All good things... : Day ten

Another warm day, with constant sun but a nice breeze swept the trench and kept the midges away again.

Sean went back to continue his spot beside the huge flags, I moved slightly over into an area within the massive flags that looked sure to have more floor waiting to be revealed. Sean quickly notched his second small find of the fortnight, something that might be dateable. He followed it up in the afternoon with another find, a nice decorative piece that I wish I could describe in more detail. Finds in my area were probably the most meager of the whole trip, as I reached the buildings north wall with about an hour to go. A little pottery and nails and, more disappointingly, no real sign of flagstones, but with some smaller dressed stones looked to have been laid as part of the floor in one area. Here's a final shot of our little piece of the trench, Sean's last day zone in blue, mine in orange:

And a final look of the large room in the building that is officially described as being "very late" (because the bath house stones in the floor means the bath house from which they came must have been non-functional by then), with a floor constructed from a combination of large flagstones possibly stolen from vicus building foundations, voussoir stones stolen from one of the bathhouses and dressed wall stones laid on end:

Digging ended half an hour early for Andy's summing up of progress over the two weeks; Justin Blake posted another of his excellent video blogs today that explains it much better than I can, and he covers the flagged area and the multi-voussoir zone so take a look there for the final summing up. Here's how the trench ended up, with the robber rubble all gone:

After some excellent fish and chips in Haltwhistle (from The Fryery) we managed to raise enough energy to make the short climb up Barcombe Hill. Some glorious views among the grasses and flowering heather, with a brisk wind hurrying through the Tyne Valley. Getting a little dark for photos, but here's the last shot before we headed back to the car:

The end of a truly fabulous two weeks of digging, lots of finds, buildings emerging, friends made and all kinds of great times had by all. Now to figure out how quickly we can do this all over again...

Flags all over: Day nine

An almost windless, warm day with barely a cloud in the sky most of the day. Not quite as warm as Tuesday, but the ice cream window was very popular at tea break:

The morning began with a surprise. Justin moved Sean and I out of the robber trench, into the area either close to where we'd started on day one (me), or adjacent to where Mark had found some huge flagstones (Sean) a little to the east. Claire and Peter took over the remaining areas of robber trench rubble we'd left yesterday afternoon. Sean quickly found two more huge flags, and after a brief period of indeterminate small stones and soil, I began to find large flat stones that had clearly been part of a floor, including yet another voussoir stone reused from the bathhouse. Most of my flagstones were smaller than Sean's and tilted significantly (orange) so don't look as clear or impressive as his (blue):

I had another couple of relatively nondescript small finds, as well as an extremely long nail, about 6 inches long. Gay hit a red hot streak though, with about four small finds, each a very different from the others. The remaining part of the team in the robber trench made good progress and only about 10% of the rubble remains to be shifted tomorrow:

Forecast for tomorrow is for sunny, even warmer weather, hopefully with many more flags scattered liberally...

Maybe a wall? Day eight

As promised, the morning was much cooler and overcast, making for a much more pleasant day for digging. No sign of rain and the sun did finally emerge occasionally by mid afternoon, but with a cool breeze to prevent the temperature rising to the heights of days six and seven.

Sean, Claire, Erin and I spent the morning helping the three-person pot washing/processing team at the tea hut; Sean and I managed to get through just two of the 20 or so bags waiting to be washed, sorted by type, weighed and logged. One of the bags was V13-59A, which we had helped fill on day seven, corresponding to the robber trench context. Seeing all the material produced from just the last couple of days made it clear how the site as a whole has so far yielded 500 tons of pottery. The time went by quickly, including a bag from V13-60A which consisted mostly of bone, while being entertained by a varied selection of jokes and songs from the thirties to the fifties from Eddie.

During the lunch break Andy took some of us over to the North Field for a quick look at the interesting developments there. Since the Canadian students left on Friday (day five) and their supervisory tandem of Alex and Beth also took a well-deserved break, the North Field trench has been quiet, but we had heard of some interesting news about one of the ditches. As they had pushed to define the ditch edges they had found more than they had bargained for, a cobbled surface that looks a lot like a road:

It will require a lot more digging to confirm it, but this just might be the first glimpse of the Stanegate at Vindolanda - the military road that was established in the 1st century AD under Agricola (ie: well before Hadrians Wall was built in 122). The line of the Stanegate is well known in many places on either side of Vindolanda, but has not been precisely located near the fort itself.

