By Pam McClounie

Published at 09:20, Saturday, 26 July 2008

ARCHAEOLOGISTS excavating the massive twin fort granaries at Vindolanda have come across part of an object never found in Britain before – a Roman perpetual calendar.

Date line: The perpetual calendar fragment discovered at Vindolanda is made of bronze and shows September

The fragment, which is eight centimetres long and made of bronze, features the month of September, with a line of punched holes each representing two days.

The complete calendar would have been a portable circular disc, around 25 centimetres in diameter, and every two days a peg would be moved into the next hole, so that the correct date could be read.

Robin Birley, director of Vindolanda Research, was astonished by the find.

He said: “I had always wondered how the soldiers could keep track of dates, without the benefit of daily newspapers and diaries.

“In the larger towns and cities, a calendar would be inscribed or painted onto the side of a building, but without some method of indicating the passing of days it could have been somewhat confusing.

“The army system of a portable calendar, like the Vindolanda example, was brilliantly simple – as long as the clerk responsible for moving the pegs every two days did his job properly.”

This calendar is the only example to be found in Britain so far and, as far as it is known, none have been found in other parts of the old Roman Empire.

Andrew Birley, the Vindolanda Trust’s director of excavations, said: “This is an extraordinary find, and it ranks with the famous writing tablets as one of the rarest objects ever found at Vindolanda.”

The calendar will be exhibited at the museum at Vindolanda, close to Hadrian’s Wall, this autumn when conservation is completed.

The find comes in the same week that this summer’s blockbuster exhibition – Hadrian: Empire and Conflict – opened at the British Museum in London.

For more information visit www.vindolanda.com or call 01434 344277.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk