Saturday, June 26, 2010

Vindolanda is a family business

THE VINDOLANDA ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG is a family business:
All roads lead to Vindolanda Roman Fort
The Birley family have toiled for 60 years to unearth Roman artefacts at Vindolanda Roman Fort in Northumbria, says Juliet Rix.


By Juliet Rix (The Telegraph)
Published: 12:34PM BST 25 Jun 2010

In a picturesque Northumbrian valley a mile south of Hadrian's Wall, Andrew Birley stands surrounded by a checkerboard of Roman remains. He is supervising a small crowd of volunteer excavators unearthing a 1,600-year-old flagstone road. They have just dug up a small stone altar with a potentially interesting inscription. Andrew is the third generation of his family to run the excavations here at Vindolanda Roman Fort. It's an unusual family business.

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For more on Vindolanda go here, here, and especially here.

(Via Dorothy Lobel King on Facebook.)