The new phase of the Vindolanda research excavations, from 2008 to 2012, will be one of the most exciting research projects that the Vindolanda Trust has undertaken in its 37 year history. It will give archaeologists a great deal of detail about life on a military settlement on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. The excavations will attempt to address the specific question 'was there a great divide between those who lived inside and those who lived outside the walls of the Roman fort at Vindolanda in the 3rd and 4th centuries?'. To answer such a question, the buildings, material culture and diet of those who lived inside the walls of the fort compared to those outside will be a key consideration.

The areas under investigation would include a section of the vicus (the aim of which is to link the sections already excavated thereby offering a tolerably comprehensive plan of the settlement), the granaries inside the fort and the north western quadrant of the fort. This will offer detailed information on the food supply to the garrison as well as comparable domestic material to that recovered from extramural areas of the site. The project will take five years to complete. The plan of the site below marks out the location of the vicus excavations as well as the work that will take place inside the fort.

Extramural (vicus area) in detail

A detailed analysis of the work undertaken to date on the extramural areas outside the stone forts has suggested that there had been a planned development in the third century. Outside the western gate of the stone fort, on both sides of the principal east to west roadway, the densely packed structures were largely of a commercial nature, representing the drinking and eating establishments, the shops and the premises of craftsmen such as weavers and cobblers. Further to the south, opposite the western wall of the fort, the structures appear to have been largely domestic. To the south-west, on the more elevated land, houses were much larger than elsewhere, and at least three of them possessed gated yards. In the far north-west lay industrial premises, mainly concerned with the processing of iron ore. Nearby, to the south, there may have been a series of temples.

An extensive area remains unexcavated, between the known large houses and the industrial/religious compounds. It is believed that this will contain a few more large houses, together with a number of temples and perhaps a market-place, giving invaluable evidence on how such settlements were formed and used by the military community.

Beneath all the third/fourth century structures will be substantial traces of the late first and second century occupations, but the proposed excavations of 2008-2012 will be to examine only the third/fourth century levels. This is because the focus of all the areas in this proposal are to determine the way in which the 3rd & 4th century settlement functioned, rather than exploring the earlier military forts beneath the foundations of the later vicus. Taking account of the proposed sampling of the remains in the north field, the work proposed here should permit the publication of a definitive report on an extramural settlement on northern frontier of Roman Britain.

Inside the 3rd & 4th century stone fort
In 2008 excavations will start on what should be the site of twin granaries (between the principia and the western fort wall), and from 2009 to 2012 will continue north of the granary site to examine in detail the north-west quadrant of the stone fort, where barracks, or perhaps stables, may be found.

1. The granaries site: at some time between 1930 and 1937, Eric Birley dug a trench across this site, and reported (personal communication) that the last phase of occupation there suggested living accommodation. No other work is known to have taken place.



2. Judging by the surface indications, rather more stonework may survive here than elsewhere on the site, probably because the massive foundations and floors of granaries proved too difficult for the mediaeval ploughmen who successfully operated elsewhere on the fort site. The stone robbers who destroyed most of the western half of the massive masonry at the south end of the principia may have dumped some of their spoil on this site, thus preserving it.



3. Excavation may be very rewarding. It could be that similar conditions to those found at Birdoswald may exist at Vindolanda, with the strongly built granaries, like the administrative rooms in the principia, surviving for many years after AD 400 to provide accommodation for whatever inhabitants there were then. Traces of late-Roman/post-Roman occupation would be very valuable to our understanding of the use of the site once official 'Roman' had ceased. This could also provide more evidence from the small Christian community that seems to have occupied the fort site in the 5th and 6th centuries.



4. The granaries themselves could contain the remains of a rich deposit of environmental material that could provide detailed evidence of the nature of the original contents of these buildings, and the careful sampling of this material will be a major object of the excavations.



5. It is not proposed at this stage to examine the numerous remains below the third century levels.



6. The north-west quadrant of the Fort: apart from P.T.Bidwell's 1980 excavation of a part of a barrack building in the NE quadrant, the only work on the barracks known to have taken place was that of Eric Birley in 1936 and 1937, on the site immediately to the north of the eastern side of the principia. The evidence for which is now only to be found in the notations on some coin packets located at the Department of Archaeology in Durham, by John Casey, and now held in the Vindolanda archive. In 1998, the excavators of the praetorium revealed a part of the northern walls of buildings to the south of that structure, which were presumed to be parts of barracks. As the Bidwell site was backfilled by EH, there are no barracks remains now visible at Vindolanda.



7. Bidwell believed that the barracks he examined had probably been designed for a part of the cavalry contingent of the Fourth Cohort of Gauls, and he drew attention to the chalet-type construction, previously thought to be a fourth century innovation. He also found evidence that suggested that the site of those barracks had lain empty for some years after the initial construction of the fort. It will be most instructive to see what evidence lies in the north-west quadrant.



8. On this site it should be possible to obtain valuable environmental evidence relating to the diet and living conditions of the occupants, and a comprehensive sampling programme will be in place.



9. In the NW corner of this quadrant there are now the consolidated remains of a small, late structure, examined in 1931, but during the excavation of the fort wall immediately to the north of it in 1976, a substantial drain was found at this point, strongly suggesting the presence of an earlier toilet block. Toilet blocks have been found in the three other corners of the fort walls (NE in 1972, SE in 1999 and SW in 2006), and it could be instructive to examine this one as well, especially when there is a major environmental sampling programme in place.



10. It is not proposed to examine pre-third century remains in this area at this stage.



11. Subject to the condition of the surviving masonry, it would be proposed to consolidate the excavated remains for permanent display.

The North Field
Over the next five years trenches will be placed into the field to the north of the site of Vindolanda to test an extensive geophysical survey that was conducted during the course of 2000. The trenches will hope to fix in the line of the stanegate road, and explore a possible industrial facility (possibly a kiln site) as well as other anomalies that came to light during the geophysical survey of the area.