Episode 6 - Wooden objects

In this episode of Things We Threw Away, we will be looking into wooden objects. The last episode featured the wooden cradle in Herculaneum, so it seemed only logical to examine other wooden objects that seemingly survived against all odds.

With the help of two examples from two opposite regions in the former Roman Empire, Jona and Stefanie dive into wooden objects that survived for thousands of years. The survival of objects depends on several conditions: 1) the material of the object and 2) the environment.

The first object is part of a larger collection, the so-called Vindolanda Tablets.

Image 1: Google Maps screenshot of the UK with Vindolanda fort highlighted; aerial photo of Vindolanda at Hadrian’s Wall

The Vindolanda Tablets are named after the location they were found. Vindolanda was a Roman fort and vicus on Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland, United Kingdom.

In March 1973, the first tablet was found. In this first campaign, 200 tablets were uncovered. Robin Birley was part of the first campaign and later the director of the Vindolanda excavations from 1967 to 2015.

This was his reaction when finding the object:

„If I have to spend the rest of my life working in dirty, wet trenches, I doubt whether I shall ever again experience the shock and excitement I felt at my first glimpse of ink hieroglyphics on tiny scrapes of wood” (R. Birley, Vindolanda, p. 132).

What are the Vindolanda Tablets?

The tablets refer to correspondence from the frontier and therefore provide an insight into life at Vindolanda, private and public.

They have roughly the same size as a modern-day postcard and are made out of wood. These tablets can either be ‘ink tablets’, which means thin wood with black ink writing or a ‘stylus tablet,’ which is made of thicker wood and shows traces of wax as the writing was inscribed with a stylus into the wax.

There are more than 1700 tablets in the British Museum collection in London, but many tablets also stayed in the museum at the Vindolanda Trust.

Image 2: Vindolanda Tablet birthday invitation

Image 2 shows one of the probably best-known tablets. The birthday invitation of Claudia Severa to her friend Sulpicia Lepidina.

Its dimensions are 9,6cm times 22,3cm, so really comparable to a modern-day postcard. In 1986, it was purchased from the Vindolanda Trust by the British Museum, where it is currently on display.

The Latin cursive can be transcribed as follows:

Cl(audia) Severa Lepidinae (suae [sa]l[u]tem III Idus Septembr[e]s soror ad diem sollemnem natalem meum rogo libenter facias ut venias ad nos iucundiorem mihi [diem] interventu tuo factura si [.....] (space) Cerial[em t]uum saluta Aelius meus [....] et filiolus salutant (2nd hand) sperabo te soror vale soror anima mea ita valeam karissima et [h]ave (on the back, 1st hand) Sulpiciae Lepedinae Cerialis a S[e]vera (taken from the British Museum website)

The translation says:

Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On the third day before the Ides of September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send their greetings. I shall expect you sister. Farewell, sister my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail. To Sulpicia Lepedina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa. (taken from the British Museum website).

This object is special for many reasons:

* The invitation comes from a woman, Claudia Severa (wife of the commander Aelius Brocchus), and was sent to another woman, Sulpicia Lepidina (wife of the Vindolanda fort commander Flavius Cerialis)

* We have a date! The third day before the Ides of September refers to 11 September (according to the British Museum, the tablet dates to around 100 AD)

* There are two separate handwritings on it: one from a scrib,e but the last part probably from Claudia Severa herself

* Seems unspectacular, but Romans seemed to have celebrated birthdays just like we do today

Why did the tablets survive?

From the research project “Making History” (ran from June 2022 to June 2024) we learn that “it appears several attempts were made to burn the tablets, but either the ground was too wet or rain dampened the flames before they could take hold. So we can be grateful that this part of the world is notoriously damp.”

A very British thing to say.

Most tablets were found “in the deepest most waterlogged trenches.” This means that there was no oxygen for bacteria, which otherwise would have destroyed the organic material (other organic material was found on site as well).

The second object is a mummy portrait and it takes us to Egypt!

Image 3: Google Maps screenshot; photo of Al Fayoum oasis; mummy with mummy portrait

Stefanie first came across mummy portraits when she interned in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK, and instantly fell in love with them. It feels like looking the past in the face.

Mummy portraits are also called ‘Fayum portraits’ (named after the location where many of them were found). These portraits were placed on top of the mummified body and show an idealised personalised portrait of the deceased. There are over a 1000 portraits known in the world.

The mummy above belongs to a young Greek man called Artemidorus. The case is cartonnage, and the painting of the face is on lime wood; it’s from the Roman period in Egypt and can be dated to the 2nd century AD. It is currently in the British Museum.

“Realistic paintings of people’s faces on wooden panels became the new trend for burials” in Egypt when it became part of the Roman Empire. They were incredibly popular between the 1st to the 3rd century AD, and they merged two funerary traditions together.

