Vindolanda
Vindolanda near Bardon Mill in Northumberland is the most important Roman site in Britain after Hadrian's Wall itself, a pre-Wall and Wall-period Roman fort and civilian settlement whose extraordinary waterlogged archaeology has preserved organic materials including wooden writing tablets whose content provides the most direct and most personal insight into daily life on the Roman frontier available anywhere in the Roman Empire. The Vindolanda Trust manages an active archaeological excavation open to visitors and a museum of international importance. The Vindolanda writing tablets, discovered from 1973 onward in the waterlogged deposits below the fort floor, are thin wooden leaves inscribed in ink with letters, records, orders and lists from the garrison and the civilian community of the late first and early second centuries AD. The tablets include a birthday party invitation from the fort commander's wife to the wife of a neighbouring commander, a list of supplies ordered for the fort kitchen and a letter requesting socks and underpants from home, the humanity of these documents providing an immediacy of connection to the Roman frontier experience quite different from the inscribed stonework that represents most Roman military archaeology. The museum contains the original tablets alongside arms, armour, shoes and other personal belongings preserved by the waterlogging in a collection of extraordinary intimacy and quality. The active excavation, where professional and volunteer archaeologists work within sight of visitors during the season, provides the additional dimension of archaeology as a living process rather than a completed achievement.