Preview: Top 10 Artefacts Coming to the New Vindolanda Museum in 2011
Earlier this month the Vindolanda Trust won funding of £4 million towards the cost of refurbishing their two existing museums at the fort of Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall. The new extended museum space will enable the trust to secure a loan of the Vindolanda Tablets from the British Museum – but it will also allow it to put many other objects on display, some of them on public view for the first time.
I asked Patricia Birley, director at the Vindolanda Trust, to tell me more about the plans for the new museum space and also to choose her top 10 objects in the new display. It's a varied collection with enough shoes to make Victoria Beckham jealous, not to mention the engagement rings, wigs, military tents and painted glass.
The Vindolanda Trust is still negotiating with the British Museum for the loan of some of the Vindolanda Tablets. Birley emphasises that the BM is extremely supportive and has confirmed that they really do want this loan to go ahead. She says: “We're now ironing out all of the usual details for the environmental monitoring and security. We're hoping to get nine good examples from the collection of tablets.” In all there are about 1,600 tablets – all at the British Museum at the moment, although some are very tiny fragments.
Work on the new museum space is due to start before the end of November and will entail refurbishing the ground floor of the existing Vindolanda Museum, as well as converting some nearby buildings into an extended modern museum space. The museum will keep its normal opening hours throughout the building work. Birley expects to open to the public with all of the new displays in place by March 2011.
The Vindolanda Trust also owns the nearby Roman Army museum and this will also be redesigned as part of the current project and will display exhibits giving insight into the life of a Roman soldier and the cultural diversity of the army. Birley says that they are now at stage two of the project and already have the blueprints for the new exhibitions at both museums.
At the Vindolanda Museum, the exhibition will be collection-orientated. Birley says: “The tablets have been the only items to leave Vindolanda. The anaerobic conditions [of the soil at Vindolanda] don't just preserve tablets – they preserve other wonderful things as well, so we've got a truly interesting site-specific collection here.”
Patricia Birley's top 10 objects make for a varied and surprising list, but she emphasises it is a list of her own choosing – and she hopes that visitors will be able to make up their own minds in spring 2011.
The Top 10 Objects Going on Display at Vindolanda from Spring 2011
1: The Vindolanda Tablets
The tablets on loan from the British Museum will be the star attraction at the newly refurbished museum. Birley says: “There are some amazing tablets: they cover personal letters, store lists, writing exercises and garrison strength reports. We will be highlighting those in the exhibition and using the tablets to tell their own story from the past. That really has to be our top treasure.”
So many tablets have been found at Vindolanda because it is a site where several Roman military camps have been built over a period of time one on top of the other. This layering of building materials, along with clay in the ground, has created sealed pockets deep in the ground where oxygen doesn't circulate much. These anaerobic conditions – where there is no oxidisation – means that materials such as leather, textiles, wood, plant matter and metals are very well preserved.
The first tablets were found at Vindolanda in 1973 and excavators have been finding batches of tablets ever since when working at the right anaerobic levels. Birley says: “When we find them we conserve, research and photograph them – but in the early 80s our trustees decided that it was in the best interest of the tablets that they go to the British Museum. So the tablets were voluntarily given to the BM at that stage. Now that our own museum has progressed, we'd like to have a few back, so that people can see them next to the site where they were found.”
As to why there would be so many tablets found in one location – Birley says this may be due to Romans having 'clear outs' when one cohort moves on from the camp and another comes in. Some groups of the tablets may have been 'dumped', others may have been used as landfill, while more than 400 tablets have been found on a bonfire, which the damp Northumberland weather had put out before all of them were burnt.
2. A Huge Collection of Roman Footwear And Other Leather Objects
This collection has some exceptional pieces that have been very well preserved by the anaerobic conditions at Vindolanda. The new display will include a whole wall dedicated to Roman footwear - Imelda Marcos eat your heart out! This will enable visitors to get very close and will give a good idea of Vindolanda's collection – about 6,000 leather pieces have been found at the site. Other leather items found at Vindolanda include an almost complete chamfron (a horse's headdress), as well as at least three leather military tents. Birley says that the extent and quality of this collection of Roman leather artefacts is impressive.
3. Wooden Objects and Composite Artefacts
This collection of objects includes: a mason's trowel, which has a wooden handle and the pointed metal end (it is still dirty from a day's use); a complete hammer with a metal head and wooden shank; a whole wagon axle; red shovels; and other smaller objects such as a needle case with graded needles inside and a little wooden comb in a leather case.
4. Woven Artefacts
There is a lady's wig made from hairmoss, which is a natural plant that grows near Vindolanda and looks like auburn hair when it's new and woven together. There is also a very rare centurian's helmet crest made of the same plant, as well as a hairnet made of very fine woven textile, similar to a crocheted hairnet.
5. A Piece of Painted Glass Bowl
This fragment of a clear glass bowl has a very colourful gladiator scene painted on it. This bowl originated in Cologne and had been imported to Vindolanda.
6. A Set of Samian Dinnerware
Also on display is a crate-full of unused Samian pottery, part of a complete dinner service. This came out of one of the fort ditches in beautiful condition, according to Birley. She says:
“We presume that the crate arrived at Vindolanda broken in transit and was then thrown into the ditch – there were probably some disappointed people here when it arrived in Roman times.”
7. Coins
The coins found at Vindolanda are in superb condition because the anaerobic layer of soil preserves metals very well. Some of the bronze coins are so well preserved they look like gold. 
8. Jewellery
There are many items of jewellery on display at Vindolanda - including s a jet betrothal medallion showing the happy couple on the front, and on the back is an image of clasped hands, the Roman sign for an agreement or a promise, as well as a collection of gold and silver finger rings, some depicting gods and goddesses, and some with messages on them.
9. Sculpted and Inscribed Stones
These are similar to the Altar of Jupiter of Doliche, found earlier this year at Vindolanda, and some of them are going on display for the very first time because, according to Birley, there has been no room until now to put them on display. A reinforced floor is needed to support this heavy stones – and with the new-look museum, this will at least be in place.
10. A Small Portable Christian Altar
This small altar has a Christian symbol on it and was found in the old Praetorian site of the last stone fort at Vindolanda. It comes towards the end of the Roman period at Vindolanda – just as the Vindolanda tablets date from the early era of the fort. It's a tiny stone about the size of a large postcard, 8-9cm in thickness and is a smooth piece of sandstone with the Chi-Rho symbol on it.
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