Leather shoes teach scholars valuable lesson about ancient site
24/09/2014
At the end of the 2014 session, academics from nearby Durham University told the Financial Times that more ancient shoes have been found at Vindolanda than at any similar site across the ancient Roman world, with more than 100 leather shoes being uncovered during this summer’s dig to add to an existing haul of 6,000. Low levels of oxygen in the soil favour preservation.
Trudi Buck, an anthropologist at the university, has said the shoes are of high value to scholars because the only thing that could reveal more biological information about the people who lived at Vindolanda would be human remains. The programme of summer excavations began in the 1930s and, in the course of the decades, only three human skeletons have been uncovered, probably because the people living there used land about 500 metres away as a graveyard.
Significantly, more than 40% of the shoes found at Vindolanda so far were women’s or children’s, helping scholars build up a picture of a thriving community, with whole families rather than just soldiers living at the fort.
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