All who attended last month's Vindolanda talk would agree it was a great success. Over one hundred attended the Mercure venue and were greatly entertained by Dr Andrew Birley's account of his recent excavations there. He also told us about Magna, another Roman fort on Hardrian's wall which is also under the care of the Vindolanda Trust. As mentioned last month, this site is under severe threat from erosion caused by the protecting layer of peat drying out. This has started to expose the delicate organic remains of the site which is likely to hold just as much information as Vindolanda itself. Dr Birley has now set up a rescue plan to preserving artefacts and knowledge that will otherwise be lost. To this end he is looking for £50k of funding but his planned trip to and from Rome with his companion, Gary Calland, to raise this, will have to wait until the current international crisis is over. However receipts from our meeting mean that we have been able to donate £210 to the cause (if anybody wants to add more here is the website.)
Magna is situated just to the west of the Walltown Crags visitors centre and Roman Army Museum near Greenhead. With a garrison of around 400 men, it is thought to match Vindolanda in its outstanding anaerobic preservation conditions but has never been the subject of a modern research excavation. It is known to have been the base for Syrian archers - the only such unit known to have served in Britain - and Dalmatian mountain soldiers from the Balkans, people who travelled some of the greatest distances to serve in Roman Britain.
Magna (known as Carvoran in the Middle Ages) also holds one of the most enduring mysteries of Hadrian's Wall, which was why the vallum, the ditch to the south of the Wall, was diverted around the site when elsewhere it runs in straight lengths. The funds raised for the project would pay for two-month digging but due to the current situation this is not likely to proceed until the crisis is over. If this wasn't Dr Birley's only worry, the current crisis has caused the temporary closure of both the Vindolanda site and the Roman Army Museum. This is a major source of revenue for the Trust and Dr Birley has had to launch an urgent appeal to keep it afloat - here are the details vindolanda.com/appeal/survival-appeal
Next Meeting
It probably goes without saying our next meeting will not be going ahead. I don't suppose anybody can guess how long this crisis is going to continue but it is likely that our May meeting will also be postponed. All our fieldwork is also on hold until further notice.
Corvid Sympton Tracker
One thing that may speed up the resolution of the current situation is this app launched by researchers at Kings College. It is designed to help slow the spread of the COVID19 virus by identifying at risk cases sooner by self-reporting your symptoms daily, even if you feel well. You can download the app to your mobile phone from this website. Please share the app with everyone you know as the researches need to get this to a lot of people fast to collect enough data to see the hidden cases - the iceberg if you like that we are sailing into. Share the app and share your "well/ill" status and let's get some data for the policy makers to work with. Stay safe; stay healthy. ♥
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