It is with great pleasure to announce the publication of a book chapter in:
At the AIA I was able to finally to get my hands on it, as the first print run sold out..
the volume has some amazing chapters, including ‘Chapter 11: Roman Leather Manufacture and the Archaeological Record: An Experimental Approach
Hrafnhildur Helga Halldórsdóttir and Gillian Taylor (Teesside University, UK)’
For two weeks only in January, the Vindolanda museum closes to allow cleaning and scheduled maintenance, but which also allows is in to take a closer look at items on display..
It was an absolute privilege to get a closer look at lepidina slipper: Here is a link to more shoes and information: This lady’s slipper was also found in the Cerialis’ house and is sometime affectionally called Lepidina’s slipper. It is the equivalent of a flip flop in design but a very expensive one at that. It was made in Gaul (modern France) by Lucius Aebutius Thales, we know this because he stamped the shoe with a maker’s mark. The shoe is further stamped with vine leaves and two cornucopiea interlocked across an ear of corn. Whether it was Lepindia’s or not it was definitely owned by a women who had money to spend on nice shoes. A simple breakage of the toe thong and she has thrown it away. Many other shoes from the site show evidence of repair but this one was discarded.
It was an absolute please to present at the Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Philadelphia.
I was presenting in the climate impact session, showcasing our latest work on climate change upon leather artefacts, entitled ‘The impact of climate change on oxygen-reduced archaeological contexts at Vindolanda, UK’ lead author Elizabeth Greene, Western Onatrio and discussing our ‘ Use of continuous monitoring as a strategy to assess climate change at Magna Roman Fort, UK.
We are busy working on the publications on both of these topics, so watch this space
LIMES – Congress on Roman frontier Studies, held every 3 years since 1949. In 2024 this was at Batumi State University Georgia
The opening ceremony was fun and welcomed everyone to the beautiful culture of Georgia
This week long event allows delegates to attend sessions, but also has two excursions across georgia. Batumi is a lively city on the edge of the blacksea, with an abundance of casino’s! Our accommodation was in the old town, with a great mix of shops, bars and culture.
Monday was my day of presenting.. first up was data from our ‘grassroots’ projects, looking at understanding Turf. We have used a combination of analytical techniques, such as total carbon, total nitrogen, pH, EC, pXRF and GCMS. To keep to the 15 minutes, we only presented on the total carbon, showing that total carbon could possibly discriminate against different occupation periods, due to obtaining turf from different areas, canopy covered, grassland. Much more to be done but slowing building up a turf toolkit.. watch this space
Monday afternoon, I was co-chairing a session with Dr Andrew Birley, Vindolanda Trust. The session was climate change on the roman frontiers, we had a packed room and a lively session. Dr Rebecca Jones from the National History Museum Scotland, gave a fascinating talk on Climate Vulnerability Index and a call for more sites to create and share data.
Elizabeth Greene presented on changes in leather artefacts degradation from 1970-2020’s at Vindolanda. This was a project which developed from questions regarding degradation, shows clearly that through the use of analytical instrumentation, fundamental visual differences between leather excavated in the 70/80’s to the leather excavated in the 90-2020’s can be shown. Although, alot more work has to be undertaken, this is exciting and new area.
SEM image of leather
The last talk was the most recent environmental monitoring data from Magna Roman Fort, this is the first environmental monitoring system on Hadrians wall addressing the impact of climate change. Over the last 3 years we have been monitoring the chemical changes and impact of our changing seasons.. especially our very wet 2024 summer!
It was an absolute pleasure to co-chair and organise this impactful session, which I am sure will become a main theme for many conferences in the future
One last thing.. if you like bread and cheese.. batumi is the place to visit
and the public art works..
The EAA is the great conference to experience a vast range of archaeological subjects over 3 days.. Rome is one of my favourite cities, but in august with high humidity.. often feels like your in a continuous steam room!
Sapienza University – EAA host
My pXRF talk was one of the very first talks on thursday, the talk was entitled ‘is laboratory preparation worth it? use of pXRF for field mapping, at Magna Roman Fort’. The talk emphasised the need for laboratory verification of results, but also presented out first work on soil mapping before and during excavation at the Roman site of Magna, on Hadrian’s wall.
