About James

I'm the Project Director and a Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Newcastle University

Leonard Hayward’s excavations

Leonard (Polly) Hayward BA BSc FSA excavated the villa between 1946 and 1952 and again between 1960 and 1963 with the boys of Yeovil School. He produced two reports on his excavations and deposited his finds in what was Yeovil Museum (they’re now held by the CHAC).

Leonard Hayward FSA

The Yeovil Archaeological and Local History Society (who have generously contributed to the current excavations) have their origins in the Yeovil School Archaeological Society established by Leonard Hayward.

The Yeovil Archaeological and Local History Society have two accounts by pupils of the excavations published on their website.

Yeovil historian Jack Sweet recounts that “occasionally  when Mr Hayward and the seniors were absent for a short time we juniors enjoyed re-enacting the Western Front in the trenches and on the spoil heaps!!” So it wasn’t all hard digging!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A day off

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.

The end of Week 1

Today was the end of the first week of excavation at Lufton Roman Villa.

The team struggled with the heat today, but despite the weather they managed to be incredibly productive throughout the whole day.

The team was also joined on site today by Sue from SSARG.

Andy spent the day surveying the trench using the GPS and Total Station equipment (below) to set up the site grid.

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James G spent most of the day directing the action and trying to wrestle with all of the exposed contexts, he did find tie to start recording the building (below).

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Elliot led James I, Henry and Sue in exploring some difficult archaeology in the North-Eastern Corner of the trench. This mainly seems to be backfill from Hayward’s excavation overlying earlier Roman deposits.

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Meanwhile, Hayley was in charge of Dan and Kevin as they searched the South-Eastern corner for the villa’s corn dryer. We didn’t find the corn dryer (the trench may just be a little too far north) but did determine the edges of some of the trenches from the earlier excavation.

Situated between those two teams, Holly-Ann directed Charlotte and Chris in attempting to resolve the stratigraphy of the newly christened wall 111. They added about 4m of length to the wall by removing the fill of a robber cut (identified yesterday) to expose the wall’s lower courses. An important discovery was what is almost certainly the line of the waterpipe discovered in the earlier excavation. This is further evidence that the trench has been located in the right place to answer our questions.

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Although the day yielded little in way of finds, at the end of the day the entire team was proud of how much work they had achieved across their first week.

We returned to camp to enjoy cheesy pasta prepared by Imogen and Antonia.

Everyone is looking forward to a day off tomorrow that should hopefully start with a nice lie in!

Cleaning Dirt

Today on site the team were tasked with the huge task of cleaning up around 2/3 of the trench so that we could see what features and contexts were visible and so that we could photograph them before excavation.

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.Imogen and Hayley identify a robber cut for a robbed out wall (above)

At the start of the day, Antonia, Imogen, James I, Henry, Kevin and Charlie (Charlotte) were led by Hayley and Elliot in trowelling back through the trench, starting in the South-Eastern corner of the trench, and working in line with the building’s walls.

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James watching the team trowelling (above)

Meanwhile, Holly-Ann finished off chasing her wall further to the west of the trowel line.

Luckily, however, we were joined on site today by Sue from the South Somerset Archaeological Research Group (SSARG) and Hollie, a sixth-form student who wants to study archaeology after her A-levels.

Before long, Ski also arrived on site and located many targets with his metal detector. Where we could excavate these they were almost all iron nails.

Elliot then bagged up Ski’s finds before recording them in the Register, so that Andy could take their GPS location.

After this, James oversaw the whole group’s mammoth task of cleaning up a huge portion of the trench, ready for Andy to take some photos (below).

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After a hard day’s work, the team returned home to a delicious meal of Chilli, prepared by Dan and Chris.

Overall, this was a slow day with a huge amount of work undertaken by the whole team. With this necessary exercise complete we’ll be able to get on with digging the building.

Onwards and Downwards

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.

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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.

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

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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.

Diggers, basins and PR

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.

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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.

A basin, perhaps?

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!

Day 2: Fences & Walls

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)

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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).

Luf16 Roof Tile

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).

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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!

The rain that raineth

The first day on site was characterised by our intrepid team of diggers struggling against the elements.

Before anything started James G was interviewed by Claire Carter of BBC Radio Somerset. This was picked up people far and wide including a colleague who teaches at the University of Florida!

After arriving on site, Andy and James laid out Trench A, in preparation for the topsoil to be machined off tomorrow.

The team was joined today by our friendly neighbourhood metal detectorist, Ski (acting under a Section 42 license) who scanned the top of Trench A.

It didn’t take long for Ski to unearth a Constantinian coin from the early to mid 4th Century – a promising start to the excavation!

While Ski scanned the trench, the rest of the team were split up and dug out some test pits.

Unfortunately, the weather had conspired to make our first day of work slightly harder by unleashing more rain during our working day than in the entire month of July! We also had trouble with a delivery, which couldn’t make it to us because of a gas leak.

We soldiered on, despite the difficult conditions and got a good day’s work done.

The team arrived home with muddy boots (see below) and a hearty meal of cheesy pasta prepared by Dan and Chris.

We’re all looking forward to opening our first trench tomorrow and getting to grips with a Roman Villa!

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Day 0

James, Andy, Hayley and Elliot arrived yesterday and spent their first full day in Somerset preparing for the weeks ahead.

After a trip to the shops to pick up our (ample) food and supplies, James and Andy scouted out the site.

Field Rations

Above: James and a wheelbarrow of shopping.

Meanwhile, Elliot and Hayley organised base camp and made preparations for the arrival of our first team of students.

Henry arrived first, followed by Holly (veteran of last season), Imogen, Antonia, James S, James I (lots of James’ this year!), Dan and Chris. Having set their tents up everyone enjoyed a delicious barbeque and settled in for a team briefing.