
UK's oldest hand-written document 'at Roman London dig' - joefc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-36415563
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secant
What strikes me most about these documents is the mundanity of life back then.
Like an agreement to pay someone back is one of them (a basic IOU), the other
is a telling off for some financial reason. It's strange to think back then
people were having equivalent disagreements and deals as they have now.

Ancient times always tend to feel very untouchable because of the massive span
of time separating us and them, but I see that the basic tenets of human life
still existed back then from this limited material. It makes me wonder how far
back we would have to go back to find proto-civilisations that make no sense,
human sacrifice not withstanding.

~~~
fapjacks
You can get this same sort of feeling from the various graffiti found
preserved in places like Pompeii. I am extremely interested in this very
thing. If two thousand years doesn't separate everyday people from "the normal
problems" that we experience, I wonder equally if I could go back ten thousand
or fifteen thousand years and have the same kinds of thoughts ("Arkurush has
refused to pay for the chickens I gave him").

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curtis
This reminded me of an article I read ages ago (National Geographic? In the
80s?) of Roman writing found on "wood shavings" during the excavation of a
Roman fort in the UK. This article was most likely about the "Vindolanda
tablets" [1].

The thing that stuck with me was that the Romans were using wood shavings
instead of paper. And they were doing this because they didn't have paper! How
can you run an empire without paper? The Wikipedia article mentions that
papyrus was used in other parts of the Roman empire, but presumably it wasn't
available everywhere, and I'm under the impression that it's quite a bit more
fragile than other forms of paper. It would certainly be more fragile than
wood shavings! Parchment would also have been available as well, but it's
always been expensive.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets)

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joefc
"The documents were written on wooden tablets which would have been covered in
blackened beeswax. Although the wax has not survived, the words were etched
into the wood below using styluses." The etching was an accidental by product
of writing on the wax.

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cowholio4
Whenever I see these big construction projects I see a bunch of big tools and
people moving lots of dirt fast. So I'm always surprised when discoveries like
this happen. Is it by accident? Or do the excavators have a team on hand
looking for "treasure"?

~~~
petewailes
It's partly because they're so big. The actual surface area separating what
will be in the bucket from what won't be is fairly small, and the bucket
itself doesn't agitate what's in it as much as you'd think.

Also, at dig sites where there's likely to be historic remains in the UK,
there's work done to ensure the conservation of the archeology likely to be
uncovered.

It's called archeological excavation, if you want to do some Googling. Also,
have a look at the Museum of London Archaeology. They do a lot of stuff with
this.

Source: I work just down the road from three current construction projects
going on at major archeological sites and asked them the same question.

~~~
afarrell
There is now some controversy[1] over how much work should be done in the name
of archeological conservation. This work and the project delays it introduces
comes at the expense of construction. There is therefore some amount of
tradeoff with affordable housing.

[1] [http://new.archaeologyuk.org/news/cba-response-to-new-
neighb...](http://new.archaeologyuk.org/news/cba-response-to-new-
neighbourhood-planning-and-infrastructure-bill-announcement)

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jl6
There is probably an immense volume of interesting artefacts buried under
buildings which are themselves historic (and as such will never be excavated).

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Bromskloss
Hand-written as opposed to what?

~~~
desas
Hand chiselled into stone tablets

~~~
Bromskloss
I thought that counted as handwriting.

