Since 1929 the excavations at Vindolanda have been under the direction of one family, the Birleys. Eric Birley purchased the site in 1929 and worked on it with his wife, Margaret and their sons Anthony and Robin. In 1972 in deep excavations to the south of the west wall of the stone fort a sequence of wooden forts was discovered. The first wooden writing tablet was discovered in March 1973 by Robin Birley. Since the 1970s the site has been in the hands of the Vindolanda trust and the excavations have been under the direction of Robin and Patricia Birley, Anthony and Heide and now Andrew and Barbar Birley.
I am indebted to the Vindolanda Trust for their support and for permission to use photographs of some of their treasures. Their website is a rich source of information about Vindolanda and its sequence of wooden and stone forts.
They have a number of Blogs, videos, and excavation reports that are well worth exploring, including my favourite blog by Barbara Birley, the Curator's Favourite Shoes (see Figure 11 in Imagining Luke-Acts in Roman Britain).
Robin Birley’s introductory book tells the story of Vindolanda and its writing tablets.
Birley, Robin. Vindolanda: Extraordinary Records of Daily Life on the Northern Frontier. Greenhead: Roman Army Museum Publications, for the Vindolanda Trust, 2015.
Anthony Birley provides a more in-depth account of the fort, while Robin Birley gives an insight into life in the Garrison fort.
Birley, Robin. Vindolanda: A Roman Frontier Fort on Hadrian’s Wall. Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2009.
Birley, Anthony R. Garrison Life at Vindolanda: A Band of Brothers. Stroud: Tempus, 2002.
Alan Bowman has worked on the Vindolanda Tablets since their first discovery. He includes a selection of the tablets and explores what we learn about life in a fort on the Roman frontier.
Bowman, Alan K. Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and Its People. Revised, Expanded and Updated. London: British Museum, 2003.