Andy reports that the minibus has been delivered. A day early, but that’s better than a day late. Even better it appears to be complete with four wheels, brakes and a steering wheel! We’ll be loading it up tomorrow.
James is busy packing and deciding how many socks to take.
All of a sudden it all seems very real.
Way back in 2014 (seems like it was ages ago) we investigated the deserted medieval settlement of Barrow in Odcombe.
The digging at Barrow is long finished but the analysis of the finds is still ongoing. Rather excitingly we’ve just received the pottery report from Berni Seddon at PCA. We found 600 sherds of pottery weighing about 4.5kg. Most of the pottery dates from around AD1175-1300. The big pit in Trench A that Lucy excavated contained pottery dated to AD1250-1300.
This is all interesting stuff and will help us to complete the report we’re writing on the excavations.
Lucy with some thirteenth-century pottery from her pit in Trench A
Congratulations to all the Lufton veterans who graduated on Monday.
James H, James St-A, Kimberley, Flora, Elliott, Hayley and Jess all did exceptionally well and have their eyes on the future.
Some of the team are heading to jobs or postgraduate courses in archaeology, others are heading off in new directions. Except for Elliott and Hayley both of whom have four weeks digging in Somerset ahead of them!
In AD407 the British usurper Constantine III made a bid for the imperial throne. He was unsuccessful and in the years that followed Britain slipped from the Roman Empire.
Some forty years later the Britons wrote to Aetius ‘thrice consul’ (AD446) and magister militum per Gallias (Master of the Soldiers in Gaul) and begged him for help against the barbarians. That help was not forthcoming and Britain went on to undergo its long transformation into the patchwork of early medieval Anglo-Saxon and Welsh kingdoms.
One of the things the project is really interested in is what happened to the Lufton Villa at the end of its life? Hayward found evidence that he thought was left by ‘squatters’. This included a rather nice iron working hearth built over a mosaic in Room 2. We hope to reinvestigate this hearth to see if it still survives and whether we can detect any clues as to its date and purpose.
The late or early post-Roman iron working hearth from Lufton (from the original report in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society)
If you’re interested in the end of Roman Britain, you might like to read James’ book The Ruin of Roman Britain which is available to preorder in paperback from the Cambridge University Press for £21.99
In just over two weeks we’ll be heading down to begin our longest and most important excavation. For all of August we’ll be digging the villa!
We’ve got a team of students and local volunteers who are all really excited to take part in what will prove to be a fascinating four weeks’ digging.
In Newcastle there are lots of preparations afoot. Andy has been hiring fencing, James is busy organising all sorts of things and looking forward to seeing the third years (including Lufton veterans) graduating on Monday.
This year we intend to dig two trenches. These are to precisely locate where the villa is and assess its state of preservation. We also hope to use new scientific techniques to study the final, so-called squatting phases of activity.
Just to whet your appetites here’s the plan of the villa showing where we propose to locate our trenches.
Proposed trenches
We’re about a month away from the start of our biggest and best excavation yet. Running for the first four weeks of August we’ll be excavating the villa!
This will be our fifth season and the biggest Newcastle excavation team (running in two two week shifts) we’ve ever taken to Somerset.
We’re pretty excited and the logistics behind this excavation are pretty impressive. A 10,000 word project design, permission from Historic England, new pieces of equipment, fencing, portaloos and the rest have all be ordered.
We can’t wait!
The blog has been quiet for a while, but that’s because big things have been afoot behind the scenes.
After quite a lot or work James and Andy have secured Scheduled Monuments Consent from Historic England and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to undertake the partial excavation of the villa this summer. Even more importantly they have managed to raise the funds from Newcastle University, The Roman Research Trust, Brympton Parish Council, The Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society and the Yeovil Archaeological Society to undertake this work.
The intention is to excavate two trenches so that the precise location of the building can be established. We will the re-excavate some of Leonard Hayward’s trenches and investigate unexcavated areas. We hope to investigate the very final phases of the villa’s occupation and use scientific techniques to analyse the finds in ways that were beyond the means of the previous investigations in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
We have a team of students and two soon-to-be graduates – Elliot and Hayley,(both veterans of previous seasons of excavation at Lufton) – ready. Roll on August and the excavation! There will also be some volunteers from the South Somerset Archaeological Research Group joining us too.
As ever, our work would be impossible if it were not for the generosity of the local community. The landowners (the Pullens) especially deserve our thanks for all the help and kindness they extend to the project. Our kind hosts – the Bakers – also deserve our thanks in advance for all the help.
The public often believe that archaeology is all about digging. The truth is that for every day we spend in the field digging, we spend two or three days more back in the lab or the office thinking about and analysing our discoveries.
James has recently sent the tiny assemblage of samian pottery (all 3 sherds!) from last year’s excavations in Hungerford to samian pottery specialist J. M. Mills. One sherd, from ditch fill [007] is a tiny fragment of a Dragendorff 15/17 platter from La Graufesenque in southern Gaul (modern France).
This sherd is important because it dates from about AD40-AD85. The Roman invasion happened in AD43 and the West Country probably wasn’t conquered until AD47 or so. We know from Tacitus and archaeological discoveries that there was trouble in the west during the Boudiccan Revolt in AD60/61.
So our little sherd shows that the inhabitants of the Late Iron Age settlement in Hungerford were in contact with the Romans soon after the conquest of the region. We don’t know what the conquest was like, but with a military presence established at Ham Hill and a fort at Ilchester it was likely to have been bloody. The sherd demonstrates other kinds of contact and that the locals were able to access some imported luxuries in the decades after the invasion.
A pretty exciting find of silver denarii has just been reported to have been discovered on a building site in Yeovil. We’re not sure where the find is, but the 3335 coins are reported by the Central Somerset Gazette to be of second or third century date. Therefore they probably pre-date the villa at Lufton. Nevertheless, they’re further evidence of Roman activity in this bit of southern Somerset.
In other news James and Andy are beginning to see the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Perhaps we will be digging the villa this Summer… watch this space!
