Roman Writing Tablets from Vindolanda.

Age-induced discolorations on cover, otherwise in very good condition. - INTRODUCTION--In the spring of 1973, excavations directed by Mr Robin Birley at the Roman fort of Vindolanda (modern Chesterholm), close to Hadrian�s Wall, brought to light the first of a remarkable series of more than two hundred wooden writing tablets. As the oldest group of written documents known from Britain, they comprise a discovery of first-rate historical importance. It seems that the tablets were deposited between about ad 95 and 105�a decade or two before work began on the construction of Hadrian�s Wall�and consist mainly of letters, accounts and other material relating to the administration of the fort. As such, they provide us with an extraordinary insight into the life of the times, seen both from the point of view of senior officers and from that of more humble soldiers. Here are stock-checks on supplies; personal letters of recommendation; the record of a gift of fifty oysters; and even the description of a parcel from home containing socks, sandals and two pairs of underpants! When taken in conjunction with references to people and to places, they are a source of information hitherto unparalleled in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire, and thus form a major addition to the National collections of the British Museum.--Most of the tablets consist of thin leaves of wood, a type hardly recognised until now, but one probably in very common use in antiquity. The texts are generally written in ink, and it says much for the skill of Dr Bowman and his colleague, Dr J. D. Thomas, that they have been able to interpret the handwriting of these long-forgotten scribes. Their definitive catalogue, Vindolanda: The Latin Writing Tablets is published as Britannia Monograph no. 4 (1983), but in this book Dr Bowman has provided us with a concise account for the general reader, prepared especially for those who have seen the tablets on display in the Romano- British gallery and who want to know more about this wonderful find and its implications.--Naturally, we are able to display only a very small number of the tablets in the gallery. These have been carefully selected by Dr Bowman to illustrate the wide range of information that the tablets contain; several of the texts are reproduced, together with a full commentary, in this book. Meanwhile, we have the task of safeguarding this unique collection of highly delicate objects, a responsibility best met by rigorous control of the humidity levels both in the gallery case and in the reserve archive; and by as little handling of the tablets as possible. When one reflects how all too rarely archaeological evidence provides such personal glimpses into the past, then it will be obvious how carefully one must monitor the condition of these rare and precious pages of history. We can therefore be grateful to Dr Bowman for providing us with this absorbing account of the tablets. However unspectacular they may appear in comparison with, say, the Mildenhall or Thetford Treasure, their appeal is universal: for, above all, they are about people and not things, and conjure up an intimate picture of life on this isolated military outpost some nineteen hundred years ago. ISBN 9780714113739