The Vindolanda Tablets: the Texts of their Times

These days, if you want to quickly communicate with someone who is at a distance from you, you’ll send a text. But that was not a possibility back in the time when Britain was under Roman rule. Heck, it wasn’t even a possibility when I was a child!

Technology has changed, but the need to communicate over distance has not. When most people think of Roman writing, they think of the monumental: the geometric, all-caps Latin letters called Square Capitals, or Scriptura Monumentalis. These are the letters that were carved into stone monuments, tombstones, and buildings, and familiar to us because they are the direct ancestor of our modern uppercase letters.

But not all Roman writing was monumental in nature. Some communication does not warrant being carved in stone any more than it needs to be posted on social media today, for all to read. People today—and people during the Roman period—asked favors, checked schedules, and invited people to parties.

So how did the Romans send their little, private correspondences? For a long time, historians and archaeologists believed that these kinds of missives were all written on papyrus.

But then, the Vindolanda tablets were discovered.  

The tablets are named after the place they were found: Vindolanda, a Roman auxiliary fort that was occupied from approximately 85 AD to 370 AD. The fort was abandoned sometime before the Romans left Britain in the early fifth century and was not mentioned in history until William Camden included it in his 1586 book, Britannia. Camden surveyed the landscape, geography, antiquities, and history of Great Britain and Ireland, and included many Roman sites, including Vindolanda.  Some archaeological digs were done there between 1814 and 1835, but the real work began when archaeologist Eric Birley purchased the site in the 1930s. It has been a family passion ever since. Grandson, Andrew Birley, and granddaughter-in-law Barbara Birley continue the tradition, with a magnificent museum and continuing excavations conducted every summer.

The story of the Vindolanda tablets begins in March 1973, when a student excavator named Keith Liddell discovered a pile of unusual wood shavings. Another of the excavators peeled two of these apart and discovered writing on the inside. The two pieces of wood were taken to an epigraphist named Richard Wright, but by the time they had arrived, the wood surfaces had become black and unreadable due to oxygenation.  They were then sent to Alison Rutherford at Newcastle University Medical School, where she used multi-spectrum photography to produce infrared photographs of the writing. The results were disappointing because no one could read the letters. Finally, two university researchers: Alan Bowman at Manchester University and David Thomas at Durham University were able to decipher this previously unknown form of cursive, and the writings were able to be transcribed. Fifty years later, more than 1,700 of these tablets have been recovered from the ruins.

The tablets are made from birch, alder and oak, all of which grow in the vicinity of the fort. They vary between 0.01 to 0.12 inches thick, and are about 8 inches wide by 3 inches tall—close in size to a modern postcard. They were scored down the middle and folded in half, with the writing in the inside.

Scientists have been able to determine that the ink used to write on the inner faces was made from carbon, gum Arabic, and water. However, the ink is often badly faded or survives as little more than a blur, making transcription impossible. Infrared photographs are often far more legible than the actual tablets, but even these have lines, dots and other dark marks which may or may not be writing. This makes transcription difficult. Another thing that makes them difficult to read are the use of abbreviations. Researchers have noted one place where an h stood for for homines (men), and another where cos is written in a place where translators presume the word is consularis (consular). Also, words are divided rather arbitrarily at the end of lines. The word "epistulas" (letters), for instance, appears with the letter e on one line and the rest of the word on the next.

It turns out using wooden tablets for communication wasn’t unusual in the Roman world. After the Vindolanda find, a collection of 405 preserved wooden tablets called the Bloomberg tablets were found in London. They were discovered between 2010 and 2013, but are older than the ones found at Vindolanda.  Other tablets, called stylus tablets, have also been discovered in 20 different sites in Roman Britain, including Carlisle, Catterick, York, and London.

 These were imported and made from non-native wood. In the 3rd century, a Roman historian named Herodian, who was unlikely to ever have been in Britain, described a writing-tablet made from lime-wood, cut into thin sheets, and folded face-to-face by being bent, which sounds very much like the tablets found in Vindolanda.

The Vindolanda tablets have shed light on life on the frontiers of the Roman world. They document both official military matters and personal ones. For instance, the very first tablet that was transcribed lists the contents of a care package sent to a soldier, presumably by his family. It includes two pairs each of woolen socks (udones), sandals, and underpants (subligaria, literally ‘the things tied under!’).  Another tablet written by a cavalry decurion (squadron commander) named Masculus asks the prefect Flavius Cerialis about instructions for his men for the following day. He also includes a polite request for more beer, since the supply at the garrison is low.

But the most famous of all the Vindolanda tablets is the invitation to a party held in about 100 AD. Written by Claudia Severa, the wife of the commander of a nearby fort, it uses charming and intimate words to invite Sulpicia Lepidina, the wife of Flavius Cerialis, prefect of the ninth cohort of Batavians, who were stationed at Vindolanda, to her birthday party. The invitation appears to have been written by two different people. Most of the text is written in a professional hand, which scholars assume was the household scribe. The closing greetings, however, on the lower right-hand side of the tablet, are written in a different hand. It says “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail,” and it is believed that Claudia Severa herself wrote them.  If that is true, the invitation is perhaps the oldest surviving document written in Latin by a woman.

 

Almost all the excavated tablets are held at the British Museum in London, where some are displayed in its Roman Britain gallery. Others are displayed at Vindolanda.

In 2025, I saw the Vindolanda tablets when I visited the site as part of my hike along Hadrian’s Wall. They were impressive, and led me to include this form of writing in my novel about Roman Britain. Currently entitled The Woman on the Wall at the End of the World (which is rather long and probably going to be changed before the story comes out), the novel opens with a Roman soldier from the 9^th Legion delivering a tablet to the main character, a potter named Enica. The tablet informs her that her lover plans to have dinner with her, and she expects him to “pop the question” when he is there. Enica writes—and receives—several more letters in the course of the story.  She doesn't look like this girl, who is Greek. Enica is a tall redhead, from the Briganti tribe who lived in Northern England. She was slave until her master died and left his pottery shop to her, a bit of generosity that makes her wonder why he did it.

I am working on my third, and I hope final edit of this story and, whatever it's name becomes, I hope to have it finished and published by late this fall or early winter. Keep checking in with me and I'll be able to give a better date as things progress. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an award winning author of historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade readers through adults. She is available to speak to classrooms, books groups, and clubs about the history behind her stories, or about writing.

After being inspired last year by hiking the width of Hadrian's Wall in Northern England, she is currently working on a novel set in England and France during the Roman era.

You can read more about her and her writing here, on her website.