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.

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.

The advance party of James, Andy, Hayley and Elliot have arrived safe and sound to a warm welcome from Maggie, Colin, Alan, Poppy the dog and all the cats.

The marquee is up (hooray! Let’s hope it stays up longer than last year). Tents are pitched the night is yet young.

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.

In a week’s time we’ll be on site opening up our trenches.

We’re excited. Soon we’ll find out what this geophysical survey really means…

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

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.