After lunch Sean and I returned to the trench and pushed further west into Claire's old trench. The depth at which the robber rubble ends and a more solid-packed, clay-like level begins remained about the same, except for an interesting spot near the southern edge. Here I found at least four fairly large and well situated mudstones forming something that looks more than just an accidental accumulation of stone; the clay around it also seems to be higher than the nearby parts of the trench. Justin Blake took a look and thought it might be consistent with a 4th C wall foundation; it will be very interesting to see how it pans out tomorrow as I remove the rubble overburden in the morning. Here's how it looked at the end of the day, with the possible wall foundation indicated by an orange arrow:

The only other news is that the huge flagstones at the eastern edge of the trench are not part of the intervallum road, but in fact are thought to be the floor from another late 4thC building. How they maneuvered those massive stones into position without modern equipment is amazing.

Bottom reached; Day seven

Another warm day, but just enough breeze to keep us from getting too hot. It was warm enough, however, to see the ice cream window open for business, just in time for tea break.

A fairly quiet day, no major finds, but lots of earth moved. I finished bottoming out my slice of the trench to the level just below the robber rubble, and then moved over to help Sean do the same in his. Just before tea break Kate had Sean move into Claire's trench, who was suffering in the heat and left to do some pot washing. While he mattocked away, at a level only just beginning to reach the rubble, I worked on final clear out of Sean's side of our trench. As we hit 4:15 and final clean up time I had the satisfaction of finishing the last of the open area; three larger stones that we had been leaving as possibly undisturbed will have to come out first thing tomorrow. Here's how it ended, with the three stones marked with white arrows:

The yellow arrowed stones at the far eastern edge of my trench seemed to mark the beginning of an unrobbed wall, but when Erin cleared more overburden away it became clear they are probably nothing. The eastern edge of the robbed area remains uncertain; but Erin is seeing some rubble, although not to the same depth Sean and I had. However, the red arrowhead stone is much deeper and may turn out to be something...

Some of the group spent the afternoon on pot-washing duty; Sean and I will start the day there. Forecast is for cooler weather, which will be a welcome relief from the heat of the last two days.

A small group has been assigned to the first robber trench, and are seeing some good floor flagstones, but in some places the robbing appears to have removed them:

Finally, it's Tuesday evening, which means Quiz Night at the Twice Brewed Inn! Lets see if a Vindolanda diggers team can take the prize...

Robber bottom? Day six

A thick fog greeted my eyes when I opened the curtains at six, visibility down to no more than 75 yards. One of the swallows nesting in the eaves above my window, perched in its usual spot on the phone wire, didn't seem to care:

However, by around 10:30 the sun had completely burned the fog away, leaving us with the hottest digging day yet, probably close to 25C, 80F, with only a slight breeze to cool us down. Sean and I attacked the pile of robber-reject rubble with mattocks, hoping to reach the southern end of the trench by lunchtime. We didn't quite make it, but reached our goal shortly after the resumption. We both still had rubble below us, so Kate and Justin had us move back to the likely northern limit of the robber trench and push lower, hopefully into the last undisturbed level beneath the rubble. A mattock proved to be extremely handy in shifting the packed rock. Finds kept coming, Sean found a really nice fragment of a glass object, with some decoration around where a handle was once attached:

I found a more solid rubble-free level fairly quickly and by the end of the day had about 80% of my slice down to that point. It was too late in the day for any of the supervisors to check my hunch that I'm finally beneath the robber's work, hopefully they'll agree with me tomorrow.

It's now clear that the robber trench extends across about half the width of the trench; the edges haven't been clearly defined yet, but I estimate it at roughly 15 yards wide, which would make it even bigger than the robber trench found earlier this season. My amateur eye thinks I may have the eastern boundary in my slice, but Erin in the next more easterly part may prove me wrong.

