Vindolanda was an auxiliary fort on the Stanegate, the lateral Roman road running south of (and predating) Hadrian's Wall, occupied from around AD 85 to the early 5th century through at least nine successive timber and stone fort phases. Garrisoned at various times by units including the Cohors I Tungrorum and Cohors IV Gallorum, it comprised a fort, a substantial extramural vicus with strip-houses, shops, a mansio and bath-house, and surrounding cemeteries, with two milestones surviving along the adjacent stretch of Stanegate.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Vindolanda was a key Stanegate garrison post controlling the Tyne-Solway frontier corridor before Hadrian's Wall was built two miles to the north, and it continued as a major Wall-system support fort thereafter. It is internationally significant as the findspot of the Vindolanda Writing Tablets — the earliest substantial body of handwritten documents from Roman Britain and one of the richest sources for daily military and personal life in the empire.
Continuous excavation since the 1930s, and intensively under the Birley family from 1970, has revealed waterlogged anaerobic deposits in the early timber forts that preserved the ink-on-wood tablets along with leather (including hundreds of shoes), textiles, wooden objects and organic remains in exceptional condition. Excavations have also exposed the stone fort's headquarters,
Vindolanda was an auxiliary fort on the Stanegate, the lateral Roman road running south of (and predating) Hadrian's Wall, occupied from around AD 85 to the early 5th century through at least nine successive timber and stone fort phases. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fort site from the Roman period in Britain.
Vindolanda (Chesterholm) Roman forts, civil settlement and cemeteries, adjacent length of the Stanegate Roman road and two milestones is classified as a Roman fort — a military site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Vindolanda (0.2 km), Military Bath House at Vindolanda (0.3 km), Barcombe Hill Roman Quarry (0.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Vindolanda (Chesterholm) Roman forts, civil settlement and cemeteries, adjacent length of the Stanegate Roman road and two milestones