A cache of 25 Roman letters has been found at Vindolanda, the fort below Hadrian’s Wall where the most famous documents from the Roman world were discovered in 1992, first-person accounts of cold feet, beer running short, and jolly birthday parties at the northernmost edge of the empire.
The tablets are still being conserved, before being scanned with infrared light which should make the faint marks in black ink legible, but the cursive script is invariably a cryptic crossword puzzle that will take experts many months to solve.
However, the archaeologists have already spotted that one of the tablets may refer to a character already well known from the original find: Masclus was then writing to his commanding officer asking for more beer supplies to be sent to his outpost on the wall. In the newly discovered letter, Masclus is requesting leave – possibly with a painful hangover.
Most of the new letters are written like the original find on thin slivers of birch, but there is particular excitement about one double-leaved oak tablet, as the two pieces of timber folded together usually give particularly good preservation of ink and the wood was used for more important correspondence than the more plentiful birch.

mora at: theguardian.com