>if you have got the time to cement over barracks for 1000 people surely you have time to pack up!

FTA: "a concrete floor laid by the Romans about 30 years after the barracks was abandoned"

So the people covering it up were probably not the same as the ones who left in the first place.

I missed that I suppose. Even more interesting not to pick up a bunch of potentially valuable stuff.

Certainly not in my d&d campaign.

According to the article, the concrete floor was laid about 30 years after the artifacts were abandoned. If I understand it right, the fort had been raised and leveled more than once in between, so there was a thick layer of soil and debris between the floor and the artifacts at the time the floor was laid. The unknown question is why such valuable items were left the first time the fort was abandoned.

I had the same thought. I've poured some slabs. We might've covered some smokes or trash, but we picked up every weapon and dry good.

I suppose they were burrying the stuff like Hoffa's corpse.

I suspect the artefacts weren't in a brick-and-tile building but a wood-and-thatch outbuilding, which after 30 years of abandonment would have collapsed and rotted over the contents.

It's now 3.5m below "ground" level.

Maybe they intentionally left a time capsule?

It's pretty interesting. I wonder if the wooden tablets have information on what the intention was.