Roman Ruins

These last few days we have been to Vindolanda, the Roman Army Museum and Hadrian's Wall.

Vindolanda Ruins

Vindolanda

Vindolanda is a roman auxiliary fort in the north of England just south of Hadrian's Wall. Today it is found near the town of Bardon Mill. Vindolanda is very well preserved and archeologists still excavate at it today. It guarded the roman road from the river Tyne to Solway Firth.

Artifacts

Vindolanda is famous for the wooden writing tablets that they excavated from an anaerobic layer which mean that there was no air so the tablets were perfectly preserved. they are among the most important finds because they have military and private correspondence written on them. No tablets as legible and well preserved have been found any where in the roman empire. Tablets aren't the only amazing finds at Vindolanda. Over 6000 shoes have been found at Vindolanda but there are only 7 pairs! This means that there were either lots of  one legged Romans or more likely that they recycled. Another interesting artifact was a die that was found in the ruins of the bath house. If you found a 2000 year old die what would you do with it? of course you would roll it. they rolled it 10 times and 8 of those it was a 6. When they x-rayed it they found a piece of led in the side! 2000 thousand years ago they played with rigged dice!

Roman Army Museum

The Roman Army Museum was fascinating we spent half a day there but you could have spent days. It was showing a 3D film called Edge of the empire. The Trailer is above. After we looked around and had lunch it the cafeteria we drove to part of Hadrian's Wall.

Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall

The wall was well designed even though it now stands only about a metre and a half high. It is evident that people had taken all the top stones to  make other buildings, because the wall is just the right height to keep sheep in. The stones would have been a very valuable resource because builders wouldn't have had to chip the stones out of the nearby quarries. Every mile along the wall there is a mile castle these were usually in valleys. On the higher points of the ridge the wall was thinner because on the north side of the wall there were cliffs and no one would try to scale the cliffs. We walked for a couple of hours and then headed back to my grannie's house.