The enthralling world of Roman Vindolanda
If you want to learn from the past about our country’s current affairs, you could do worse than look back to Roman Britain – a fascinating world of continually shifting power dynamics. Arguably nowhere offers better insights into this world than the Vindolanda excavation site near Hadrian’s Wall. Vindolanda (‘shining lawn’ in Celtic) was both a strategic fort and a supply base for the massive wall-building project that marked out the northern-most edge of the Roman Empire. Not only is it an exceptional place to visit today, with world-class exhibitions at both Vindolanda and its sister Roman Army Museum nearby, but also you can join in the excavations, with the prospect of unearthing startling finds.
You might imagine that life for Roman soldiers stationed in north Britain, 1,100 miles from Rome, was bleak. Arriving at Vindolanda, this view is soon dispelled. The site covers fully 15 acres. While life here between the first and fourth centuries was not exactly peaceful (the menace of restless natives was constant), it was surely diverting, thanks to the politics of
