A cold Roman soldier is promised new socks, while his commander’s wife invites her peers to party: mundane texts offer priceless historical insights
For the average museum-goer the romance of archaeology is inextricably bound to extravagant displays of power and riches: Egyptian pharoahs in their gilded sarcophaguses, China’s extraordinary Terracotta Warriors, the gold and jewellery of ancient Rome. In the field, it is the remnants of mighty fortifications and sumptuous palaces, the imprint of catastrophic events, that people cross continents to visit.
Few of the thousands who traipse along Hadrian’s Wall to the Roman fort of Vindolanda each year would go out of their way to see two of the treasures discovered there, both now at the British Museum. One is a birthday invitation from the wife of the fort commander to a friend, including greetings from her husband and “my little son”. The other is a letter to a soldier promising socks, sandals and underpants to protect him from the Northumberland cold. Yet these messages offer sharp and human insight into colonial life in a remote outpost of empire nearly 2,000 years ago. More tablets are still being unearthed by archaeologists racing against the effects of climate change.
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