Here's a sampling of the days winnings, a fairly large fragment of Samian ware (top left, thin orangey-red with a distinctive shiny glaze), a piece of sheep/pig (?) bone, a nail and Sean's piece of glass on top of a piece of tile:

Our bit of the trench looks a lot different than it did this morning:

And here's a view of Mark, Graham and Justin's work at the eastern end, uncovering what I think is indeed the intervallum road:

Even warmer weather is forecast for tomorrow, hopefully the day will see the end of the robber trench in my section.

Trials of a mobile blogger

The past several days have been a harsh lesson in the difficulties of blogging with poor internet access. I'm relying solely on my iPhone 4S to write the blog, in an area without 3G coverage. Mobile apps for blogs hosted on Google's Blogger exist, but as I've already mentioned, Google's own Blogger app is very unreliable, and 3rd party apps using the Blogger API are equally affected. So, I've ended up having to rely on the web browser to make/edit new posts. This works fine for the text, but adding pictures is another story altogether.

I spent four hours yesterday morning solving the puzzle, and in case anyone else should find themselves in the same boat, this is what I found. The browser editor gives you four options for uploading images:

1. Pre-existing images from the blog itself
2. From Picasa Web albums
3. From your phone
4. From a URL

Pre-existing images are no use to me, because I want to add new ones. When you click on the Picasa Web Albums options, it doesn't seem to recognize any albums that I can upload to very easily. The "From your phone" option sounds like the one to use, but it depends on using Google+, which I downloaded, but it requires Auto upload of all pictures taken on the camera; this is impossible when every image is 6 MP and the network is going at worse than a 56k modem. The URL option seemed simple enough, until I found that neither DropBox or Flickr now allow direct access to images via an URL. Photobucket does, but the mobile app is literally broken, does not work at all - I tried it even though more than 80% of the 159 reviews are 1 star on the App Store! I have a Wuala account, but after getting the mobile app for it I found that it only works for downloading content you've already put there; new content can't be added from a phone.

To cut a long story short his is what eventually worked, using the "From a URL" option:

1. Open photos in Photogene2, edit as needed (fantastic app by the way, can do some quite sophisticated adjustments, like increasing shadow exposure, color balance etc, as well as all the standard cropping, rotation, text, arrows), export reduced size images into Picasa.
2. In Picasa Web Albums mobile app ($6), select image, copy URL
3. Paste URL into blogger's browser interface

Even this solution is clunky at best, because the browser has a limited display of the editor window; if you load more than two images it won't scroll all the way down. I had to put all the text in and then gradually add the images from the bottom up, so I could continue to see and place images higher up the window.

Come on Google, get your act together and make the mobile Blogger app work as its supposed to!

Robber Trench II - Day five

Like an unwanted sequel to a bad movie, Friday saw the arrival of an unwelcome archaeological development on any excavation: a "robber trench". An unusually large one was discovered in the trench in late May, but it was depressing to discover another one. Robber trenches can result from the thieves seeking many different prizes, but in both cases here it looks like it was the stone they were after: all the larger ones useable for building are missing. Its hard to say when the robbing took place (pre 1850 anyway, when ploughing stopped and the site was finally receiving some protection), but the walls of one of the several farmhouses near the fort is very likely to be where the stolen goods ended up. However, the thieves were apparently only interested in the stone, because all the various kinds of Roman artefacts typical of Vindolanda remained in the mixture of soil and rubble of robber trench 1, and the same seems to be true of the new one. We're hoping they have simply removed a back wall of our building and not the floor, which may hold the best dating evidence for the structure.

Some time during the morning Sean was cleaning around a decent-sized but very thin piece of stone when he found there was a hole beneath it, not the hard-packed orangish-brown soil we had been seeing all week. Andy came to take a look and was instantly crestfallen, seeing the telltale signs of recently disturbed loose material that indicate the presence of a robber trench. At that time I had been working at the far eastern edge of my zone, but as soon as I moved westward a little way the same rubble/brown soil mixture became very apparent. It appears at the moment that the eastern edge of the robbing may be in my zone, the western edge perhaps ten yards away. With hindsight I had just stopped short of hitting the northern edge of it myself on day four, and the southern end of it may well still be hidden under the grass, judging by the similar rubbly appearance of the surface that runs right to the edge of the trench. Here's a shot of what we're hoping is the eastern edge of the robber trench (yellow arrow), and roughly the northern edge (blue arrows), southern edge of the trench visible at the top of the image:

