Discovered in 2008 at the Roman fort of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall, the Vindolanda calendar is a fragment of a portable, perpetual calendar used by the Roman army to mark the passage of the year. It is the first of its kind to be found not only in roman Britain but the Roman world.
Ancient Calendars
Very few examples of ancient portable calendars have been found relating to the Roman period. A Celtic bronze table was discovered in Coligny, France in the late 19th century, followed by the further French find of a register of the Roman months or a menologium, in 1886.
Roman calendars of the year were usually permanent and fixed to the wall of major public buildings in towns and cities. Portable calendars that marked not only the months but days of the year must have existed for mobile users, such as the army. None had been discovered until the find at Vindolanda.
The Discovery of the Vindolanda Calendar
The Vindolanda calendar was discovered in July 2008 during excavations beneath the stone floor of the eastern granary of the Roman fort. Made of bronze, it was not a complete calendar but an 8cm long curved fragment.
It is estimated that in its entirety, the calendar would have been a circle or semi circle of 25cm in diameter, possibly backed with a wooden disk. Letters composed of tiny dots were punched into the metal at the top and bottom of the strip. Through the centre of the fragment were a regular series of holes that totally perforated the metal.
A Roman Perpetual Calendar
The find was interpreted as a Roman portable perpetual calendar. This meant it could be carried anywhere and re used on a yearly basis. The capitalised letters at the top of the strip spelled out the name of the month of September whilst the letters at the bottom consisted of K, N, ID and AE. Each of these letters corresponded with a punched hole at an appropriate distance from each other. They were abbreviations for the fixed days of the Roman month known as the kalends, nones and ides. The letters ‘AE’ referred to the autumn equinox.
The spacing between the marked holes corresponded to the spacing between the fixed days in the roman calendar, assuming that each hole corresponded to two days. Every other day, a peg would have been moved to next hole, to mark the daily position on the calendar.
The Roman Army and Timekeeping
According to Robin and Andrew Birley, archaeologists in charge of Vindolanda, the calendar demonstrates that it was possible for the Roman army to mark festivals and carried out timed commands whilst on active service and away from official civic calendars.
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