There was no rest on friday, I co-chaired a session ‘ Paris or Pardigm shift’, what a great series of talks, covering aspects of policy and case studies from USA, Ireland and the UK
With so many talks on saturday, I opted to stay in the goat/sheep session, Elizabeth Greene was presenting our recent work on species determination using ZooMS from the Vindolanda leather collection. Although, Elizabeth was still in canada we were hoping the zoom link would work!! we were wrong.. and I ended up giving an impromptu talk. The session was amazing, the use of ZooMS and different proteomic and genomic applications, from samples under different environmental conditions was fascinating, congratulations to the session organisers.
Well this is a new aspect of my work… The GCMS has a staring role in a film!! and not just any film.. a film that will go tot he BFI film festival in london this october.
It was a fabulous to be involved in this project and get a chance to explore a different side of the GCMS
Researchers’ short film selected for BFI London Film Festival | Media centre | Teesside University
At the start of July, the HLF funded project started at Magna. The £1.6M project was to support excavation and explore the impact of climate change, and awarded to the Vindolanda Trust.
The Teesside University team were involved in the installation of the weather station and monitoring system – VanWalt, which provides data every 15 minutes from a wide range of sensors including pH, temperature, ORP and moisture.
In July, soil monitoring was conducted by Dr Gillian Taylor and Dr Rhys Williams prior to the excavation. You can keep upto date with excavation progress by following the dig diary. The excavation in 2023 focuses on milecastle 46 and already some interesting artefacts such as a steelyard beam.
There is also a wonderful report in current archaeology about Magna and magnifying milecastle 46.
One year has now past since Dr Gillian Taylor was involved in the installation of a weather station at Fort Magna. It is not just a weather station but also monitors ground chemistry to help us understand seasonal changes. The data has been fascinating and watch this space for updates on conference presentations later in the year..
https://www.vanwalt.com/projects/soil-research-equipment-for-the-vindolanda-trust/
Not content with one weather stations, in April 2023, the team also installed a similar system, provided by Van Walt across the Vindolanda site, monitoring more chemistry, more conditions and importantly watching those anaerobic areas very carefully, as we all know by now, the anaerobic conditions are important for the preservation of artefacts.
There are two other blogs posts, whom have written about the adventures of putting in the new system, so enjoy the link
https://www.vindolanda.com/blog/monitoring-the-buried-archaeology-of-vindolanda
https://www.vanwalt.com/dubois/2023/04/23/whisky-and-paracetamolepilogue/
Orr, C.H., Williams, R., Halldórsdóttir, H.H. et al. Unique chemical parameters and microbial activity lead to increased archaeological preservation at the Roman frontier site of Vindolanda, UK. Sci Rep 11, 15837 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94853-7
Published: 04 August 2021
Abstract: Waterlogged burial conditions impact upon artefact preservation. One major determinant of preservation is presence and behaviour of microorganisms, however, unravelling the mechanisms, especially in waterlogged conditions is challenging. In this study, we analysed elemental composition, bacterial diversity and community structure from excavation trenches at the Roman Site of Vindolanda, Northumberland, UK, using pXRF and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Excavation trenches provide information of different occupation periods. The results indicated that microbial communities were dominated by Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria at a phylum level. Samples which also had visible vivianite presence showed that there were marked increases in Methylophilus. Methylophilus might be associated with favourable preservation in these anaerobic conditions. More research is needed to clearly link the presence of Methylophilus with vivianite production. The study emphasises the need for further integration of chemical and microbiome approaches, especially in good preservation areas, to explore microbial and chemical degradation mechanisms.
This image shows the adherence of vivianite on wood recovered at Vindolanda.
Untreated wood normally degrades whilst buried due to rot and bacterial attack. The conditions at Vindolanda preserve wood exceptionally well. Vindolanda is known particularly well for its preservation of wooden tablets with handwritten correspondence. These adherence of vivianite into the wooden tablets seem to have helped preserve them over millennia of burial. TUBA is researching how vivianite adheres to wood, and how wood degrades at Vindolanda.
