
Unearthed near Hadrian’s Wall: lost secrets of first Roman soldiers - Shivetya
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/09/hadrians-wall-lost-secrets-roman-vindolanda-unearthed
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brownbat
Some historians think for a few hundred years Hadrian's Wall was a
megastructure where the locals had no solid understanding of who built it, how
they managed it, or why.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr42](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr42)

It's admittedly debated, but even if just plausible, still fascinating to
contemplate.

If not for the wall, there were probably periods in the local history around
the pyramids that would qualify. Julius Caesar is closer to our time than he
was to the time when they were built. There's a lot of time for people to
forget other civilizations in there.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
This is still true of Stonehenge, Avebury, and some of the less well-known
archaeological remnants in that area. (Durrington Walls, Marden Henge, and so
on.)

~~~
adrianratnapala
I think with Stonehenge and the like, the thing some people find mysterious is
how they were built using the technology of the day. (I don't find it
mysterious, I think they did things by working hard and being clever).

The claim about Hardian's wall is that after the fall of the Roman Empire, the
medieval people didn't know how to build such things _at all_ , and could only
guess how the Romans had done it. And part of those guesses might well have
been "by magic".

~~~
arethuza
We still have no idea how or why people would melt the rock walls of
fortresses to create "vitrified" forts:

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

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hanoz
I came across a couple of features
([https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=NY7569166021](https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=NY7569166021))
about 1km west of Vindolanda
([https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=NY7705466352](https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=NY7705466352))
on a Lidar Map I made.

I assume they're not unknown to science as they're pretty prominent, but then
again they're not marked on the Ordnance Survey map as such things tend to be,
like the Roman Camps just to their north west for example
([http://streetmap.co.uk/grid/375689_566022_120](http://streetmap.co.uk/grid/375689_566022_120)).

Any archaeologists in the house?

~~~
arethuza
Whatever they are they are fairly visible in Bing Aerial view (NB I used Bing
as they have OS 1:25,000 maps).

Edit: Speaking of things not being on OS maps - I've noticed that over the
last ~40 years (since I started looking at OS maps at an early age) that they
show far less historical details than they used to. I don't know if this is
policy to keep maps less cluttered or because many things in agricultural
areas simply have been ploughed over so many times that nothing remains. A
shame either way.

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odammit
I get the idea of grabbing the things most important to you before you and
leaving your stuff behind in favor of kids (I guess), but what I'm curious
about is what caused them to cover the barracks in the first place.

I mean if you have got the time to cement over barracks for 1000 people surely
you have time to pack up!

~~~
edmccard
>if you have got the time to cement over barracks for 1000 people surely you
have time to pack up!

FTA: "a concrete floor laid by the Romans about 30 years after the barracks
was abandoned"

So the people covering it up were probably not the same as the ones who left
in the first place.

~~~
odammit
I missed that I suppose. Even more interesting not to pick up a bunch of
potentially valuable stuff.

Certainly not in my d&d campaign.

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dmix
> As well as other weapons, including cavalry lances, arrowheads and ballista
> bolts – all left behind on the floors – there are combs, bath clogs, shoes,
> stylus pens, hairpins and brooches.

Reading about these digs I've always been curious that given the large number
of artifacts found if it is a common phenomenon for the people involved in the
dig to 'steal' or bring home certain items for themselves that we'd never find
out about? Clearly these are people most interested in the subject at hand so
I could see a motivation...

~~~
avenoir
I'd imagine that most of the wall has been metal detected by hobbyists
throughout the years. I don't know how much of it is under protection but from
various videos on YouTube it seems like a great section of it goes thru
farmlands out in the boonies. A pretty easy target to hit with a metal
detector without anyone noticing.

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mncharity
Was the site under threat of looting or construction, or was this a massive
stewardship failure?

For context, once upon a time, archaeologists "carefully" used dynamite, and
excavated entire sites. Leaving nothing at all behind, but for a few
"carefully" washed and polished artifacts (the "important" trophies, like
weapons and jewelry), and perhaps some "carefully" hand-drawn sketches of some
big things (formerly) at the site.

Nowadays, archaeologists "carefully" crack open an anaerobic site, ... and I
just don't have the heart to finish this post.

Does anyone have a good link on archaeological ethics, and limiting excavation
to only threatened sites? The idea is to avoid unnecessary excavation, because
it destroys _vastly_ more information than it preserves. Information which
could have been captured with improving technology, if only the excavation had
happened later.

This article is ghastly, close to parody. Picture of volunteer displaying "the
icing on the cake" trophy in ambient atmosphere, sitting on newspaper, the
'who cares about dirt?' brushed off, at best coarsely sieved, then discarded
on a big pile. The Birley quotes... show no recognition that anything
unfortunate has happened.

~~~
dvtv75
I suggest you discuss this directly with archaeological faculty at a
university, rather than making claims about dynamite - e.g. those who used
dynamite were treasure hunters, for example, not archaeologists. Modern
archaeologists do share your distress over most of what you've claimed.

For instance, you say "Information which could have been captured with
improving technology, if only the excavation had happened later." A not-
insignificant amount of archaeology is performed because of an imminent threat
to a site, be it natural (rising oceans) or man-made (highways). I recall
reading about (what I consider to be) significant Roman sites in London being
destroyed after examination because a developer had a building plan for that
particular location.

Even Time Team would dig up mosaics in a field, record everything
meticulously, present their findings to the public (in a rather unscientific
manner), and then bury it again, to protect it.

Go and expand your horizons, instead of making decisions based upon incomplete
information. You have some pleasant surprises waiting for you.

~~~
delazeur
> I suggest you discuss this directly with archaeological faculty at a
> university, rather than making claims about dynamite - e.g. those who used
> dynamite were treasure hunters, for example, not archaeologists. Modern
> archaeologists do share your distress over most of what you've claimed.

My experience with academic archaeologists has been that they are pretty
myopic on this. They like to dismiss past archaeologists as treasure hunters,
but they are also eager to get their hands on all the data they can without
much regard for the locals or for preservation. They usually justify this by
pointing out that they aren't looking for treasure, in the traditional sense.

~~~
mncharity
> My experience with academic archaeologists has been that they are pretty
> myopic on this.

I wonder if anyone has done a survey of views? There is some "do no harm",
exploit non-destructive techniques, and reserve excavation for rescue
archaeology. But seemingly a variety of other standards of care for site
conservation and consumption.

Not my field, but one thing I've anecdotally seen underappreciated, is the
rate of change in molecular biology, and thus eventually in molecular
archaeology (aka bioarchaeology outside the US). Where over a mere decade or
two, "can't imagine doing X" can change to "doing X costs years and millions",
and then to "new trainee can casually do X in an afternoon", and even to "X is
a field-deployable box". With a potential impact... for example, it turns out
tooth calculus preserves DNA. So from millennia old teeth, one might sequence
the owner, their mouth microbiome (with health information), and the species
they've been eating. Grabbing a few soil samples might be ok if you're
thinking pollen, but rather less so if a single tiny rat incisor might tell
you so much. And proteomics is just getting started. And in addition to
biology, there's improving imaging, inorganic materials analysis, bulk data
management, robotics, and so on. Aggressive excavation, with 'DSLR, eyeball,
sample bagging, brush, sift, and float', while largely unchanged for decades,
seems rather more problematic if one looks ahead?

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nether
A Roman makeup container was found a while ago, with fingerprints still
visible in the cream: [https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/makeup-
scienc...](https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/makeup-science)

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ionised
Someone in the comments section actually blamed the fall of the Roman Empire
on socialism.

See this is what not making education a priority gets you.

