Vindolanda

Vindolanda was a Roman auxiliary fort (castrum) just south of Hadrian's Wall in northern England, which it pre-dated. Archaeological excavations of the site show it was under Roman occupation from roughly 85 AD to 370 AD. Located near the modern village of Bardon Mill in Northumberland, it guarded the Stanegate, the Roman road from the River Tyne to the Solway Firth. It is noted for the Vindolanda tablets, a set of wooden leaf-tablets that were, at the time of their discovery, the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain.

==History and garrison== The site is a hill on the Stanegate road, with steep slopes on the north, east, and south sides. It originally had a deep dip running north-south through the centre of the hill, which was gradually filled up by successive layers of occupation. There is currently no evidence for settlement on the fortress site before the Roman period, but there was an iron-age hillfort at , to the northeast (which served as a quarry and signal station in the Roman period). Two pre-Roman farmsteads have been found in the area and two standing stones called the Mare and Foal, about to the west, are the remnants of a stone circle, which might have been the local religious centre. The name "Vindolanda" is probably Celtic, meaning "white lawn" or similar. An inscribed altar records a group called the Textoverdi, who may have been the native inhabitants of the area.