Hello everyone! We’ve reached the end of our field school adventures, and we’re all returning home or enjoying new travels! I’m a little sad that it is over now, but incredibly grateful for this experience! The excavation has given me plenty of memories and lessons that I’ll take with me into the future. Before I go, here are three things I learned while at Vindolanda:
1. It’s not always about finding small artifacts with delicate tools.
It’s true that Vindolanda’s unique conditions yield a wealth of cool finds such as leather, glass, pottery, and beads, but other features can be equally important! During our small portion of the excavation season alone, we found drains, ditches, posts, walls, cobbled roads, ovens, and much more! You can’t put features like these behind glass – often we had to destroy them (after careful recording) to see what lay beneath! However, these discoveries are in a sense the real treasure. They inform us of how the Romans used a space, improving our understanding of the many construction phases and happenings at Vindolanda. We didn’t just use trowels and brushes either! When excavating a potsherd, uncovering a road surface, or sweeping the loose dust that inevitably gets kicked up while digging, these tools are invaluable. However, archeology includes the grunt work too. Whether we were mattocking large rocks out of a backfilled drain or spading up clay-filled soil in cubes to sift through later, all our work was a part of the process!
2. Rain can be a good thing.
While preparing for our trip, we were warned: “bring waterproof everything!”, and we expected to be poured on the whole time. We were therefore surprised and pleased to find that for the four weeks we were excavating, the weather in Northumberland was beautiful! However, the climate affects the archeology, not just the archeologists! On a daily level, lack of rain can make the soil very hard and fill the trenches with dust that blows around annoyingly. When drought continues for extended periods, as Tyler discussed in his post, Vindolanda’s valuable anaerobic conditions are put at risk. Over the course of our excavation period, we went from hoping for sunny days to being grateful for the few brief rain showers we did get!
1. Archaeology is for everyone.
As Cheyenne mentioned in her post, this is the motto of the Vindolanda Trust, and it isn’t just empty words! We’ve had the chance to work and learn alongside a host of awesome volunteers ages 18-78 from different countries, backgrounds, and career paths. Some were seasoned veterans, while others were brand new to archeology like most of us from Western. The Vindolanda team made us all feel welcome, not only teaching us the basics of excavation but also letting us try out other tasks such as washing, categorization, and location logging of finds. Vindolanda is pretty unique in letting untrained volunteers participate alongside the professionals, and the extra guidance and encouragement which the Vindolanda team provides in order to make this possible is very much appreciated!
I’d like to thank Dr. Greene and Dr. Meyer, whose planning and hard work made the field school a reality! Thank you for teaching and looking out for us for the past five weeks. Thanks also to Cheyenne for being an awesome TA, and for running our blog and social media accounts! Thank you to all of the generous donors whose contributions helped to make this amazing experience possible for us! Lastly, thank you to all of you who have been following our blog! We really appreciated your engagement and encouragement along our journey. We loved sharing these stories, so thank you for listening and supporting us!
Western Classics Abroad 