Latest on the excavations of Binchester Roman town – [Link]

David Petts has posted an x-ray made by Jenny Jones of one of the artifacts found this summer – [Link]

It didn’t look like much when it was found. It turns out to be a stylus – for writing on wax tablets.

Evidence for literacy in the last days of empire. A personal item, likely as not. To convey the mark of the writer. Another of those silent witnesses in our contemporary archaeological sensibility, attuned to traces and vestiges, memory fragments asking for reconstitution.

I find this kind of thing so evocative.