Vindolanda's 2021 Excavation

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Situated roughly one mile south of Hadrian’s Wall is one of the great jewels of Roman and early medieval archaeology: Vindolanda. Over the past 50 years, annual excavations at this site have revealed incredible amounts of new information. Information that has not only shone more light on the site’s history, but also on the minutiae of everyday life for those people who lived on this north western frontier of the Roman Empire almost 2,000 years.

A plethora of stunning artefacts have been unearthed over the last half decade from Vindolanda: from the only Roman boxing gloves found from anywhere in the Roman Empire to early medieval Christian graffiti. What’s most exciting of all, however, is that there are still so many more exciting finds to be uncovered in the years ahead.

In this episode we return to Northumberland to speak to Dr Andrew Birley and Marta Alberti who, alongside their team of archaeologists and volunteers, are constantly discovering more about the people who lived and passed through the site. They describe their findings from 2021, including more information about the other animals at Vindolanda and the post-Roman uses of the fortifications. We also get a glimpse of what we can expect from next year’s work.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Entrance on History Hit, I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast
0:08.7	where we are talking all about the site of Vindalanda once again, that stunning location
0:14.9	just south of Hadrian's Wall.
0:17.2	So why are we talking about Vindalanda again?
0:20.1	Well because over the course of 2021, a new excavation has been underway at Vindalanda
0:27.2	and this podcast is dedicated to talking all about the new excavation and what they found.
0:33.6	Now this episode we've curated it from a new documentary that we've made for History Hit TV
0:40.0	all about the 2021 excavation and so in this episode we feature two of the leading archaeologists
0:47.3	at Vindalanda.
0:48.5	Dr Andrew Burley, the head of excavations and Marta Alberti, the site archaeologist
0:54.7	and in this podcast Marta and Andrew, they guide you through the 2021 excavation week
1:00.8	by week structure by structure.
1:03.0	They explain what areas they excavated, what time periods these areas date to and of
1:08.3	course most important of all what's remarkable artifacts they've discovered this year.
1:13.8	Now this is a very very special ancient episode, our chief editor Sophie, she's putting
1:19.4	the loss of hours to get this podcast ready for release so huge kudos to Sophie on that
1:25.5	and without further ado to talk all about Vindalanda's 2021 excavation season.
1:31.1	Here's Andrew and here's Marta.
1:36.2	Vindalanda is one of the great jewels of Roman Britain.
1:40.6	The site is situated roughly one mile south of the historic landmark that is Hadrian's
1:46.0	Wall.
1:47.0	The Andrew Burley is the director of excavations at Vindalanda and here he explains what Vindalanda
	...

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