atypical perfect weather continues.  I find this disturbing.  Can't say I've ever seen a forecast here with 0% possibility of precipitation.

I've continued to sort out the details of the barracks room I've been in since the start of the week.  It has been bashed about quite a bit since between being built in the 3rd Century and being beaten up by plows in the 19th.   I'll skip the technical details and just show some.....things

Low grade artifacts:

Pot Lids, just bits of flat stone or broken pot that are shaped into round to cover some sort of vessels.  Pottery? Wooden bowls?  Who knows.  The supervising archaeologist hates 'em and lets her Mediterranean passions fly when I bring her one.  I try to look apologetic..

Not everything on site is that difficult.

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.

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.  

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.  

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.

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...