The Vindolanda Tablets

The Vindolanda Tablets are a collection of Roman documents, many of them fragments, dating from 90 AD to the 120s AD. There are about 1,600 fragments, which have been written in ink on wooden sheets. The writing includes private letters written by the soldiers and their families stationed at Vindolanda, as well as store lists, writing exercises and garrison strength reports.

These documents written on wood have been preserved at Vindolanda because of the special conditions at the 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 with little oxygen circulating. 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. In the early 1980s the Vindolanda Trust decided that it was in the best interest of the tablets that they go to the British Museum, although the Vindolanda Museum will be in a position to put some of the tablets back on display from March 2011, following funding and a refurbishment.

The Vindolanda Tablets include this example: a letter from Claudia Severa inviting her friend to her birthday party.