It was a busy day on site today but the team managed to make a brilliant discovery of a tessellated floor. This pavement is in a room that occupies an area that Hayward had thought was outside of the villa entirely.

At the start of the day, James G was hoping to work off some of Josh’s excess energy by having him, Jeff, Frankie and Elliot hack out some of the overlying rubble deposits in the North East corner of the trench.

However, after a near miss with the mattock, Elliot struck some tesserae. These quickly grew into what was clearly a full paved floor. The pavement is suffering from some subsidence but otherwise appears at the moment to be a plain grey floor.

Elsewhere in the trench, Hayley, Doug and James B worked hard to record and take off the clay layer which was overlying the burnt deposit on the east side of the trench. They topped the day off by taking a micromorphology sample from their deposit and cleaning up the surrounding contexts.

Becca and Lucy continued their adventures in archaeological recording by planning walls and contexts for the whole day while Freddie cleaned up the loose over the walls and Tilly worked on the water pipe channel in the Southern end of the trench.

The team are all very excited about their new discovery and are looking forward to finishing their work in Lufton soon.

The team were working extremely hard today, and managed to move an awful lot of ground to make some good archaeological progress.

The day kicked off with Hayley and Lucy returning to their Roman oven.  After identifying the edges of the feature and thoroughly cleaning it, Andy was able to snap some photos of it before Hayley and Lucy drew it and took some levels.

Meanwhile, the majority of the team were occupied with the northern and central sections of the trench.  James G led Josh, Frankie, Freddie, Pete and Sue in attempting to resolve the stratigraphic relationships between the rooms in the northern section of the villa, and the hitherto unrecorded apsidal room.  While the rest of the team were working hard, mattocking and shovelling, Elliot was working hard to identify the edges of what may turn out to be another hypocaust room.

In the centre of the trench, Andy led Matt, Jeff, James and Tilly in attempting to find out whether Hayward had left any in situ deposits in Room 4.  Despite their best efforts, it doesn’t seem to be the case, but Andy and Tilly managed to discover an almost complete pot in the ground!

After a quick paddle in our new paddling pool, the team enjoyed a meal of corned beef hash prepared by Becca and Doug.

Today was another scorcher on site but our team battled through the heat and sun to do some great work!

The day kicked off with Elliot and Tom finishing off Elliot’s work from yesterday, cleaning up the robber trench before recording it and taking some levels.

Meanwhile, Matt, Jeff, James, Becca and Pete were working with Andy to remove the top layer clay from Room 4, revealing the sandy, mortar-filled context beneath (and also finding some great pottery sherds along the way!)

Hayley was working with Lucy today, investigating what could perhaps be a Roman oven – skillfully identifying colour change around the cut feature.

This ‘oven’ feature produced an interesting sherd of burnt BB! yesterday (below)

On the north side of the trench, James G took charge of Josh, Freddie, Tom and Sue in trying to see where the heated apsidal room leads and found another wall of the villa wall in the process.

At the end of the day the team were incredibly surprised to see that Maggie had bought us all a paddling pool to help us cool off at the end of a hot day’s work – thanks again to Maggie for the gift!

The team all enjoyed a dinner of fajitas prepared by Tilly and Frankie before settling in for the evening.

Today on site, the team were visited by Hugh Beamish from Historic England.  The inspection went off without a hitch which was greatly encouraging for our first team’s last day on site.

From the start of the day, Elliot supervised James S, Charlotte and Henry in hunting for slate deposits in the western side of the trench, uncovering some large pockets of slate, interpreted as a roof collapse event.

Meanwhile, Hayley, Holly-Ann, Dan, James I and Chris were investigating some backfill from what may have been a robber trench, while James G may have found a section of robbed out wall.

Our star find of the day came in the form of a milk bottle and two plastic cups (one red, one yellow) which are almost undoubtedly leftovers from the original mid 20th Century excavations led by Hayward.

Later in the day, Holly-Ann took Dan and Chris to do some recording in the South-Eastern corner of the trench, drawing a plan and taking levels, while Henry went on a mission to find a drainage feature.

As our first team of the 2016 season reach the end of their experience, they would all like to share what their favourite part of the excavation has been:

Holly-Ann: “Being the wall whisperer, finding a glass bead and becoming a BBC celebrity”

Imogen: “Enjoying camp life and a pan of pimms!”

Chris: Meeting new people and getting to be on TV

Dan: “Putting up the greatest fence of our lifetime, being on the BBC and getting a Peugeot 107 across a wheat field”

Henry: “Experiencing life in Somerset”

James S; Discovering a genuine Roman tile floor”

James I: “Working out how to detect minute soil colour changes”

Kevin: “Getting to ride on the back of a tractor.”

Antonia: “Getting acquainted with Maggie’s kittens and having a load of new experiences”

Charlotte; “I loved every minute of the two weeks!”

We’ll be incredibly sad to see this team leave us – as everyone has worked incredibly hard, and each and every person has made a hugely significant contribution to this year’s excavation, and to the project as a whole.

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!