Watched the Roman wall trench at Vindolanda fill in over 3 seasons and the dirt tells a story

Jamie Bell · 2026-10-20T16:15:03.836703+00:00

I volunteered on a dig at Vindolanda in Northumberland for three summers, and the same stretch of trench looked totally different by year three. The first season it was a clean band of dark soil over orange clay, and by the end the whole section had slumped and mixed because water kept pooling in the corner after heavy rain in 2022. Our supervisor, a guy named Owen, pointed out that what looked like a new floor layer was actually just mud that had washed down and settled. Has anyone else seen a site change that much between seasons, and did you ever figure out if it was weather or just bad backfilling?

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Watched the Roman wall trench at Vindolanda fill in over 3 seasons and the dirt tells a story | Archaeology Discoveries - Free To Speak