Archaeologists excavating at Magna, a Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, England, have uncovered an amazing treasure trove of ancient leather shoes, many of them unusually large. Of the 32 shoes unearthed in the northern defensive ditches of Magna, 25% are more 11.8 inches long, including a record-breaking 12.8-inch sole (the U.S. equivalent of a size 15 shoe) — the biggest yet recorded in the Vindolanda Trust’s vast collection of Roman shoes. The boots were recovered from oxygen-poor, waterlogged conditions at the base of Magna’s deep “ankle-breaker” trenches — defense ditches designed to trip and injure enemies. "You need specific soil conditions with very low oxygen for organic objects made of things like wood, leather, textiles, stuff like that, to survive for this length of time,” said Rachel Frame, a senior archeologist on the project. She noted that the team is probing the history of the Roman Empire for answers, stressing that people of different cultures and backgrounds would likely have been meeting at the site.