Confirming that there are still finds to be made, here's a good example of a nail and Sean holding the "staff of recognition" while his first small find of the week is being logged (unfortunately in the category I can't describe):

I also pulled a broken piece of roof tile (stone) out of the robber trench rubble; a complete one might have been kept/recorded, but Justin asked to keep it to use for one of his many daily talks to visitors. I caught his arm in the shot while he described a different style of roof tile (lower, lighter coloured) without the hole mine had:

Day four

We had drizzly rain on and off all day, only becoming dry in late afternoon. A heavier spell of drenching rain came at 10:30, leading to a retreat to the tea hut and a decision being made to take an early lunch and restart at noon. In the end we only lost half an hour of digging overall, by putting in a long post-lunch session from noon to 2:30.

It was largely uneventful day, with the trench looking more and more rocky everywhere, but with few easily-determined features appearing. One exception was the linear jumble of rock at the western end, which continues to look like a collapsed wall, and the massive stones at the eastern end seem as if they might be part of the intervallum road (although seem slightly out of alignment for that). Here's a view of the eastern end and the massive stones there; if you look carefully you can also see two large fragments of a pot lying trapped in beneath some smaller rocks in the foreground:

Remarkably few finds of note anywhere in the trench, although I did get another small find that is not earth shattering but can't be described in detail, suffice it to say that it was not even exciting enough for me to photograph...! I'm now about 70% of the way back to the southern edge of my slice, hoping to get close to completing it tomorrow. The Canadian students spent the day picking through sticky black mud in the vicus trench, hauled up to grass level spade by spade by supervisors Alex and Kate; the slightly sulfurous smell of the anaerobic soil wafted up and across the path downwind.

Here's a view of my slice standing at the southern end of the trench, beginning to reveal a jumble of stones (foreground) rather than the back wall that Andy and Justin were hoping/expecting to find:

Forecast tomorrow is for clear skies all day and warmer, lets hope it's more accurate than today.

Voussoirs galore! Day three

Sorry for the sudden silence after day two, but I have determined that the Blogger iPhone app has its problems, and the issue also extends to another Blogspot app, BlogGo. I had tested both of them quite a bit before leaving for the UK and initially had no problems here either, but as of Wednesday evening the posts I wrote would never publish, even ones with only a few words and no pictures. The built-in browser interface seems to work though.

Having lost the original day three post, here's what I can piece together on Friday morning, while I wait for it to be time to get up.

No time lost to rain, began to make quicker progress as I got more confident. Andy and Justin are confident we are still in largely unstratified material, so they are encouraging a more aggressive use of spades rather than gentle trowel scraping. A feature of the day for me was finding three more voussoir stones in the floor, at the northern edge of our trench; the builders of this 4/5th C building probably stole these from one of the bathhouses, possibly the main one in the vicus. Voussoir stones are specially cut to help form arches; the examples here are characterized by having a very flat surface and neatly carved "ears" at one end that (if I understood Justin Blake correctly) supported the ends of wooden beams that formed the bathhouse roof. Here's a shot of the first additional one I found:

And within an hour it became clear there were two more adjacent to it, with four of them (the first was discovered a few weeks ago) forming a sideways L-shape:

Sean and I both found plenty of crusted/rusted Roman nails/hobnails from sandals as well as many pottery sherds, including this nice rim that Sean unearthed:

I also managed to record a couple of "small finds" in the last hour of the day - these are more unusual/special items that get their own bag and their find location is recorded in 3D space, using a digital level. Nothing too spectacular, but unfortunately I can't describe them here.

Finally, here's a shot of our little piece of the trench at the end of the day:

Day two

Low clouds hovered overhead all day, but the rain thankfully held off until about 3:30. Time was called at 4 when the rain became a little steadier, but given the forecast we did well to get almost a full day in. 

Everyone pushed their slice of the trench down 3-6 inches or so, revealing another big flagstone next to the ones I worked yesterday, and a few more that may be part of the floor but are less obviously flags. At the western end of the trench it looks like there may be a wall appearing, forming an end to the building. Sean and I had many more nails and assorted pottery; I also turned up a golf ball sized piece of slag. Could be just a remnant from an earlier period rather than an indication of an industrial use for the building. Erin to my east had a couple of nice finds, one a spindle whorl, but again it's not clear if it really "belongs" with this late period structure.

