After a Saturday night where some of the team sampled the hospitality of the Mason’s Arms in Odcombe, others stayed at camp to consume the odd cup of Pimms from a large metal pan. This level of sophistication has never been reached by the project before…

Sunday has given us all a well-deserved day off. Most of the team caught up on some sleep and have spent the day relaxing and doing laundry. Tonight we’re looking forward to a tasty barbeque. What more could anyone ask for?

The first week has seen us set up camp and the site. After two days of machining we have defined the various deposits within the building and located exactly where we are in relation to Hayward’s published plan of the site. We’ve also been able to identify areas that Hayward trenched, found over twenty Roman coins (largely due to Ski’s metal detecting), lots of stone roof tiles and ceramic building materials (bricks and tiles). A couple fragments of window glass, wall plaster and a few tesserae point to the high status of the building.

We’ve found relatively little pottery so far. That said, we have sherds of BB1, Oxfordshire and New Forest Colour Coated wares and also a fragment from a thin walled Baetican amphora. This last vessel probably carried Spanish olive oil and, along with some oyster shells, points to the rich and varied diet of the inhabitants of the site.

Tomorrow we should start getting into the occupation deposits within the building. We all hope this will reveal further insights into this fascinating structure.

As the team finally settle into a regular routine on site, we all enjoyed a day of discovery. With the last of the machine work done yesterday, the team now set about working out how best to continue.

At the start of the day, Elliot oversaw Antonia, James S and Henry as they cleaned up the section in the North-Eastern corner of the trench before trowelling back the loose and trying to locate more features.

Meanwhile, James led Chris and Charlotte (joining us from the University of Trinity St David) in analysing what was have been a robbed out (or previosuly excavated) wall on the Eastern side of the trench, and managed to pull out an impressive Roman tile.

On the other side of the trench, Hayley was in charge while Dan and Imogen worked hard to locate what could be a very interesting context.

Holly-Ann continued in her wall hunting endeavours and was able to follow the base course of another of the villa’s walls.

We were visited by the Western Gazette and made the BBC news website – fame at last.

The major success of the day was establishing exactly where the trench was in relation to Leonard Hayward’s plan of the villa. We know where we are! Onwards and downwards!

After a long day’s work, the team enjoyed fajitas for tea, prepared by James I and Kevin. Alas, we made a mistake with quantities and pizza needed to be ordered to make up the shortfall.

On our third day at site the team were visited by a media team from BBC Points West who caught us in our element during excavation. We’re not sure when the interview will be broadcast. This week with a bit of luck!

The day began with James and Andy overseeing the machine work whilst Elliot and Hayley supervised Dan, James I, Kevin, Imogen, Antonia and Chris as they worked on tidying up our sections.

After that the team set about trowelling back across the trench to try and reveal some of the more interesting colour changes in the soil, allowing us to get a better idea of the archaeology of the villa.

Holly-Ann spent most of the day excavating more of the villa walls that we were able to uncover.

Meanwhile, Ski returned to site and was assisted in his metal detecting by Charlotte.

We managed to discover some interesting finds throughout the day, with Ski locating several more coins and some more small finds for our team to wrap their heads around.

One of our more baffling finds is what James has identified as a possible stone basin.

The team enjoyed corned beef hash prepared by James S and Henry for tea after a hard day’s work.

Last night, James dug deep and worked hard with the University Press Office.  However, the resulting headline wasn’t quite what he expected. C’est la vie…

All in all the team had an incredibly productive day, and are looking forward to getting properly stuck into digging tomorrow..

Special mention goes to Dan, who came home with the most impressive burns in the shortest amount of time!

The team had another hard day’s work on site today but managed to be incredibly productive, getting their teeth sunk into the archaeology.

Our first job today was to transport the fencing to site, which was a considerable task. With some help from James Pullen (the land owner), Elliot, Holly, Kevin, James S, James I, Chris and Henry were able to move a huge amount of fencing to site, where the rest of the team unloaded it. (below)

Meanwhile, James and Andy got on with the important task of machine watching while our digger lifted the topsoil off of Trench A.

Ski also returned to site today and was able to uncover no less than 8 copper-alloy coins in a morning! All of these coins appear to be of fourth century date: we have a Soli Invicto Comiti of the early fourth century and a coin of the usurper Magnentius (AD350-353)

Another interesting find from site was a Roman roof tile (below).

Before we broke for lunch, we were also able to locate what we believe to be one of the villa’s walls, leading Holly, Charlotte, Kevin, Hayley and Henry to try and find where it leads us (below).

While part of the team was occupied by the trench, the rest of us set about constructing the fencing to surround the site and putting up our on-site tent, which we use as a site office.

At the end of the day we all enjoyed spaghetti bolognese for tea and looked forward to a day of discovery tomorrow!