Back in the Mud at Vindolanda

I've just returned from my annual trip to Northumberland, where I spend two weeks every year on my hands and knees in various trenches at the Vindolanda Trust's Roman fort. This year marked my 9th time volunteering since my first dig in 2015, and I've yet to find a good reason to stop.

Before heading north, I spent the weekend in London and the Cotswolds, including an unplanned side quest randomly following road signs to a "Roman Villa," as you do. Which is where I stumbled onto Chedworth and its extraordinary mosaic floors. A fine omen, I decided, before catching the train north to Vindolanda and the real work began.

And it is work. The walk from my accommodation up to the site is a proper hill, and by the time I reached the top each morning I sounded like I'd run a half marathon rather than strolled to a dig. The weather did its bit too. One morning the site looked more like a water park than an archaeological excavation. So much for England’s heatwave!

When the sun did show its face, we were released onto the site like feral beavers with trowels. (An aside: I love beavers, and I recommend Derek Gow's Bringing Back the Beaver to anyone who'll listen.) My band of volunteers became TeamNZ, and we were shuffled through walls and rooms as the fortnight went on, clearing backfill from a 1980 excavation and eventually helping uncover more of the temple. In the photo above, I’m posing on one of the two enormous temple column bases. Still feels like a dream!

The finds were the usual glorious mix of the significant and the less so. My trench buddy Martin turned over the first rock in a new spot and there sat a beautiful pot, mostly whole. I found the bottom of a lovely drain and scraps of animal bone, which sounds dull but was not. Elsewhere, someone unearthed a 1970s ring pull, and TeamOZ found a piece of Samian ware showing two stags going at each other. My own tableware at home remains a disappointment by comparison.

The weather forced another delay in operations, and we used that time to visit Magna, Vindolanda's sister site. Super impressive and aggressively windy.

During the middle weekend, I visited Arbeia at South Shields, and was stunned at their reconstruction of its west gate as it would have looked in the second century, its excellent grounds and barrack reconstruction, and its free entry, which I repaid into the donation bucket because it was worth every coin. Sadly, our visit the same day to Segedunum Roman Fort was particularly disappointing. Sad, dilapidated, and how on earth did they ever get planning permission for that monstrosity of a tower? Also, their reconstructed Roman baths have been closed to public access since 2013 ish, due to ‘structural issues’. They’ve had more than enough time to fix those issues in my opinion!

Back to Vindolanda, and my happy place! Digging isn't really why I go, not now. The friends are. Some I've dug alongside since 2015, and a few have made the long haul all the way down to New Zealand to visit me. This year the Vindolanda Trust's archivist interviewed me about my experiences volunteering, and I got to tell the story of bringing my own daughter over to dig in 2022, and of the friendships that have grown out of a hole in the ground and steered so many of my books towards Northumberland. The archivist also asked whether I'd donate copies of my books to the Vindolanda archives, my three-book Ithaca time travel series and all three Cheviot Hills titles. I said yes on the spot, and signed every one. Those books all grew out of my time in these trenches, so it's right that they'll now live on site.

Which brings me neatly to the Cheviot Hills time travel series I write with Shawn Inmon. Book three, The Ancient Lives of Emily Best, owes a great deal to Vindolanda (and, I'll admit, to the TV show Detectorists). When you write about people slipping between centuries, it turns out that kneeling in an actual Roman trench, lifting objects last touched by hands two thousand years ago, is decent research. The line between the fiction and the mud is thinner than you'd think.

So yes, I'll be back next year, the Roman gods willing, notebook and trowel in hand. Fortuna, if you're reading, a little less rain next time wouldn't go amiss.