Page 13 - BBC History - September 2017

The weight of the British Mark IV female D51 tank
(named Deborah). Deborah, which saw action at
Cambrai in 1917, was recently moved to a new
28 tonnes home at the Cambrai Tank Museum

NEW FIND
HISTORY IN
Letters reveal THE NEWS
A selection of
life on Roman stories hitting the
the history
frontier headlines District
Lake
awarded
A 2,000-year-old holiday Unesco status
request has been discovered The Lake District has
become the 31st site in the UK
and British Overseas Territories
to be placed on the Unesco
cache of 25 tablets dating to World Heritage List. Other
A the first-century AD has been sites listed this year are
discovered at Vindolanda Roman fort Okinoshima island – an
Experts may
at Hadrian’s Wall. have identi!ied ancient ‘men-only’
Discovered in a trench at the deepest St Columba’s cell religious site – and
level of the site, most of the letters are Radiocarbon dating of Asmara, the
written in cursive script (in which the charred remains of a capital of
characters are joined together) on thin wattle hut on the Scottish island Eritrea.
of Iona, excavated in 1957, has
slivers of birch. But one letter has been
given a date of AD 540–650. Experts
written on a double-leaved oak tablet
now believe the hut belonged to
comprised of two pieces of timber folded
St Columba, the Irish abbot who helped
together. The use of higher quality wood, bring Christianity to Scotland in 563 AD.
experts believe, could be an indication of
the importance of its contents.
The letters bear a striking resemblance British and Irish hillfort details
to another set of correspondence online for the !irst time
discovered at the fort in 1992. The The locations and details of every
hillfort in Britain and Ireland –
original letters included first-person
4,147 in total – are now available
accounts of cold feet, beer shortages and
on an online database.
even an invitation to a birthday celebra- Viking
The database can be
tion. One character from the 1992 stash accessed for free at toilet
– Masclus – is believed to appear again in https://hillforts. unearthed in
Denmark
this new set of tablets, this time request- arch.ox.ac.uk
ing a period of leave rather than more Analysis of the faeces
layer of a 2m-deep hole
THE VINDOLANDA TRUST/ALAMY/ MUSEUM SOUTHEASTERN DENMARK supplies of beer.
that was found at a Viking
Experts will now scan the tablets using settlement in Denmark
infrared photography to make the faint suggests it could be the
black ink legible and allow them to country’s oldest toilet
decipher the complicated cursive script. – about 1,000
years old.
Layer of house-
hold refuse

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:
The Lake District has won
Unesco World Heritage status Layer of raw
– this shot shows Derwentwater; clay, closing
a hut on Iona is thought to have off the latrine
belonged to St Columba (pictured
here on a window at Edinburgh
One of the cache of tablets undergoing Castle); Eggardon hillfort, one of Layer of human
cleaning by the Vindolanda Trust 4,147 featured on a new website; faeces, dated to
a 1,000-year-old toilet in Denmark the Viking age

BBC History Magazine 13