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Image
details:
Stylus tablet 836 with the wax preserved,
showing the letters incised in the wax
Image ownership:
© CSAD |
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Image
details:
Stylus tablet 836 with the wax removed after
conservation, with traces of letters incised in the wood
Image ownership:
© CSAD |
One of the most important aspects of the Vindolanda writing tablets
is their contribution to our knowledge of writing and writing materials
in the Roman world. Before the discoveries at Vindolanda stylus
tablets (which also survive at the fort) were considered to be the
main type of wooden writing tablet. These are wooden rectangular
panels, the size of large postcards. The panels are recessed to
carry a layer of wax a few millimetres deep. On this wax layer writing
was incised with the point of a stylus (also spelt stilus). The
wax could be smoothed to correct mistakes or to erase the whole
text, allowing re-use of the tablet. Wax rarely survives, but traces
of the writing were often left in the wood beneath by the stylus
point. Stylus tablets were often made of tree species not native
to Britain at this time, including silver fir and occasionally cedar.
Books of writing tablets were probably imported as goods in their
own right.
Ink tablets
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Image
details:
A near complete diptych, a letter inviting
its recipient Lepidina, to a birthday party.
Image ownership:
© CSAD |
Most of the Vindolanda tablets are however quite different. They
are thin leaves of wood, normally less than 1mm thick and about
20cm wide by 9 cm long, the size of a large postcard. The tablets
were cut from the sapwood of young trees with a very sharp knife,
a technique perhaps related to making wooden veneers for furniture.
Their smooth surface may have been prepared to take writing in ink.
Texts were written with a pen, using ink made from carbon, gum arabic
and water. Tablets were usually folded once the text was written,
so that the writing on the inner faces was protected. Sometimes
the wet ink produced offsets on the facing surfaces (343).
Despite their absence from the archaeological record before the
Vindolanda discoveries, there is evidence that such tablets were
well known in the Roman world. The third century historian Herodian,
describing the death of the emperor Commodus (AD 180-192) noted
that the assassination was caused by the discovery that the emperor
had made a list of proscribed persons, 'taking a writing-tablet
of the kind that were made from lime-wood, cut into thin sheets
and folded face-to-face by being bent.' Discoveries since Vindolanda,
for example at Carlisle, show that these tablets were in wide use.
The Vindolanda tablets were not made from lime wood but from birch,
alder and oak. They could therefore be cheaply and easily produced
from local growing trees.
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