The portraits are often painted on wood. Different types of wood can be used to create the portraits. In a research project conducted by the British Museum and they found that out of the 180 portraits they looked at, 70% were made out of lime tree wood (the article is from 2020, see below). Lime wood is not native to Egypt, and there are hardly any traces of the wood being imported before mummy portraits.

Image 4: Mummy portrait of a woman

The above mummy portrait shows a woman. She has black hair, curly in the front, parted in the middle with a bun in the back. Her face is rather round, with a short nose and a small mouth with red lips. The eyes seem to be covered in dark shades, and the eye colour appears to be green. She is wearing jewellery: golden earrings and a golden necklace.

The portrait can be dated to the 1st century AD. It is painted on lime wood in encaustic. The dimensions are a little bit bigger than a DIN A4 sheet of paper, 33cm x 23cm.

It was found in Hawara by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1911, which is the same year it arrived in the Ashmolean Museum.

Why did it survive?

It is a combination of the technique of painting and the climate in Egypt. Encaustic is a technique that involves mixing pigments with soft wax, which is then painted on the wood. The climate in Egypt is hot and dry. Because they are part of a funerary tradition, they were made to last. The climate and the painting technique just added to it.

Two different wooden objects, both preserved by climate conditions and yet so opposite.

Bibliography

R. BIRLEY, Discoveries at Vindolanda. Newcastle upon Thyne 1975.

R. BIRLEY, Vindolanda: a Roman frontier post on Hadrian’s Wall. London 1977.

A. K. BOWMAN, Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier – Vindolanda and its People. London 1994.

A. BOWMAN and D. THOMAS, The Vindolanda Writing Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II), London 1994.

https://www.getty.edu/publications/resources/virtuallibrary/0892360380.pdf

Useful links

http://www.vindolanda.com/

http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/roman-britain/vindolanda-tablets

https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects/making-vindolanda-tablets

Publications on the Vindolanda tablets: https://www.vindolanda.com/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=13cd7fca-3796-411e-bf65-c3a29cfd5397 from 1974 to April 2024

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1986-1001-64

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/depicting-dead-ancient-egyptian-mummy-portraits

https://www.getty.edu/publications/mummyportraits/

https://www.namuseum.gr/en/collection/fayum-portraits/

https://mikedashhistory.com/2014/12/16/the-fayum-mummy-portraits/

Image credits

Image 1: Vindolanda tablets, available at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects/making-vindolanda-tablets

Image 2: Google Maps screenshot, UK map with Vindolanda marked on it

Image 3: Vindolanda Fort from the air via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda#/media/File:Kastell_und_Vicus_von_Vindolanda,_Luftbild,_2010.jpg

Image 4: Birthday invitation Vindolanda tablet, available at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/roman-britain/vindolanda-tablets

Image 5: Compilation of mummy portraits, from Reddit, available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/18k0eq5/fayum_mummy_portraits_naturalistic_portraits_on/

Image 6: Mummy portrait on mummy: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/6033001 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Image 7: Google Maps screenshot Fayum

Image 8: Fayum oasis, taken from Cairo top tours, available at: https://www.cairotoptours.com/Egypt-Travel-Guide/Nile-Valley-Attractions/El-Fayoum

Image 9: Mummy portrait of a lady, Ashmolean Museum, available at: https://www.ashmolean.org/collections-online#/item/ash-object-741191

Things We Threw Away – Where to Find the Podcast

* TWTA on Substack – Updates, transcripts, and reflections from the project

* TWTA on Spotify – Listen and follow via Spotify

* TWTA on Apple Podcasts – Available through the Apple Podcasts directory

* TWTA on Instagram – Visual updates, behind the scenes, and illustrated content

* TWTA on Bluesky – Public discussions, reflections, and cross-links

Credits

* Intro and outro music: “Meeting for Two – Background Music for Video Vlog (Hip Hop version, 43s)” via Pixabay Music by White_Records

* Story interlude/underlying music: “Medieval Ambient” via Pixabay Music by DeusLower

* Research behind the script: Jona Schlegel

* Editing and post-production: Jona Schlegel

* Cover art: Stefanie Ulrich

Projects by the team members

Jona Schlegel

* Follow on Instagram (@archaeoink): Visual science communication through illustration, websites and archaeology

* jonaschlegel.com: Portfolio and background on archaeological communication, coding, and design

* archaeoink.com: Illustrated archaeology, blog posts, newsletter, and research-based visual storytelling

* pastforwardhub.com: A platform for (freelance) archaeologists who want to create a more sustainable career, be visible, and connect with others

Stefanie Ulrich

* Follow on Instagram (@thepublicarchaeologist): Photography of archaeological objects, and material encounters with a special focus on ancient Rome