30th June 2005

Work is progressing quickly on the new areas exposed this year. We are becoming quite confident that the building demolished and replaced by the aisled building is a bathhouse. The walls are being fully exposed (see picture) and its dimensions, together with the arrangement of the rooms is similar to bathhouses on other Roman villa sites. The adjacent pits are also being excavated with a large rubbish pit producing huge quantities of artefacts, including pottery, animal bone and building material. Another adjacent pit was filled with clay, which may have been prepared for use as daub or for tile production. At long last some rain has allowed us to work on the courtyard area inside the newly exposed southern wall, which had baked so hard in the sun that the mattocks just bounced off its surface. Pits and postholes are beginning to appear.

                       
Fig 1: Excavating the large Roman pit adjacent to the bathhouse [BV05-0605-038].                                  Fig 2: Excavating the flint wall footings of the bathhouse [BV05-0605-041]

                            
          Fig 3: Glass bead and pierced tooth from a necklace [BV05-0605-033].                                                               Fig 4: Site supervisors directing the diggers to remove the last
                                                                                                                                                                                               grains of soil before Chris takes his photo's [BV05-0605-043].

 

20th June 2005

The 2005 season is now underway. The trench has been expanded to the south-west, and has picked up the south wall of the villa courtyard with what could be a lean-to building on its inner face. We have also exposed all of the earlier building that was encountered last year below the aisled building (Building 3). We are speculating that this may have been an early attempt at building a bath house, which was then demolished. Many other interesting features have also been uncovered and will be excavated over the next six weeks. Already excavated so far has been a large Roman pit with large quantities of pottery dumped into it.

 

There are still places available on the training courses and during the volunteer weeks.
 

                            

Fig 1: Fully excavated oven adjacent to Building 3 [BV05-0505-004]                           Fig 2: Ditch filled with demolition rubble from the possible bath house [BV05-0605-001]

 

 

                 

Fig 3: Part of a Saxon cooking pot from a recently excavated Saxon pit [BV05-0605-003]                           Fig 4: The Roman pit being excavated [BV05-0605-007]