A number of specialists visit the Vindolanda Trust every year during the winter season, in order to conduct research on our artefacts. One of them is Rhys Williams, a graduate tutor and PhD candidate at Teesside University who is studying the processes of preservation in bone, and specifically the chemical and microbiological reasons for which certain bones buried in certain conditions are better preserved than other Read more
Hosting a guest blog post written by one of our volunteer excavators and bursary winner Emily. She describes her experience of digging at Vindolanda over summer 2018. Read more
Once an artefact is found during the excavations, it undergoes conservation in our onsite laboratory. It is stabilized, conserved and prepared for display or storage. Research on the object is weaved throughout. Learn about more about the process through the Hipposandals found summer 2018. Read more
Pottery is something we find in great quantities at Vindolanda during each excavation season - usually into the tens of thousands of sherds per year. A volunteer excavator is almost guaranteed to find some when they are here. The types of pottery we find vary in origin, manufacture, size, shape, material, colour, design and decoration. Here we focus on one of them - Samian Ware. Read more
Here we are, at the end of 2018 excavation season, ready for a recap of what we have uncovered during this summer of extremes. From the Beast from the East to the mid-season heatwave we have pushed our excavators hard. What have we accomplished this year? Read more
Dr Trudi Buck takes a closer look at the human skull unearthed during the 2018 excavation of the Severan fort ditch at Vindolanda. Read more
Both visitors and volunteers have been very curious as to what those beautiful timber posts sticking out of the ground are. Here is what the archaeologists have concluded so far. Read more