Magna Dig Diary 2025
Welcome to the 2025 season of excavations at Magna Roman Fort. Here in this Dig Diary we will post regular updates on the current excavations and post excavation taking place on site. You will hear from our archaeologists and volunteers as they share news and thoughts about what is being uncovered, the challenges and the highlights of the excavation season.
If you’d like to catch up on what was uncovered in Year 1 & 2 of the Magna Project you can read our 2023 Dig Diary, 2024 Dig Diary, and check out updates on our YouTube channel.
Who you’ll hear from (guest volunteers will sign off with their first name and “volunteer”):
Rachel: Senior Archaeologist for the Magna Project
Franki: Geoarchaeologist for the Magna Project
Sophie: Activity & Diversity Officer for the Magna Project
Cristina: Vindolanda Trust Pottery Specialist
Sonya: Vindolanda Trust Communications Manager
Want to check on a specific period? Use the links below to take you to the start of each period of excavations. The latest posts are at the top of the page.
Period 1: 14th – 25th April 2025
25th April
Meet our amazing Period 1 volunteer crew who’ve officially launched Year 3 of the Magna Project with buckets of energy (and quite a bit of mud!) They have been hard at work over the past two weeks, as we have moved into our new excavation area for 2025 at the northern fort walls and defensive ditches here at Magna. A huge thank you to our Period 1 team for getting the season off to a fantastic start! We can’t wait to welcome our Period 2 volunteers on Monday.
As regular readers of our Dig Diary will know, our updates often include a mix of excavation highlights and reflections on the famously changeable Northumbrian weather. But, there is a reason for all our weather chat – it ties into our broader research on how climate change is affecting buried archaeology.
Interested in learning more? Join us for a one-day conference at the Roman Army Museum and Magna Fort, where we’ll be exploring the theme of climate change and its impact on archaeology. From the unique conditions at Magna Roman Fort to the broader frontier landscape of Hadrian’s Wall, it will be a fascinating day of discussion and discovery.
Tickets are available for both in-person and online attendance – book your here! Sophie
22nd April
Another sunny excavation day at Magna, and we are already seeing some interesting features within our excavation area. Up near the fort wall, we’re chasing a potential robber trench where resourceful individuals might have taken the well-made Roman facing stones to help construct their own buildings (maybe even bits of Carvoran farm). Luckily, they left behind plenty of Roman pottery and animal bones for us to find in their wake. Additionally, it seems like the upper layer of our first fort ditch contains some of these facing stones which were likely pulled into the ditch by ploughing at some point in time. We’re keen to record and then remove these stones to see if they might have any inscriptions or graffiti on them. Unfortunately, it looks like we won’t have any facing stones from the most recent stone fort left in situ – but there is still hope for the earlier forts beneath the ‘visible’ one.
Moreover, we got our first taste of waterlogged soil today, which means the anaerobic is not far off. This year we should have anaerobic deposits within all fort ditches in our excavation area, which means that there is large potential for organic material artifacts like leather shoes and wooden objects. This group of volunteers have moved a lot of dirt to get us to where we are now, and I am keen to see what else they can uncover in their final three days of excavation! Franki
18th April
We have reached the end of our first week of excavation and already we have made a lot of progress, even if some wet weather tried to slow us down on Wednesday. We can now see two of the defensive ditches that were dug to the north of Magna fort, along with areas of cobbling laid in the spaces between them. The surface at the north end of the trench is much flatter and made of smaller cobbles than the one between the first and second ditch, suggesting this could be a road running around the outside of the fort.
At the other end of the trench, we are also on a mission to find the fort wall. Currently this area is covered by a deep layer of rubble created by the collapse of the Roman fort wall and more recent dry stone field wall, meaning there are a lot of rocks to shift. However, this should have protected the underlying archaeology from later damage so there should be some intact Roman features waiting as our reward!
We are still finding a variety of Roman pottery and have had a few animal bones starting to come up, things I’m sure we’ll find a lot more of in the coming weeks as we start going down inside the ditches to see what the Romans have thrown into them over the centuries. Rachel
15th April
We have officially broke ground on the 2025 Magna excavation season! Our Period 1 volunteers arrived yesterday to cold but dry weather, and they began stripping off the turf in the afternoon. Unlike the past two excavation seasons, where we were able to use a mini 360 excavator to get rid of the grass, we must de-turf by hand this year because the archaeology is so close to the surface. We’re beginning our excavations near the north stone wall of the latest rendition of Magna fort and then continuing north across the fort rampart and ditches. The first ditch is very prominent in the landscape, although it does, unfortunately, have a Victorian stone field drain cutting through it. Nevertheless, we’re confident that the deposits underneath this stone drain are relatively untouched.
Already, we’ve found nice sherds of black burnished ware, mortaria, and even a bit of Samian.
This bodes well for us as we continue to get rid of the previously plowed topsoil, and into the secure Roman contexts. With less than two full days under our belts right now, I think we’re making great headway into an exciting summer! Franki
13th April 2025
In exciting news – soil sampling for the 2025 season has begun! Last week, Rebecca (archaeology assistant for the Trust) and myself took a series of topsoil samples for elemental analysis. These samples will be processed with a pXRF (portable X-Ray Fluorescence) machine and could potentially give hints as to where important archaeological features are located. As we begin uncovering different layers of occupation within our trench, we will take more soil samples like these so as to build a comprehensive survey of the elemental makeup of the soil across the ditches. Franki
11th April 2025
You may have heard the exciting news that excavations have officially started at our sister site of Vindolanda this week, which means there’s only a few days left until we will be back out in the trenches at Magna!
If you’ve visited the site recently for a sneak peek at where we’re digging, you might have spotted some of our field’s newest residents out exploring the excavation area. Don’t worry though, we haven’t seen any armed with trowels or bags of finds to show off to their friends!
We are busy doing the final preparations on and off site, making sure the spades are polished, and the biscuit barrel is stocked. We can’t wait to meet our first group of volunteers on Monday to get stuck into a new excavation area; and of course share our discoveries here in the dig diary. Rachel
1st April 2025
Spring has slowly but surely started to arrive in Northumberland and that means only one thing here at Magna: its nearly time to start excavating!
This year we will be moving into the fort field, opposite the new activity and archaeology centre, with a long trench stretching out from the north edge of the fort platform. Although it may look like an unassuming area of flat grass today, in the Roman period it would have been dominated by the northern ditches and ramparts of the last stone fort. There could be up to five of these waiting to be excavated, and potentially other archaeological features dating to different phases of the fort’s history. As with so much of the site, the ground here is frequently waterlogged and early trials in the 1970s showed that the anaerobic conditions needed to preserve organic material existed below the turf. This means there could be all sorts of exciting surprises preserved within the ditch fills, especially as the Romans often used the fort ditches as rubbish dumps!
The fences are up, the wheelbarrow fleet is assembled, and we can’t wait to welcome our first team of volunteers to get stuck in uncovering more of the history of Magna. All that’s left to do now is pray for some nice weather! Rachel