Here's a closeup view of the area around my slice at the end of the day:

And a full view across the trench looking east, not looking a lot different to yesterday, but I think tomorrow we'll see things change a bit more significantly as we all get down to the floor level:

Supposed to be dry tomorrow, hopefully the forecasters have it right. 

Friends Night

[this post is out of sequence, it failed to upload 2 days ago].

Our visit happened to coincide with the annual Vindolanda Friends night, when the 1,000 or so Friends of the Vindolanda Trust can meet the staff and get a live update on site. About 150 or so were present this time.

After a midge infested start from Patricia Birley, telling us about the Trust's non-digging news while we listened near the museum, we moved up to the fort. Midge-free, but cold in the stiff breeze. 

Here's a shot of the spoil heap from all the southeast quadrant work this season being moved, ready for the coming week:

(Pic later, can't get it from my big camera onto the iPhone I'm connecting to the net with)

Justin Blake gave us his usual energetic update of the fort progress, making sense of the huge and complex expanse of stone. At least three periods of occupation are clear, with a very late possibly post Roman building lying on top of 3rd, 4th and possibly even 5th century remains.

(Pic to come)

Andrew Birley gave a description of some  finish-up work being done in the vicus, on a pair of small wattle & daub structures in a pre-Hadrianic level, probably 105-120AD. They will shortly be covering them back up with the same clay that had maintained the anaerobic conditions for 1900 years. Photo to come...

And finally, Beth Greene described the complex and interesting set of ditches, pits and a hearth in the North Field. Dating evidence for these is scant at the moment, not clear yet whether any of the ditches are pre-Hadrianic. The trench has been so productive it will be continued into next season. Pic to come. 

First day on the dig

The day started with sprinkles of rain but by the time we reached the site there were large expanses of blue sky. We stopped for a slightly early lunch due to rain and again for tea, but no time lost so far. Sean and I are in the SE quadrant of the fort, with all but five of the volunteers, pushing the trench further to the south. Some big pieces of amphora, several nails, 10-15 pieces of pot were among our finds, here's a general view of the deturfing:

After tea break we helped deturf our neighbor Claire's strip (she somehow got a piece twice as wide as the average) but spent about an hour overall beginning to trowel down into the real archaeology - the deturfed 8 inches or so is fully mixed due to decades of ploughing in the 18th/19th centuries, but below that is presumed to be less disturbed and as it was left by the last occupants of the fort.

The edge of our section had some very large stones, probably forming the floor of a 5th century building, and most likely robbed from the vicus according to Justin Blake. As we began troweling down more carefully some additional flagstones are beginning to show themselves, it will be very interesting to see how far into the building these extend. Here's a shot of the whole trench at the end of the day:

And a sample of our finds from the deturfing (amphora fragment on the left, nail and a nice piece of other pottery):

And last but not least, the beginnings of the floor appearing at the edge of our strip of the trench:

Forecast for tomorrow isn't looking too clever, but we had a great first day. 

On site!

A quick post to show we made it to Vindolanda! Now wandering the fort before Vindolanda Friends evening. A shot of a hypocaust system in one of the rooms of the praetorium (commanding officer's residence):

Journey started

A humid, wet start to the trip, left the house at 4:45, now at Logan with very low cloud, and thick mist. No sign of threatened thunderstorms, so looks good for on time departure...

Ditches and drains

      The North Field trench has more than its fair share of drains and ditches this year. If I'm reading the analysis correctly, the curving one that starts in the middle of west side and ends in the northeast corner, and the straight one that catches the corner at the south side, are both definitely Roman. Not yet clear from here whether they are from the same period, but there's probably some hints already from pottery and possibly other finds.

