https://www.tartandictionary.org/tags/vindolanda/Recent content in Vindolanda on Tartan DictionaryHugoenWed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.tartandictionary.org/posts/vindolanda-check/Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.tartandictionary.org/posts/vindolanda-check/<p>A generation before the <a href="https://www.tartandictionary.org/posts/falkirk-tartan/">Falkirk</a> cloth was stuffed into its coin-pot, there was already checked wool being worn on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. It comes from the fort of <strong>Vindolanda</strong>, just south of Hadrian's Wall, and it is one of the earliest checked cloths to survive from Britain at all.</p> <h2 id="the-find">The find</h2> <p>Vindolanda's waterlogged early levels are a textile archive: the anaerobic mud under the first timber forts preserved leather, wood, writing-tablets and cloth that would have rotted anywhere drier. Among the woollens excavated there is a <strong>simple two-colour check</strong>, deposited in the fort's <strong>earliest levels, around AD 100</strong> — a full century or so before the Falkirk hoard was buried. The textiles were published by J. P. Wild in the Vindolanda research reports, and the fleeces themselves were analysed by M. L. Ryder.<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup><sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">2</a></sup></p>