Arlington - It’s A Matter of Interpretation?
- by Bruce Milton

No, I hadn’t been drinking – although my eyesight could have been attributable to the bacchanalian orgies much described in my previous years digging at Barcombe! It was more in common with those weird 3D pictures that were all the rage some years ago – you know the ones where you had to vacantly stare at a spot in the image and hey presto (if you were blank enough) you would see a faint grey shape suddenly emerge from the background. Perhaps I have the gift to stare blankly at any time of the day, whether I am at work, at home listening to the wife and/or kids or even staring at a bit of flint, but these 3D images seem to work for me more often than not even if I don’t necessarily see the correct image that emerges from the picture.

But hey, you are probably staring blankly at these words wondering what on earth I’m talking about; let me explain. I was manipulating and studying the results of some resistivity work that was undertaken by MSFAT & BHAS members in a field near Arlington on weekend of   22^nd/23^rd March and trying to decipher the data in front of me when suddenly features seemed to jump out at me.  Alarmed by this unique insight I asked my wife to come and have a look at the size of the irises in my eyes in case I was ‘on’ something and to confirm that she could see the same things I could see. Bless her, I wasn’t; she could; and even pointed to one or two more features which seemed to complete the picture. Read on; more on our vision later.

We were alerted to this field by a metal detector club via Sid Jeffrey who confirmed that a lot of material (mainly Roman) had been found scattered on the ground; but was concentrated around a level platform within the sloping field, close to a stream and within a short distance of a Roman road – reminiscent of our site at Barcombe but facing north and without such a great view. This was worth an investigation. We surveyed the site using our trusty RM15 resistance data logger and initially covered 5x5 20m grids using the zigzag transverse method with a sample interval of 1m. (you’re not staring blankly are you?) The data was downloaded on David Stavely’s laptop and processed on site. It was then decided to survey 2 more grids – to make sure we had captured all the possible features within the site. David then e-mailed me the results to further process a couple of days later.

I suppose now I’d better get to the point, having filtered, de-spiked and smoothed out the data, some features immediately stood out. These dark features shown on the untouched plot denote high resistance, and can be seen running from the west of the site and turning a 90 degree angle at the east of the site. Further high resistance readings and concentrations can also be seen which could possibly denote walls and buildings. A circular feature in the south-eastern corner could show a possible roundhouse – it seems to be the correct size. There also appears to be some low resistance areas within the plot, particularly the ‘lollipop’in the south-western corner and the square platform in the eastern side. Don’t ask me to speculate on what they are.   The features that ‘popped’ out at me included more roundhouses, circular ditches and even a large enclosure ditch running north/south at the eastern edge. I must stress (and no doubt you will assume that this is all part of my usual ramblings and weird outlook on life) that these features only appear clearly on the monitor. No matter how hard I try I cannot transfer the features clearly on the printed copies - so you just have to take my (and my wife’s) word for what we saw.

Fig. 2:  The results of the Resistivity Survey at Arlington

So there you go, evaluating resistance data not only depends on what you see clearly before you, it can also depend on your interpretive abilities. This data can give you clues and, possibly, red herrings of what lies beneath, but the only way to find out for sure is to excavate, at least the resistivity can indicate to you where to dig. I’m off to have another delve, why don’t you have a go. First look at the image yourself and then start staring, staring, staring, perhaps you may see the features I can see, or perhaps you can see something different.