       There are also at least two annoying Victorian additions present, the straight, stone covered ditches that are probably 19th C in origin. They are not always deep enough to disturb Roman levels, although this year it looks like they are. You may be asking, why they are being left alone, rather than being removed to see what's underneath? The issue is that they are often still working, so if you break them you risk having your trench filled to the brim with water after each rainstorm; this is what happened to us last year. In trying to find the other edge of the ditch the baulk between the Victorian drain and the trench was trimmed down to about a foot, but this gave way one night during another of the many downpours last spring/summer, breaking the drain and producing the pool I blogged about on June 9th. Here's an image from last year's trench, Victorian drain in yellow, now-missing baulk outlined in black, (1st century?) double-ditch in blue, and a 3rd C later drain into the older ditch in red. The black pipe at the end of the Victorian drain was our attempt (90% successful) to reconnect the broken ends.

Great onsite updates today

No sooner did I post yesterday about the sources of daily info, and two really good ones appear:

• The Official Excavation blog run by the Trust has an excellent video post (Week 12) describing in detail the latest news on progress in the fort trench.
• One of the students posted a really good summary of a day in the North Field, including his find of an intact Roman shoe, in an anaerobic deposit within a small pit.

Progress is rapidly being made in the north field; as they go deeper things seem to be becoming more and more interesting. The anaerobic layers at Vindolanda can contain fully intact leather (mainly shoes & pieces of tents), wooden items such as combs, and very occasionally writing tablets with Latin text still remaining.


OK, I've decided, I want to be in the field again...

Sources for daily excavation updates for Vindolanda junkies

I'm planning to post at least once a day while I'm digging (July 1st to July 12th), but before/during/after that there are at least four other potential sources of daily info on the state of the Vindolanda excavations:

Daily tweets from Justin Blake, Deputy Director of Vindolanda Excavations, giving some official interpretation of the various trenches; these usually include a picture.

The Vindolanda Field School blog. Not necessarily every day, and includes their whole "summer in Northumberland" experience. Excavation updates are almost all from the North Field.

The official Vindolanda Trust Excavation Blog. Excellent weekly summary (usually posted on Friday) of the action by Justin Blake, occasional entries on other topics. Sometimes features video blogs that really make you feel like you are on a guided tour.

WeDigVindolanda Forum. Individual volunteers sometimes post reports and photos here. Also has an excellent historical overview of Vindolanda and description of typical finds. Need to join the forum to see everything.

2013 excavations so far

There are some detailed descriptions of the current excavations in the links I've included in the right side column, but it might be useful to try and summarize what's happening, to the extent that I can figure this out from 3,000 miles away. :-) I should emphasize that this summary is my own interpretation of information contained in the various blogs and tweets linked to the right.

There are two places being investigated this year, the southeast quadrant of the fort (yellow rectangle on image, right), and the North Field.

Fort, 2013
In only 10 weeks, more than half of the yellow rectangular area has been taken down about a foot, into the level of the last Roman/post-Roman occupation. Walls/floors from a variety of buildings have emerged, one of which was most likely housing soldiers at one point, another appears to have been domestic. In the late Roman period (and certainly post-Roman) the governing systems put in place by the Romans gradually broke down throughout Britain, and forts began to be used by locals in various non-military ways. So it wouldn't be surprising at all to find civilians living in the fort, even in the 4th century, before the Romans officially left Britain to its own devices in 410. These buildings likely date from the 4th and 5th century, built on top of and reusing stone from earlier forts that had not been properly maintained.
       An annoying feature this year is a very large "robber trench", where all the building stone was taken, probably to build one of the nearby farmhouses in the 18th or 19th centuries (there are two just off the edge of the photo); fortunately the robbing seems to have stopped just above the early 3rd century fort level (built 213 AD). The robbers were only interested in the stone, so there were many small finds in this area, but their usefulness as dating material was limited because the soil was so disturbed. Many small finds of all kinds have emerged from the Fort, as usual, but not the leather and other "soft" finds that are preserved in the deeper, anaerobic layers that Vindolanda is famous for.

