It has been almost six months since work began on the archive collections held here at Vindolanda and we’ve made some great progress. I’m also starting to realise just how much work there is to do!

Much of my first few months consisted of drafting up policy guidelines and various collections related paperwork before I could start looking at the actual material. Documentation such as this is essential to safeguard the longevity of any collection, both from a physical standpoint, but also to ensure that the material can be used as much as possible within UK access legislation.

I am pleased to report that much of this work is now complete (or are in progress) which has allowed me to start diving into the collections.

Charlie Anderson was a stonemason, and his Archive consists of thousands of photographs taken all along Hadrian's Wall to document his consolidation work. So far, I have found some absolute gems.

I can tell the archaeological images are proving interesting from the approving sounds the archaeologists make when they catch a glimpse of a photograph on my desk. Personally, I am enjoying the often unintentional traces of the past which can be seen within the images, including a lovely photograph of a dog, some rogue sheep, reversing tractors, and various precariously balanced walkway planks hanging above cavernous trenches. I’m learning I would not have had the co-ordination skills required to live in the deep past (the 1970s).

Dr. Marta Alberti-Dunn and I recently spoke about one of the unintentional aspects of this collection at the Lit & Phil in Newcastle, highlighting some of the ways these images are useful for our understanding of the social history of archaeological practice and archaeologists themselves. 

© The Vindolanda Trust 2025

Alongside Charlie Anderson’s Archive, I have also been working on our Eric Birley Archive. Last month we were visited by Dr Catherine Teitz (whose guest-blog posts you can read on this page) who kindly contributed her knowledge about Eric to support the creation of a boxlist for the collection. This is the first stage in the cataloguing journey for a mixed collection of this size and enables the collection to be better understood.

Although by the end of the process we were both seeing offprints (a printed copy of an article that originally appeared as part of a larger publication) in our sleep, there are a lot, it was an incredibly positive step forward for the Archive and resulted in a lot of excitement and plans for things to come. 

I’m excited to show you more of this Archive, and others, as we move through the coming months. But for now, I will leave you with this wonderful reminder that even seminal frontier scholars make mistakes sometimes.

© The Vindolanda Trust 2025