Housteads Site Survey

Wednesday, May 7th:

Today we went to Housesteads to do a site survey of a Roman fort. My group consisted of Maren, Jayson, Alisha, and myself. We took charge of the Commanders house, and the Hospital. Again, they were so technologically advanced for their time! The commander had his own bath, and his own person bathroom which was really odd for this time period. They believe this fort was built around AD 120. The hospital also had a drainage system which would carry the blood from the surgery room, and possibly a bathroom, but we weren’t quite sure if the hospital had it’s own bathroom.


Today was a really warm day and most of us got burnt, but I just got a really good tan! When we got back from Housesteads, we went to the Pub/Hotel/Restaurant again for supper where I had my first Fish and Chips experience! It was pretty good, but their tarter sauce was really strong and tasted like it had a lot of vinegar in it. Oh, and I also had Sticky Toffee Pudding, and this was heaven! We went back to the hostel and discussed what we had discovered about the site.


We discovered that this particular fort was mainly for military use. This is because it was right on the wall, close to direct fire. The Romans wouldn’t have wanted their families that close to fire. The other group decided to hop over to Scotland for a minute, and discovered that Hadrian’s wall was effective because it was very difficult for them to climb the wall back over to England.


Tonight we met a backpacker from England and one from Holland. We were all out there as a group eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oddly enough, they had NEVER heard of such a thing! So, we decided to let them have some of ours, and they absolutely hated it! Weird, huh!? We also taught them how to play some card games, and they seemed to catch on really fast. Hopefully we gave them a good American impression!