North Field, 2013
Excavations over the last five years or so have produced tantalizing evidence that the first fort at Vindolanda may have been in an adjacent field. Ditches and small finds dating from the pre-Hadrianic period (ie: late 1st C/early 2nd C) have been discovered; this is the area where I was digging in 2010 and 2012. It is hoped the trench this year will provide more clues as to what was in the field and when it first began to be used. A fort here would have been constructed of timber, so there is hope that some of the main structure may eventually be found, permitting an accurate date to be determined.
       This year's trench hasn't revealed any timbers, but it has produced at least two distinct ditches, an area that looks to have been used as a hearth, and a pit of unknown function. One ditch has pottery dating from the latter part of the 2nd century, at a time when a fort on the main site had already been in use for decades (and by then had been rebuilt several times over). The vast majority of the excavation here has been done by students from the Vindolanda Field School (which is run by faculty from Western University, Ontario, click here for their excavation blog), but they are being joined by regular volunteers already so Sean and I could be digging alongside them. The Field School students will be leaving midway through our two weeks on site, but the two faculty (Beth Greene and Alex Meyer) will remain to continue the trench into August with a full crew of volunteers.

We don't know where we'll be assigned to dig until we arrive and I'm torn about which to hope for. Both previous times I've been in the North Field (with Beth Greene supervising in 2010 and 2012 and Alex Meyer in 2012), so it would be great to be posted there with them again, but there's so much happening in the fort as well...!

Testing video posts

Ten days to go before we leave, and just wanted to go through the process of posting a video. Here's a 14 second clip taken with my iPhone, in the back garden yesterday evening; if you listen carefully you can hear a few "chips" from the hummingbird, a brief bit of the high speed wing beats, and all of this behind the loud song of our nesting catbird:

This is "HD" quality, but still looks a little grainy IMHO. 4MB file.

New blog "skin" finished

Having decided to revitalize the blog for another digging season, it struck me that the blog could use a facelift. Over the past couple of days I've been tweaking it, finally digging a little bit deeper into the different available Blogger themes and discovering there is some fairly easy customization possible. Now I'm satisfied with it, so if there is actually anybody out there but me reading this, they could even comment on how it looks... 8-)

The header image is actually a section of Hadrian's Wall near Steel Rigg, sliced from a shot I took in 2010. You could even go so far as to say this is another milestone in the blog. But no, that would be too corny.

Testing mobile apps for Blogger

As the trip nears I realize I need to test out some mobile blogging apps, so I can post quickly from the trench. BlogGo ($1.99) has more bells and whistles, more ways to change fonts and image sizes can be selected more easily. But, on an iPhone 4s the typing space is TINY. Blogger (free) is less customizable, but for basic blogging looks to be the one for me. I think the BlogGo interface could be modified to free up more space for typing and relegate the additional options to a popup; as it is now it becomes extremely difficult to edit once you have both text and an image present in your post. Because most people are by now using an iPhone 5 with a taller screen, it may be that the developer won't be interested in fixing this, but I think it could do with some cleaning up all the same...

Here's a screenshot of Blogger:

Followed by the much more cluttered look of BlogGo:

Flying Archaeologist

As noted below, an episode of "The Flying Archaeologist" was focused on Vindolanda, and they were around for filming during the week I was digging. A separate news story describing the main ideas in the episode ended up on the BBC website: BBC story on Vindolanda and yours truly is in the second image of the four shown within the story. Fame at last. The programme was shown in the UK in April 2013; there's a 3 minute clip from it on the page linked to above.

Postscript for 2012's dig...

I guess the blog was a bust last year. Sorry. Had a great week, only lost one day of the five to rain, despite 2012 being one of the wettest on record in the UK. We defined a ditch that probably ran along the outer perimeter of one of the earliest forts at Vindolanda. However, because the very wet conditions meant we were all covered in thick mud the whole day, I took very few pictures. Here's evidence of how wet it was, showing the crew first thing on day 4, looking at thousands of gallons of rain in our trench from an overnight storm, believe it or not we were digging an hour after this picture was taken:

And here's a shot of the dry trench the day before, with the ditch in view running through the middle of the shot, right to left at a slight diagonal (a marker post is lying along the bottom of one side of the ditch):

And here's a view I took of the entire site from Barcombe Hill (Hadrian's Wall is on the ridge in the background, at right), on our day lost to rain, with our trench visible in the north field towards the centre right of the image:

We were visited by a BBC film crew during the week (see link to a news story about it), filming an episode of the series "The Flying Archaeologist". It turned out they showed a nice find of mine from that day, a small piece of armour: