Thursday, May 11, 2017

Vindolanda 2017 Day Eight

Another day of removing "Demolition Rubble", this time just to the north of where I had been the day before.  Glorious sunshine, which is good fortune in its own way, but how to improve my luck regards actually finding things amidst the rubble?

Well, I spotted this interesting little rock glittering in the sun.

Of course it is not an artifact, just a rock that has fractured in interesting ways.  And, no, I don't actually believe in the magical powers of crystals.  But what the heck, I held it up over the trench then set it on a nearby wall.

It took a while, all day in fact, but eventually I did find something.


It is the bottom part of a bowl, and the delightful pumpkin orange color identifies it immediately as Samian Ware.


A quick splash from my water bottle and a wipe with my sleeve (you don't of course do this with fragile artifacts or surface worn pottery)

As soon as it came out of the ground I just knew it would have a pottery stamp on it. You don't find these very often and it is a great help to dating sites as the patterns of what variety of Samian was made where and when are pretty well mapped out.


As I said earlier, I don't really believe in the Powers of Crystals.  But to some extent I believe in karma.  To share my good fortune I loaned the crystal to an adjacent trench where they set it up like some mystical wifi router distributing luck to its immediate environs.



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