Vindolanda Tablets

[Pertinax]

This is an ongoing project which im sure members are aware of , here is an excellent link:-

 

http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/

 

this is praiseworthy work, I am preparing for my photo-recce to Vindolanda by reading all I can on the recovered items.

 

and..I will give a brief review of the published work which I am presently reading.

Edited January 9, 2006 by Pertinax

[phil25]

An interesting and worthwhile project. I know Vindolanda quite well - a wonderful spot in my favorite county.

 

Do you know that they found parts of a prefabricated palace there - perhaps used by Hadrian on his visit when he ordered the wall to be built?

 

The site also boasts excellent reproductions of both the turf and stone walls - last time I was there the turf wall was suffereing rather from age, subsidence and rot, but I think they may have allowed this to happen deliberately to see how long the original structure might have survived without repair.

 

I assume that you are also aware that all the digging that has produced the tablets has been carried out OUTSIDE the walls of the surviving fort. Inside belongs to the National Trust and no digging has been allowed. Outside the land belongs to the Vindolanda Trust.

 

I had the privelege, in my youth in the 60s of hearing Eric Burley (father of the two current academics) speak at my local archaeological society meeting. Even 40 years and more on, I can still recall his talk - he reminisced about spending summers on the Wall doing excavations, with his family in tow. Vindolanda was known as Chesterholm then. It was a couple of years later when I was about 14 that i first went to northumberland and visited Chesters, Houseteads and Corbridge. There was no considered much to see at Chesterholm in those days. I have been back many times since and am never disappointed.

 

Incidentally, the mystery of Vindolanda for me does not relate to the tablets, but to the round hut foundations thathave been excavated just inside and under the line of the wall of the stone fort. Anyone any ideas on what they might have been?

 

Phil

[Pertinax]

There was a recent article in the Times outlining the scandolous condition of the wall -I didnt bring this up before because of the great preponderance of non-Britons on the site ( local issue really )-its a scandal and the government should be ashamed, immediate rescue work is needed and the National Trust are totally culpable . As always they are a dead hand on the very thing they should be preserving, they are merely a self centered quango only interested in themselves. Their appaling record in the Lake District is shameful , but the Wall is a litany of ignorance , inertia and stupidity.Steps have to be taken at once -but no-one is listening.Shame on them. A huge proportion of the area hasnt been excavated -so perhaps great things will be found by future generations not so neglectful.

Some of my fondest memories are of Housesteads in the late 60s -perhaps we met?

 

I had assumed you were North American !

Edited January 10, 2006 by Pertinax

[phil25]

No, I am a Brit, Pertinax.

 

I think I have loved Housesteads every time I have been there.

 

When i first went, the Alan Sorrell drawings were about the only reconstructions atround 9of any period) and i loved them. He did a very dramatic one of Housesteads with the rain sweeping in. When I got there, the bleakness of the place entranced me. You stand on the north wall of the foot, with the scarp dropping away in from of you. Behind, the hills could almost be southern England, rolling and green, but northwards it is purple and grey, with hints of silver where the lakes are, and a vast expance of sky!! terricic. It never disappoints.

 

I love too the walk along the Wall, westwards, over Cuddy's Crag, to the milecastle, then down past the iron-age farmstead site, and across the fields to Vindolnda, the into Haltwhistle for tea and the train back to Hexham.

 

It's about 10 years since I was last on the Wall and quite a lot of work had been done at that time. I hadn't realised it was a concern now.

 

As to the National Trust, are they the responsible body for the wall, or is it English Heritage? I suspect the latter, as the NT is usually houses and gardens, rather than monuments in public ownership. But I maybe wrong. I think they do a huge amount of good, but they can be a dead, risk averse, hand.

 

I'd like to see much more imaginative management - with reconstructions in situ of parts of forts (where the remains are not particularly novel) and more excavation on the lines of that the Burley's understake. The military zone of the wall, as you say, holds immense promise of great finds.

 

Phil

[Pertinax]

The Sorrell drawing is very evocative-he hit some sort of psychological nail on the head with his representation.You are correct about English Heritage -they are even worse than the trust. Where their little kingdoms overlap the promote inertia and fail to realise that monuments fall down if lots of people walk all over them, so repairing is not an evil but a dire necessity.The report I mentioned was scathing-the place is apparently dropping apart and the wall should,in sections ,be cordoned off so emergency work can be done.

[phil25]

In conservation terms the great paradox of our day is how to prmote, facilitate and increase access to sites of physical and historic significance, and yet to preserve them.

 

I don't know how the balance is to be achieved, but it has to be.

 

I am probably as fierce a critic as you of EH, but they do have a major problem.

 

It's like the modern city of Rome - simply too much to handle in terms of ancient remains.

 

Phil